Saint Dunstan Dunstan was one of the foremost Saints of Anglo-Saxon England: he was also one of the most venerated before the cult of St. Thomas Becket took hold of the popular imagination.

He was born in 909 A.D. and was taught by Irish monks at Glastonbury Abbey, Somerset, where he developed a reputation as a formidable scholar. He also learnt metalworking, and was later adopted as the patron saint of goldsmiths, jewellers and locksmiths. The wear and tear of time took its toll, however, and St. Dunstan’s was rebuilt in 1831. Much of the internal fabric pre-dates the rebuilding of the Church in the 1830s. The high altar and reredos are Flemish woodwork dating from the seventeenth century. There are also a large number of monuments from the original church. Some of the earliest are two bronze figures thought to date from 1530. The church has been associated with the Worshipful Company of Cordwainers (old English for shoemakers) since the fifteenth century.

St Dunstan-in-the-West was a well-known landmark in previous centuries because of its magnificent clock. This dates from 1671, and was the first public clock in London to have a minute hand. The figures of the two giants strike the hours and quarters, and turn their heads. There are numerous literary references to the clock, including in Tom Brown’s Schooldays, the Vicar of Wakefield and a poem by William Cowper (1782): When labour and when dullness, club in hand, Like the two figures at St. Dunstan’s stand, Beating alternately in measured time The clockwork tintinnabulum of rhyme, Exact and regular the sounds will be, But such mere quarter-strokes are not for me. Samuel Pepys's Diary Sunday 10 August 1662 (Lord’s day) - "Being to dine at my brother’s, I walked to St. Dunstan’s, the church being now finished; and here I heard Dr. Bates, who made a most eloquent sermon.....