On the campus of Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, a white stone church stands out like it was lifted from the City of London. In a way, it was.

The Church of St. Mary the Virgin, Aldermanbury, once sat near the Guildhall in London, with a church on that site dating back at least to the 12th century. After the Great Fire of London destroyed the building in 1666, it was rebuilt to a design by Sir Christopher Wren and completed in the 1670s using Portland stone.

That stone shell survived for centuries, until the night of Dec. 29, 1940, when German bombing raids ignited so many fires that the event became known as the Second Great Fire of London. St. Mary Aldermanbury was gutted, with its roof and interior destroyed, leaving the outer walls and tower.

The church’s path to Missouri began with Winston Churchill’s 1946 visit to Westminster College, where he delivered the “Sinews of Peace” speech and warned that an “iron curtain” had descended across Europe. In the early 1960s, the college looked for a lasting memorial and chose the bombed Wren church for an ambitious relocation and rebuild.

For mason contractors, the move is a reminder that the success of any salvage, restoration, or dismantle-and-rebuild job depends on jobsite controls. Workers in London labeled roughly 7,000 stones to record each piece’s position, and more than 700 tons of stone were shipped by boat and rail. Even with labeling, the project reportedly got harder when the stones arrived out of order, turning reconstruction into a massive sequencing challenge.

Using Wren’s surviving plans and photographs, builders laid the foundation stone in 1966 and rededicated the rebuilt church on May 7, 1969. The church, now part of America’s National Churchill Museum, was restored again in the 2020s and continues to host services, concerts, and weddings.

Read the full, original article from British Heritage Travel here.