St George in the East

• St George in the East is one of six Hawksmoor churches built from 1714 to 1729, with funding from the 1711 Act of Parliament. It has been described as one of his most bizarre flights of fancy ‘a gleaming castle with four pepperpots and a single colossal tower surmounted by an octagonal lantern’.The name of the church was also the parish for the surrounding area, until it was subsumed into Metropolitan Borough of Stepney and abolished in 1927.

• The church was hit by a bomb during the Second World War during the bombing of London's docklands in May 1941. The original interior was destroyed by the fire, but the walls and distinctive "pepper-pot" towers stayed up. In 1964 a modern church interior was constructed inside the existing walls, and a new flat built under each corner tower. It is located on Cannon Street Road, between The Highway and Cable Street, in the East End of London.

• Behind the church lies St George's Gardens, the original cemetery, this was passed to Stepney Council to maintain as a public park in mid-Victorian times.

• It appeared in the 1980 film The Long Good Friday starring Bob Hoskins.

• The church was designated a Grade A listed building (the ecclesiastical equivalent of a Grade I listing) in 1950.