Interior of St Stephen, Walbrook

An early-Victorian writer, George Godwin, dismissed the interior of St Stephen's as "something which might not obtain from observers more than an ordinary degree of praise or admiration". However, Godwin went on to say that the overall sense of the church was most pleasing, if the details were mostly 'faulty'. The body of the church, which is very nearly a parallelogram, is divided into five unequal aisles by four rows of Corinthian columns, the whole giving the church a cruciform arrangement. Godwin managed to admit that this was greatly elegant, but marred by the failure to connect the square of the cruciform to the round of the cupola, while 'the walls of the church were entirely plain, and accord but ill with the rest of the composition'.

The church is very ancient, having been founded on the west bank of the Walbrook River (which still runs underneath London) sometime in or before the eleventh century. It burned down in the Great Fire of London in 1666 and was rebuilt by Wren (to the not complete approval of Godwin!). It was again badly damaged during the Blitz in London, but still stands today.