It is located on St Mary Axe, within the Aldgate ward, and is a rare example of a City church that survived both the Great Fire of London and the Blitz.

The first church on the site, which today is bordered by St Mary Axe and Leadenhall Street, was built in medieval times, being recorded in 1147.

Formerly, St Andrew Undershaft had one of London's few surviving large stained-glass windows, installed in the 17th century, but this was destroyed in the Baltic Exchange bombing in 1992.

[6] The custom continued each spring until 1517, when student riots put an end to it, but the maypole itself survived until 1547 when it was seized by a mob and destroyed as a "pagan idol".

[7] According to John Stow, the chronicler who is buried here, they had it "raised from the hooks whereon it had rested for two-and-thirty years, sawn in pieces and burnt.