=St. John the Baptist= was situated on the west side of Dowgate Hill in the ward of Walbrook. _Ecclesia Sancti Johannis super Walbroc_, occurs about 1181; _ecclesia Sancti Johis de Walbrook_ is set down in the “Taxatio Ecclesiasticus” of Pope Nicholas IV. (1291). The first mention of the church is contained in a book at the Cathedral (Newcourt, i. p. 371) compiled in the time of Ralph de Diceto made dean 1181. The entry is as follows:—“_Ecclesia Sancti Johannis super Walbroc_ est Canonicorum, & reddit eis ii sol. per manum _Vitalis_ clerici, solvit Synodalia ivd, Archidiacono xiid. & habet in domino suo quondam terram, quae reddit ii sol. & est de feodo _Willimi de la Mare_, & etiam terrulam, quae est inter ecclesiam & _Walbroc_ & reddit iii sol. non habet coemiterium.” Thus the earliest church stood upon the east side of the stream, a little tract of land intervening between its west wall and the bank. When the watercourse was diverted to flow more eastwards, the chancel bordered on the brook. It was rebuilt about 1412, and again in 1621, but destroyed by the Great Fire in 1666, when its parish was annexed to that of St. Antholin. The earliest date of an incumbent is 1150. The patronage of the church was in the hands of: the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul’s in 1150, who granted it to the Prioress and Convent of St. Helen about 1373, till it was seized by Henry VIII. and so continued in the Crown up to 1671, when it was annexed to St. Antholin. Houseling people in 1548 were 375. Only two monuments are recorded by Stow as being of note—W. Combarton, Skinner, who gave lands to the church, buried 1410; and John Stone, Taylor, Sheriff 1464. The site of the building was converted into a churchyard, and upon the wall is a stone with this inscription: “‘Before the dreadfull Fire, anno domini 1666, here stood the parish church St. John Baptist, upon Walbrook—William Wilkins, James Whitchurch, churchwardens this present year anno domini 1674.’ The above stone was refaced, and the letters fresh cut anno domini 1836—Rev. John Gordon M.A. rector, Edward Jones, Lewis Williams, churchwardens.” The parsonage was not rebuilt, and Strype notes (1754, vol. i. p. 516) that neither its site nor that of its garden was given in the 1693 visitation. Newcourt (_Repertorium_, i. p. 371) further notes that the same visitation records great encroachments having been made on the churchyard since the Fire “to some of which the parish had consented, and others have been done by the Lord Mayor and Court of Aldermen, without the consent of the Archbishop and Bishop of London (as ’tis said) and the Chamberlain of London receives the rent for them.”