Pete Locker, who lives on the Boundary Street Estate, close to St Leonard’s, took this night-time shot of the church using a pinhole camera. I think it certainly captures the aura of this creepy place of worship – which is every bit as unsettling as the Hawksmoor churches highlighted by Peter Ackroyd in his 1985 novel Hawsksmoor.

You might know St Leonard’s as St Saviour’s-in-the-Marsh – in the BBC sitcom Rev. It was where my two murderers in The Italian Boy, John Bishop and Thomas Williams, married their wives; and in 1825 James May, resurrectionist and co-accused with Bishop and Williams, was caught in the act of dragging a body from the grave in the burial ground of the church.

Despite plenty of locals as eyewitnesses to the crime, and a ludicrous defence on the part of May, the magistrate acquitted May. Resurrection men often got the benefit of the doubt in such cases, as the judiciary were only too aware that an unhappy bodysnatcher might start to reveal the names of the surgeons and hospitals he was supplying. Better, in many cases, to “keep them sweet” with an acquittal or a light sentence. .

© Picture: Pete Locker