Restoration and Renewal

Restoration & Renewal - Transforming Temple Church

Temple Church is one of Britain's most important medieval jewels. Founded by the legendary Knights Templar, it was possibly the first Gothic building in England. It is the birthplace of Magna Carta and survived the dissolution of its founding monastic order, the English Reformation, civil war, the Great Fire of London and even (just) the Blitz. We remain an active church community and welcome more than 40,000 pilgrims, worshippers, tourists and concert-goers every year to experience the unique spirituality and atmosphere of this special place. 

Temple Church was last subject to major repairs in the 1950s, after extensive bomb damage on the night of 10 May 1941. Architect Walter Godfrey’s elegant and austere restoration has served us well for seven decades but the Church is ill-equipped now to meet the demands of 21^st century life. We have no step-free access and just two public toilets for a building seating 500 people, whilst our choir rehearsal and guest artist spaces are woefully inadequate given the expanding nature of our work.

In order to continue serving our community, Temple Church Trust has embarked on the biggest transformation of this special place in almost 80 years.

Our plans

Restoration and Renewal is a £6.7m project that will transform the church for generations to come.

In the first phase, working with an outstanding team of heritage architects and craftspeople, we are conserving the great West Doorway (one of only a few surviving Romanesque structures in London). More than a decade in the planning, works will begin on site in May 2026 and be completed by January 2027. You can learn more about the technical and artist challenges of creating replacement carvings for a Grade 1-listed medieval religious building here.

From April 2027, we will renovate the Vestry and back-of-house facilities. This second phase of the project includes building a new Song School, where our girl and boy choristers will train four times a week and where we will host some of our expanding music outreach work with junior schools across the City of London.

For the first time, we will have full disabled access throughout the church and its ancillary spaces - and a suite of supporting rooms that will radically improve the Temple experience for visitors, musicians and our regular congregants. We will be building ramped access from street level to the West Door and the new Song School, enriching the churchyard with pollinator-friendly planting and reducing our environmental impact by installing a more efficient heating system. 

We have all the necessary permissions in place to complete the door works and are in pre-planning with our Vestry, Song School and churchyard proposals.

Our supporters

Our biggest supporters have been the Inns of Court of Inner and Middle Temple, who since 1608 have been the custodians of this special place. Together they have pledged £3m to the project. We have also enjoyed enormous support from members and benchers of the two Inns, who have given more than £400,000 to date.

The Corporation of London provided a significant initial grant to help take our plans from concept to RIBA Stage 3. This vote of confidence has encouraged other donors to help us reach our goal.

We are grateful to all of the following organisations, individuals, trusts and foundations for their gifts as we look to close the remaining £1.8m gap to complete this once-in-a-generation project:

Inner Temple 
Middle Temple
J C Baker Family Trust 
Mrs Elizabeth Mellows 
The Wolfson Foundation
The Julia Rausing Trust 
Golden Bottle Trust 
Foyle Foundation
Linbury Trust
Aurora Trust
Baronial Order of Magna Carta

How to give

If you feel able to support our project, please consider making a donation - however large or small - to our Appeal Fund. If you'd like to know more about the fundraising campaign, email gifts@templechurch.com and one of our team will be in touch directly. You can also give online via our Just Giving page or send a cheque, written out to Temple Church Trust, to: Appeal Fund, Temple Church Trust, 1 Inner Temple Lane, London EC4Y 1AF. Thank you.