St. Anne's Church Limehouse

St. Anne's Limehouse is a church in the Church of England built between 1714-1727 under the direction of an Act of parliament in 1711 (St. Anne's Limehouse). It was created as “St. Anne’s Limehouse” by the Limehouse Parish Act (1729) and officially consecrated in 1730 (Cryer). The idea was to serve a growing population of East London. Queen Anne, who had ordered the building of this church, decreed that the captains could register events that happened at sea since the church was not far from the River Thames. This same reason (being close to the Thames) is why the clocktower is the highest in London. Additionally, thanks to the special status afforded to this church as a registry of happenings on naval ships, it can fly the White Ensign of the British Navy all year round, which is a formal flag consisting of the Union Jack in an upper left corner and the St. George's cross (Munks). (This flag has a long history going back to the Tudors, which used to more colorful, but the colors changed to red, white, and blue. The White Ensign now looks the same as it did then, just that the cross is smaller in dimension (Jamieson, Zubova).)

At the time, England and Scotland had joined together as the Kingdom of Great Britain, so building a church means that the Anglicans can reach more people to proselytize. The church serving as a place for naval captains to register events that occurred on their ships also supports the fledgling British Empire, which would soon have its footholds in the Indian Subcontinent, West Africa, North America, and the Caribbean. The people working in Poplar would likely have been white ethnics (Irish, Italians, Eastern Europeans) or people of color (British History Online), and non-Protestants or non-Christians who would be doing domestic work (nannying, cooking, laundry), manual labor (building ships, unloading ships, etc.), or other types of labor that didn’t pay well, which entrenched the cycle of poverty into the East End.

Cryer, A.B. “St. Anne’s Limehouse Explained.” Everything Explained Today, n.d., https://everything.explained.today/St_Anne%27s_Limehouse/.

Jamieson, Kate. “History of the Naval Ensign.” The Trafalgar Way, 17 Oct. 2019, https://www.thetrafalgarway.org/blog/history-of-the-naval-ensign.

Munks, Holly. Photograph of St. Anne’s Limehouse, showing the clocktower. Poplarlondon.co.uk, n.d., https://poplarlondon.co.uk/st-anne-s-church-limehouse-history/.

Munks, Holly. “Watching over Limehouse: the secret history of St Anne’s Church.” Poplar LDN, 21 May 2024, https://poplarlondon.co.uk/st-anne-s-church-limehouse-history/.

"Pennyfields". Survey of London: Volumes 43 and 44, Poplar, Blackwall and Isle of Dogs. Ed. Hermione Hobhouse (London, 1994), British History Online. Web. 24 April 2025. https://www.british-history.ac.uk/survey-london/vols43-4/pp111-113.

“St. Anne’s Limehouse.” St. Anne’s Limehouse [organization], n.d., https://web.archive.org/web/20141222162558/http://stanneslimehouse.org/history.html.

Zubova, Xenia. “The White Ensign: A brief history of the iconic Royal Navy flag.” Forces News, 2 Sep. 2022, https://www.forcesnews.com/services/navy/white-ensign-brief-history-iconic-royal-navy-flag.