Bow Church is the parish church of St Mary and Holy Trinity, Stratford, Bow (or Stratford-le-Bow). The church is located on a central reservation site in Bow Road, in Bow, in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets.
There has been a church on the same site for approximately seven hundred years. It originated as a chapel of ease, licensed by Ralph Baldock, Bishop of London, on November 17, 1311 for the residents of Stratford-at-Bow within the parish of Stepney. The parish became independent in the early eighteenth century.
The present church structure dates from the fourteenth century with the addition of the fifteenth century tower as well as other later additions. The chancel roof collapsed in 1896 and the church suffered considerable bomb damage during World War II, requiring a massive restoration effort.
The last burial in the churchyard was in 1854 and it was re-ordered as a public garden by the Metropolitan Public Gardens Association in 1894. It was laid out by the MPGA's landscape gardener Fanny Wilkinson, who took advice from CR Ashbee of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings as to which tombstones should be preserved. The eastern section of the churchyard was laid out as a garden by Wilkinson's successor Madeline Agar in 1911. There are a number of monuments inside the church.
The church is the resting place of Philip Ludwell I (1637-1716), an Anglo-Virginian colonial who served as Governor of the colony of Carolina (serving 11 Apr 1692 – May 1693), at a time when North and South Carolina were one colony; and moved to England circa 1700. It is also the burial site of several members of Ludwell's family, including his grandson, Colonel Philip Ludwell III, the earliest known convert to Eastern Orthodoxy in America. Although the church was Anglican, he was buried according to the funeral rites of the Orthodox Church