St Martin-in-the-Fields is a Church of England parish church at the north-east corner of Trafalgar Square in the City of Westminster, London. Dedicated in honour of Saint Martin of Tours, there has been a church on the site since at least the medieval period. This location, at that time, was farmlands and fields beyond the London wall.

St Martin's became a principal parish church west of the old City in the early modern period as Westminster's population grew. When its medieval and Jacobean structure was found to be near failure, the present building was constructed in an influential neoclassical design by James Gibbs in 1722–1726. The church is one of the visual anchors adding to the open-urban space around Trafalgar Square.

Excavations at the site in 2006 uncovered a group of burials dating from c A.D. 350, including a sarcophagus burial dating from c. A.D. 410. The site is outside the city limits of Roman London (as was the usual Roman practice for burials) but is particularly interesting for being so far outside (1 statute mile west-south-west of Ludgate), and this is leading to a reappraisal of Westminster's importance at that time. The burials are thought by some to mark a Christian centre of that time (possibly reusing the site or building of a pagan temple or possibly even developing around the shrine of a martyr.

The Roman burial ground was acknowledged by the Saxons, who also buried their dead there. To have such a long time span as a burial ground makes St Martin-in-the-Fields relatively unusual. It is possible that the Saxon town of Lundenwic essentially grew eastwards from the early burial group (Museum of London Archaeology).

Medieval and Tudor

The earliest extant reference to the church is from 1222, when there was a dispute between the Abbot of Westminster and the Bishop of London as to who had control over it. The Archbishop of Canterbury decided in favour of Westminster, and the monks of Westminster Abbey began to use it.

Henry VIII rebuilt the church in 1542 to keep plague victims in the area from having to pass through his Palace of Whitehall. At this time it was literally "in the fields", occupying an isolated position between the cities of Westminster and London.

By the beginning of the reign of James I, the local population had increased greatly and the congregation had outgrown the building. In 1606 the king granted an acre ( 4,046.86 mts2) of ground to the west of St Martin's Lane for a new churchyard, and the building was enlarged eastwards over the old burial ground, increasing the length of the church by about half. At the same time, the church was, in the phrase of the time, thoroughly "repaired and beautified". Later in the 17th century, capacity was increased by the addition of galleries. The creation of the new parishes of St Anne, Soho, and St James, Piccadilly, and the opening of a chapel in Oxenden Street also relieved some of the pressure on space.

As it stood at the beginning of the 18th century, the church was built of brick, rendered over, with stone facings. The roof was tiled, and there was a stone tower, with buttresses. The ceiling was slightly arched, supported with what Edward Hatton described as "Pillars of the Tuscan and Modern Gothick orders". The interior was wainscotted in oak to a height of 6 ft, while the galleries, on the north, south and west sides, were of painted deal. The church was about 84 ft long and 62 ft wide. The tower was about 90 ft high.

A number of notables were buried in this phase of the church, including Robert Boyle, Nell Gwyn, John Parkinson and Sir John Birkenhead.

Rebuilding

A survey of 1710 found that the walls and roof were in a state of decay. In 1720, Parliament passed an act of Parliament, the Church of St. Martin-in-the Fields Act 1719 (6 Geo. 1. c. 32 Pr.) for the rebuilding of the church allowing for a sum of up to £22,000, to be raised by a rate on the parishioners. A temporary church was erected partly on the churchyard and partly on ground in Lancaster Court. Advertisements were placed in the newspapers that bodies and monuments of those buried in the church or churchyard could be taken away for reinterment by relatives.

The rebuilding commissioners selected James Gibbs to design the new church. His first suggestion was for a church with a circular nave and domed ceiling, but the commissioners considered this scheme too expensive. Gibbs then produced a simpler, rectilinear plan, which they accepted. The foundation stone was laid on 19 March 1722, and the last stone of the spire was placed into position in December 1724. The total cost was £33,661 including the architect's fees.

The west front of St Martin's has a portico with a pediment supported by a giant order of Corinthian columns, six wide. The order is continued around the church by pilasters. In designing the church, Gibbs drew upon the works of Christopher Wren, but departed from Wren's practice in his integration of the tower into the church. Rather than considering it as an adjunct to the main body of the building, he constructed it within the west wall, so that it rises above the roof, immediately behind the portico, an arrangement also used at around the same time by John James at St George, Hanover Square (completed in 1724), although James' steeple is much less ambitious. The spire of St Martin's rises 192 ft above the level of the church floor.

The church is rectangular in plan, with the five-bay nave divided from the aisles by arcades of Corinthian columns. There are galleries over both aisles and at the west end. The nave ceiling is a flattened barrel vault, divided into panels by ribs. The panels are decorated in stucco with cherubs, clouds, shells and scroll work, executed by Giuseppe Artari and Giovanni Bagutti.

Until the creation of Trafalgar Square in the 1820s, Gibbs's church was crowded by other buildings. J. P. Malcolm, writing in 1807, said that its west front "would have a grand effect if the execrable watch-house and sheds before it were removed" and described the sides of the church as "lost in courts, where houses approach them almost to contact".

The design was criticised widely at the time, but subsequently became extremely famous, being copied particularly widely in the United States. Although Gibbs was discreetly Catholic, his four-wall, long rectangular floor plan, with a triangular gable roof and a tall prominent centre-front steeple (and often, columned front-portico), became closely associated with Protestant church architecture world-wide.

In Britain, the design of St Andrew's in the Square church (built 1739–56) in Glasgow was inspired by the church. In the American Colonies, St. Michael's Anglican Church (Charleston, South Carolina) (built 1751–61), was heavily influenced by St Martin-in-the-fields, though the columns of its front portico are of the Tuscan order, rather than the Corinthian order. All Souls Church, Unitarian (Washington, D.C.) is also based on it, but without the royal insignia. St. George's Church, Dublin (built 1802), though obviously influence by St Martin's-in-the-fields, that influence seems to be via St Andrews in the Square, as exampled in the copying of its Ionic columns instead of St Martin's Corinthian columns. In India, St Andrew's Church, Egmore (built 1818–1821), Madras (now Chennai), is another example. In South Africa, the Dutch Reformed Church in Cradock is modelled on St Martin-in-the-Fields.

Various notables were soon buried in the new church, including the émigré sculptor Louis-François Roubiliac (who had settled in this area of London) and the furniture-maker Thomas Chippendale (whose workshop was in the same street as the church, St Martin's Lane), along with Jack Sheppard in the adjoining churchyard. This churchyard, which lay to the south of the church, was removed to make way for Duncannon Street, constructed in the 19th century to provide access to the newly created Trafalgar Square. Two small parcels of the churchyard survived, to the north and east of the church. The Metropolitan Public Gardens Association laid them out for public use in 1887; unusually for the MPGA, it paved them with flagstones as well as planted them with trees. For many years covered in market stalls, the churchyard has been restored including with the provision of seating.

Before embarking for the Middle East Campaign, Edmund Allenby was met by General Beauvoir De Lisle at the Grosvenor Hotel and convinced General Allenby with Bible prophecies of the deliverance of Jerusalem. He told General Allenby that the Bible said that Jerusalem would be delivered in that very year, 1917, and by Great Britain. General Beauvoir de Lisle had studied the prophecies, as he was about to preach at St Martin-in-the-Fields.