St Dunstan in the East is the shell of a bombed City church that the City of London turned into a public garden in 1970. Trees grow through the window openings, a fountain runs in the middle of the old nave, and it costs nothing. It is five minutes' walk from the Tower of London and most people walking that route never notice the turning.
It is small. Ten minutes covers it, twenty if you sit down, and that is the correct way to use it: as a pause between two larger things rather than a destination in itself. This page explains what you are looking at, how to find it, and why the time of day matters more here than at almost any other free site in the City of London.
St Dunstan in the East Church Garden
- What it is
- A public garden inside the ruins of a Grade I listed church, run by the City of London Corporation
- Cost
- Free
- Nearest stations
- Monument (District, Circle, Northern via Bank) and Tower Hill (District, Circle)
- Opened as a garden
- 1970
- Time needed
- 10–20 minutes
- Facilities
- Benches and a fountain. No toilets, no café, no shop
What happened to the church
A church stood on this site from around 1100. A new south aisle was added in 1391 and repairs were carried out in 1631. Then came the Great Fire of 1666, which damaged the building severely but did not destroy it.
Rather than rebuild from scratch, the parish patched the medieval walls, and Christopher Wren added a tower and a needle spire carried on flying buttresses. That steeple is the reason people call it a Wren church, and it is still standing over the garden today. The body of the church was rebuilt again in the nineteenth century, leaving Wren's tower and spire in place.
The Blitz finished it. The church was severely damaged in 1941, and the tower and steeple were the main survivors. When the Church of England reorganised its City parishes after the Second World War, the decision was taken not to rebuild. In 1967 the City of London Corporation resolved to make the ruins into a public garden, and it opened in 1970.
That sequence explains what you see: medieval and Victorian wall fragments, a Wren tower, and half a century of planting that has had long enough to take over. Nothing here is a reconstruction or a folly.
Photo: Phlizz · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons · resized
What it is like inside
You come in through a gap in the wall and the noise of Lower Thames Street drops away almost at once. The old nave is now a lawn and planting bed with paths through it, and the fountain sits roughly where the crossing would have been. The window openings are empty, so the walls frame views of the surrounding office blocks, and climbers have colonised most of the stonework.
The effect is genuinely unusual for central London: an enclosed, roofless, green room, with benches. People eat lunch here, read, and take a lot of photographs.
The planting does most of the work seasonally. Spring and early summer are the greenest; autumn brings colour along the walls; in deep winter the ruin is barer and colder and the garden loses much of its point. If you have one free half-hour in January, spend it somewhere indoors instead.
When to go, and when not to
This is the practical heart of the matter. St Dunstan in the East is a well-known photograph, it sits in the middle of an office district, and it holds perhaps forty people before it feels full.
| Time | What to expect |
|---|---|
| Weekday, before 9am | Almost empty. The best light on the east walls. Commuters passing outside, nobody inside |
| Weekday, 12pm–2pm | Busiest. Office workers with lunch fill the benches; photographers queue for the arch |
| Weekday, mid-afternoon | Quiet again, steadily emptying |
| Saturday and Sunday | Far fewer office workers, but visitors arrive in a steady trickle. The surrounding streets are dead, which some people love |
The City does not publish opening hours for this garden. Its page gives directions and history but no times. Treat it as a daylight garden: go between mid-morning and late afternoon and you will not be caught out. In midwinter that means before about half past three.
Finding it, which is harder than it sounds
The garden lies on St Dunstan's Hill, the short lane that drops from Great Tower Street down towards Lower Thames Street, between the Monument and the Tower of London. The City's own page names Monument and Tower Hill as the nearest Underground stations, and either is a walk of a few minutes.
The difficulty is that the entrance is a gap in a wall on a side lane with no grand signage, and the surrounding buildings are tall enough to hide the tower until you are almost underneath it. Walking east from the Monument along Great Tower Street, watch for the lane dropping to your right. Walking west from the Tower, come up Lower Thames Street and look for the steps climbing to your left.
There are no toilets in the garden. The nearest reliable ones are in the cafés and shops around the Tower and at Monument station; our guide to public toilets in London covers the general problem in the City, where most facilities sit inside buildings that shut at the weekend.
What survives, and what the planting is doing
Look at the stonework rather than the greenery for a moment and the garden becomes readable. The tower and spire at the west end are the Wren work of the 1690s, built after the Great Fire; the spire is carried on four flying buttresses rather than a solid base, which is the detail architects come here for. The walls around the old nave carry the marks of several rounds of repair and rebuilding, and the window tracery is the part most worth looking at closely.
The planting was chosen to work with all of that rather than hide it. Climbers are trained up the walls but the window openings are kept clear, so the frames still read as windows. Palms and ferns hold their shape through the winter, which is why the garden looks deliberate in February rather than derelict. City of London gardeners work here regularly, and the apparent wildness takes a good deal of maintenance.
The tower is not part of the public garden, and there is no way up it. What you can walk into is the roofless nave and the paths around it, which is the whole of the visit.
Photography, and what needs a permit
The City of London is straightforward about this. Visitors are welcome to take photographs and videos of their visit and do not need to ask permission. If you are running an organised photoshoot with a cast and crew, you must apply for a licence or permit first.
The line between the two is about production rather than equipment. A couple taking engagement photographs on a phone is a visit. A photographer with an assistant, a reflector and a changed outfit is a shoot. Staff and City gardeners work here and will say so if you have crossed the line.
Practically: the arch at the east end is the shot everyone wants, and at lunchtime there will be people waiting for it. Early morning solves that entirely.
Other City ruins and gardens within walking distance
St Dunstan is the best known of the City's bombed-church gardens but not the only one. Christchurch Greyfriars, beside St Paul's Cathedral, is another Wren church left as a ruin and planted as a rose garden, with box hedges marking where the pews stood. Postman's Park, a few minutes further north, holds the Watts Memorial to Heroic Self-Sacrifice, a wall of ceramic tablets commemorating ordinary people who died saving others. The City Corporation lists all of its gardens on its website.
Within ten minutes on foot you also have Leadenhall Market, Tower Bridge, and the free rooftop gardens the City has gained in the last decade. Our pages on Sky Garden, roof gardens and free terraces and the City's skyscrapers explain which of the towers you can go up and which you can only look at from a bench in a ruined nave.
Every September, Open House opens buildings across London that are normally private, and the City is one of the densest areas for it; see our guide to the Open House Festival. The London Museum tells the story of the bombing that emptied this church.
A half-day that works around it
The garden is too small to plan a morning around, so build it into a route. A sequence that works well: start at the Monument, climb it if you want the view, walk east and drop into St Dunstan for fifteen minutes, carry on to the Tower of London for the afternoon, and finish with coffee on the South Bank across Tower Bridge.
Reverse it if you are starting from the Tower. Either way, going early is the difference between having the place to yourself and sharing it with a hundred people eating sandwiches. Our round-up of free things to do in London lists more no-cost stops in the same part of town, and where to find good coffee covers the immediate area, which is better supplied on weekdays than at weekends.
For somewhere else in London that is both a ruin and a garden, but on a far larger scale and with its own rules, see Highgate Cemetery. The full list of sites in this part of the guide is in our landmarks and historic buildings section.
Frequently asked questions
Is St Dunstan in the East free to visit?
Yes. It is a public garden maintained by the City of London Corporation, with no ticket, no booking and no donation expected. It can be hired for private events, so on rare occasions part of it may be in use.
What are the opening hours of St Dunstan in the East?
The City of London's page for the garden does not publish opening hours. Plan on visiting in daylight, and remember that in December and January that means finishing well before 4pm.
Which church was St Dunstan in the East?
A parish church on the site from about 1100, damaged in the Great Fire of 1666 and repaired with a new tower and spire by Christopher Wren. It was severely damaged again in the Blitz in 1941. The decision was taken not to rebuild, and the City turned the ruins into a garden that opened in 1970.
Can you take wedding or engagement photographs there?
Personal photographs and videos are welcome without permission. An organised shoot involving a cast and crew requires a licence or permit from the City of London, which must be arranged in advance through its filming and photography service.
How do you get to St Dunstan in the East?
Monument and Tower Hill are the nearest Underground stations, both a few minutes away. The entrance is on St Dunstan's Hill, the lane running between Great Tower Street and Lower Thames Street. There is no large sign, so watch for the church tower above the surrounding buildings.
Sources
- City of London Corporation - St Dunstan in the East Church Garden (checked September 2026)
- City of London Corporation - Find a garden (checked September 2026)
- City of London Corporation - Filming and photography in City gardens (checked September 2026)