The Archaeology of Terrorism: Damage to Two Medieval Churches in the City of London in the IRA Attacks of 1992 and 1993

Abstract

On 10 April 1992, a one-ton bomb in a white truck exploded outside the Baltic Exchange in St Mary Axe street in the City of London, killing three people and damaging the church of St Helen Bishopsgate. On 24 April 1993, a second more powerful bomb in a truck exploded in Bishopsgate, a couple of hundred yards away, directly outside the church of St Ethelburga. A newspaper photographer was killed. These bombs were planted by the Provisional Irish Republican Army. The incidents led to great changes at both churches. St Helen’s was refurbished in a striking manner, not without criticism, when a new neo-Classical layer of fittings was added to its many phases of history; St Ethelburga’s, badly damaged, was partly reconstructed and repaired to serve as a Centre for Reconciliation and Peace, an initiative of the new Bishop of London, Richard Chartres. This paper describes the initial responses to the two blasts, and how the churches were restored. It is a record of two terrorist incidents and what happened afterwards.