Inside the entrance of the church stands the unlikely figure of an Agent Provocateur from the roof of the Lenin Museum in Prague, by the artist Irena Sedlecka, one of three Czech sculptors commissioned in the early 1950′s by the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia to create six larger-than-life heroic figures for the Museum and which could have been destroyed with the fall of communism in 1989 had they not been saved and brought to England, where Sedlecka in fact lives.

There were several Lenin Museums across Europe, part of a network with the Central Lenin Museum in the USSR.  Of these, only one survives, in Tapere in Finland, perhaps because it was not run by the local communist party and today has a broader focus on telling the story of the relationship between Finland and Russia.  It also has historic significance, being housed in the Tampere Workers’ Hall, which was where Lenin and Stalin secretly met and plotted the revolution back home in Russia.

The Church of St Michael and All Angels in Shoreditch, completed in 1865 by the architect James Brook (known as the Sir Christopher Wren of the East End), looks like a typical 19th century church with its gothic brick exterior, timber-framed roof and stained glass. It was however built on a huge scale and you do wonder if there was ever a congregation large enough to support it, especially as it was one of several churches built in the East End at the time.

With a dwindling congregation, the church closed in 1964 and would no doubt have been demolished had it not been taken over as a treasure house of architectural antiques, now operated by Westland London.

In an area with art galleries such as Jealousy and Pure Evil focusing on street art, and a growing number and variety of bars and restaurants, the church is an Aladdin’s Cave of fireplaces, ironmongery, light fittings, fountains, panelling, stained glass and sculpture and Irena Sedlecka’s statue for the Lenin Museum in Prague.

So, if you are an interior designer with a your cheque book at the ready, looking for something old and unusual, this is the place to come….