St. Peter le Poor

St. Peter le Poor was a parish church on the west side of Broad Street. It is visible on the Agas map south of Austin Friars, bearing the number 24. That it was sometime peraduenture a poore Parish gave it the name le Poor (Stow). Its name distinguished it from the other London churches dedicated to St. Peter. Stow mentions that at this present there be many fayre houses, possessed by rich marchants and other near the church (Stow), suggesting that the parish was no longer impoverished.
The church underwent repairs in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries before a complete rebuilding was undertaken in 1788. During construction, the church had to be moved further west because it had been hanging over the street. The last vestiges of the early modern building can be seen in Benjamin Cole’s 1754 engraving of Broad Street Ward (Cole), before construction changed the face of the church. The church stood until the early twentieth century when it was removed (Harben).

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