The Danish Church

The Danish Church, originally St Katharine's College Chapel, is a collegiate-style building constructed between 1826 and 1828 by Ambrose Poynter for the Royal Hospital of St Katharine. It was restored in 1969. The chapel is built of grey brick with stone dressings, with a stone-faced west end. It is a tall building of seven bays, designed in the Perpendicular style. It is connected to and flanked by numbers 4, The Pastor's House, and 5, St Katharine’s Hall.

The west end has a gabled design with octagonal corner turrets boasting arrow slit windows, decorative elements above the roofline, and spires. A pointed arch doorway incorporates a wooden door and a square-headed label with enriched spandrels and stops. Above the doorway is a tall, seven-light traceried window. The apex of the facade features a hexagonal clock surmounted by a crown and flanked by coats of arms. The north and south facades have tall, high three-light traceried windows in each bay, topped by a cornice and blocking course. The east end mirrors the west end with a similar traceried window.

The interior is simple and whitewashed, and contains two late 17th-century figures of Moses and John the Baptist by Caius Cibber, previously from the Danish Seamen's Mission in Commercial Road, London. Former church furnishings and monuments were distributed around 1950 between the Tower of London and St Katharine's Foundation in Butcher Row, London.

The chapel was built to replace an earlier chapel which was part of the religious hospice founded in 1148 by Queen Matilda, later known as the Hospital of St Katharine, situated near the Tower of London. The original site was redeveloped as St Katharine’s Dock in 1825. The patronage of the chapel historically resided with the Queen of England; Queen Alexandra, the Danish wife of King Edward VII, subsequently granted it to the Danish community in London.