The Lion and the Unicorn

At the Parish Church of St. Mary le Strand, nothing is quite as it first appears!

Here, for example, is the ‘official’ photograph of the Hanoverian Crest of King George I which sits above the apse…..

But we asked our photographer, Jianwei Chen, to photograph the crest from a different angle – and this is what we discovered…..

A unicorn with a monster-sized horn!

Remember, the decoration of the interior of St. Mary le Strand began in 1719 – after the failure of the 1715 Jacobite Rebellion, led by John Erskine, 6th Earl of Mar….

James Gibbs – the designer of St. Mary le Strand….

……..described here in the Latin as ‘Jacobus Gibbs’…..was also a convinced Jacobite, determined, as a Roman Catholic, to bring the Catholic friendly – and indeed Roman Catholic – Stuart family back to the throne of Britain….

He worked as a Jacobite agent for Mar in…