St Mary-le-Bow on Cheapside is free and open Monday to Friday from 7.30am to 6pm, which makes it the earliest-opening church in the City. Its twelve bells are the Bow bells of the Cockney definition, they hang a hundred feet above the pavement, and they were cast at the Whitechapel bellfoundry in 1956. Whether anyone can still be born within the sound of them is a more interesting question than it looks, and the answer is mostly no.
The church was founded around 1080 as the London headquarters of the archbishops of Canterbury. The medieval building survived three structural collapses before the Great Fire destroyed it in 1666; Wren rebuilt it; a German air raid destroyed it again in 1941; and it was rebuilt once more and re-consecrated in 1964. The eleventh-century crypt underneath is the oldest part, and it is now a wine bar.
Our guide to All Hallows and the City churches puts this church on a walk with six others. This page is about the bells, the crypt and the rule they gave their name to.
St Mary-le-Bow: the practical frame
- Address
- Cheapside, London EC2V 6AU
- Cost
- Free
- Open
- Monday to Friday 07:30–18:00. Usually open at weekends informally; the church suggests emailing first if it matters
- Services
- Morning and Evening Prayer on weekdays, 15 minutes; Eucharist 25 minutes, Tuesday 08:15 and Wednesday 13:05; Sung Compline Thursday 19:30
- In the crypt
- A wine bar, Humble Grape, rated 5 by the Food Standards Agency in January 2026. The long-running vegetarian café that was there before has gone
- Nearest stations
- Bank, Mansion House and St Paul's, all within about five minutes. Buses 8, 25 and 242
- How long
- Fifteen minutes for the church; longer if you time it for a service or a recital
Why 7.30am matters
The City's churches are weekday buildings that mostly open between ten and four, and shut at the weekend. St Mary-le-Bow opens at half past seven in the morning, before nearly everything else in the Square Mile including the coffee chains, and says on its own front page that it is open all day for stillness and prayer. That makes it the right first stop on any City walk, and the only realistic place to sit down indoors in Cheapside at eight in the morning.
Weekends are the qualification. The church describes weekend opening as informal and asks anyone who needs certainty to email in advance. Do not build a Sunday around it without checking.
What a Cockney actually is, and the years nobody could be one
The definition is that a true Cockney is born within the sound of Bow bells. The church itself sets out the folklore: Dick Whittington heard the bells call him back to London in 1392; the Great Bell of Bow ends the nursery rhyme Oranges and Lemons with "I do not know"; and during the Second World War the BBC World Service broadcast a recording of the bells, made in 1926, as a symbol of hope to occupied Europe. That recording is still used as an interval signal.
Here is the problem with the definition, and it comes straight from the church's own history of its bells. The peal was declared unringable in 1926 and not rung again. A recast set, paid for - probably - by Gordon Selfridge, the American who founded the Oxford Street store, rang for only eight years before being destroyed by a German air raid on 11 May 1941. The present twelve bells were not rung for the first time until 21 December 1961.
Nobody born in London between May 1941 and December 1961 can be a Cockney by the traditional test. There were no Bow bells to be born within the sound of: the old ones were destroyed in the Blitz and the new ones did not ring for twenty years. That covers most of the generation that gave the word its modern meaning, which is the kind of thing the definition survives by not being examined too closely.
Can you still hear them?
Less than you would think, and rarely during the day. The bells hang a hundred feet, or thirty metres, above the ground in a frame of Javanese jang; the smallest weighs about 285 kilograms and the tenor nearly 2,135 kilograms, so they are not quiet instruments. But the church has fitted adjustable sound control, which lets the bells be heard for service ringing and keeps them much quieter for practice, and it states plainly that little ringing takes place during the working day out of consideration for its neighbours.
So the answer for a visitor is to come when they are ringing rather than hoping. A group of ringers who work in or near the City rings for the church's main services, so Sunday morning is the likeliest time. The Ancient Society of College Youths, founded in 1637, still rings here regularly, as do the other London societies, and over 300 full peals have been rung in this tower - more than in any other in the City.
The clock is a separate pleasure and runs all day. The tune the bells strike on the quarters and the hour was composed by Sir Charles Villiers Stanford in 1904, which makes it one of the very few purpose-written chimes in London that is not a copy of Westminster's.
The bells' history in six dates
| Year | What happened |
|---|---|
| 1469 | First known reference: the Common Council orders a curfew rung at 9pm. The 9 o'clock bell also marked the end of an apprentice's working day. Curfew ringing stopped in 1876 |
| 1666 | Tower and bells destroyed in the Great Fire |
| 1677 | Christopher Hodson of Crayford casts a heavy peal of eight for Wren's new church |
| 1881 | The ring is augmented to twelve. In 1926 the bells are declared unringable |
| 1941 | The 1933 recast bells destroyed by an air raid on 11 May |
| 1956–61 | Twelve new bells cast at the Whitechapel bellfoundry, using salvaged metal at reduced weight, and first rung on 21 December 1961 |
One detail is worth the walk up the tower stairs you cannot take: each of the twelve bells carries an inscription from a psalm or a New Testament canticle, and the first letters of those inscriptions spell D WHITTINGTON. Much of the cost of the rebuilding came from the Bernard Sunley Charitable Foundation and from Holy Trinity Wall Street in New York. The Whitechapel foundry that cast them closed in 2017 after more than four centuries.
The crypt: eleventh-century vaults, and a change of tenant
The crypt is the oldest surviving part of the church and dates from the eleventh century. For many years it held a well-known vegetarian lunch café, and a great many guidebooks still say so. It no longer does: the business has left the food hygiene register, and the space at this address is now occupied by a wine bar, Humble Grape, which the Food Standards Agency rated 5 at an inspection in January 2026.
That changes what the crypt is useful for. It is no longer the cheap weekday lunch it was, and it is an evening and early-evening proposition instead. Our guide to wine bars in London covers the category; for a City lunch, the options in our City of London guide are a better bet.
Above ground: the balcony, the arches and the spire
Three things to look at. The balcony on the front of the church, which has often been read as a reference to the medieval viewing balcony from which jousts in Cheapside were watched - an unusual thing to find on a Wren façade. The steeple, which is among the most elaborate Wren built and was widely imitated afterwards. And the interior, which is a 1960s reconstruction inside Wren's walls, with modern stained glass rather than anything old.
The name is older than any of it. "Le Bow" refers to the bows, or arches, of the Norman crypt, which is the part that has outlasted every version of the building above it.
Music, and the best hour to come
The church runs a concert and recital programme, organ recitals and a resident chorus, and it has a long-standing lunchtime and evening pattern: Eucharist at 1.05pm on Wednesdays, Sung Compline at 7.30pm on Thursdays with refreshments afterwards, and occasional sung masses on feast days. All are free to attend. If you want a single recommendation, Thursday's Compline is thirty minutes of sung plainsong in a Wren church at the end of a working day, and it costs nothing.
Our guides to classical music in London and choral evensong set the City church circuit in context, and free live music in London lists the other lunchtime options.
What to put around it
The church stands halfway along Cheapside, which means everything in the western City is within ten minutes on foot. St Paul's is five minutes west, Bank junction and the Royal Exchange five minutes east, and Guildhall three minutes north. St Stephen Walbrook, with its Henry Moore altar, is the obvious pairing and keeps shorter hours, so do this one first.
Bank, Mansion House and St Paul's stations are all about five minutes away, and this is one of the places where the Underground is a waste of money: our guide to Tube stations it is quicker to walk between explains why. For the Cockney dialect the bells named, see British words and slang for visitors, and for the food that goes with it, pie and mash and jellied eels. Dick Whittington's real office is still filled every November, as our guide to the Lord Mayor's Show describes, and the man who probably paid for the 1933 bells built the store in our guide to Selfridges.
Frequently asked questions
Are the Bow bells still rung?
Yes. A group of ringers who work in or near the City rings for the church's main services, and the London ringing societies practise here. The church has adjustable sound control and says little ringing takes place during the working day out of consideration for neighbours, so Sunday morning is the best chance of hearing a full peal.
What does born within the sound of Bow bells mean?
It is the traditional test of a true Cockney: someone born close enough to St Mary-le-Bow on Cheapside to hear its bells. It is a definition with holes in it. The bells were declared unringable in 1926, the recast set was destroyed by bombing on 11 May 1941, and the present bells were not rung until 21 December 1961, so for two long stretches there was nothing to hear.
Is St Mary-le-Bow free to visit?
Yes. It is open Monday to Friday from 7.30am to 6pm with no charge, which makes it the earliest opening of the City churches. Weekend opening is informal, so email the church first if you are making a special journey.
Is there still a café in the crypt?
There is a business in the crypt, but it is now a wine bar rather than the vegetarian lunch café that operated there for many years and that many guidebooks still list. The wine bar holds a food hygiene rating of 5 from an inspection in January 2026.
How old is the church?
The foundation dates from about 1080, when the church was the London headquarters of the archbishops of Canterbury, and the crypt is eleventh-century. Everything above ground has been rebuilt twice: by Wren after the Great Fire of 1666, and again after bombing in 1941, with re-consecration in 1964.
Sources
- St Mary-le-Bow - opening times, services and contact (checked September 2026)
- St Mary-le-Bow - Bow Bells: a brief history by Mark Regan (checked September 2026)
- St Mary-le-Bow - history of the church and parish (checked September 2026)
- Food Standards Agency - food hygiene rating register (Humble Grape, St Mary Le Bow Church, Cheapside EC2V 6AU, rated 5 on 16 January 2026) (checked September 2026)