The parish church of Greenwich commemorates Alfege (the normal modern spelling), Archbishop of Canterbury. Having been captured there by Viking raiders he was taken to their camp at Greenwich, where he was murdered after a drunken feast in 1012. An early church was reputedly built on the spot, later succeeded by a medieval one of which the roof collapsed in a storm in 1710, owing to age and an undetected structural problem. Thomas Tallis, the Elizabethan composer, was buried in that building and Samuel Pepys described it as a 'fine church' when he attended in January 1660.

This print shows Nicholas Hawksmoor's building of 1714 (consecrated 1718), the first of Queen Anne's 'fifty new churches' scheme for London, though that total was never built. The Act providing for them was prompted by the petition to Parliamen by the parish for £6000 of aid to rebuild St Alfege, submitted on 14 February 1711. Among other reasons this stated that Greenwich was by then a poor community, the majority of inhabitants being seamen,waterman and fishermen, with many of the first in the Royal Navy and often in long arrears of pay: also that many 'masters of families' had died at sea in the Great Storm of 1703, the loss of Admiral Sir Cloudesley Shovell's squadron on Scilly in 1707 and other recent accidents of war, leaving some 3000 widows and chidren dependent on the parish up the date of the request.

The body of the church - the first of eight in the fifty churches scheme in which Hawksmoore was involved - was built up against the medieval square tower, which survives inside the Portland casing which John James added, with the steeple above, in 1730. This view from across Greenwich High Road is practically the same today as far as the church and churchyard are concerned, with part of Church Street on the right. The church no longer has a flagmast and the roof and most of the interior dates from the 1950s, when it was sensitively rebuilt by Professor Sir Albert Richardson after being gutted by incendiary bombing during World War II. The victor of Quebec, 1759, Major-General James Wolfe, is buried in the vault as is John Julius Angerstein, founder of the National Gallery: both were local residents and have visible memorials in the church, as does Sir George Airy, 7th Astronomer Royal, though not buried there. [PvdM, amended 2/18]