The devastation wrought by the blitz between 1940 and 1941, left 624 of London's 701 churches damaged, with 91 destroyed. Much of the damage inflicted on these churches was captured by postwar photographers whose legacy is an invaluable record of loss and restoration, not only in terms of physical fabric, but in some cases the function of the church. The variety of restorations and rebuilds from conservative to radical by architects such as Thomas Ford and Partners; Seely and Paget; Laurence King; Ansell and Bailey; and Stephen Dykes-Bower amongst others, is significant and presaged the creation of Sir Basil Spence's Coventry Cathedral. In recent years, however, many of the postwar restorations carried out by such architects have been altered or destroyed by refurbishments that aim to either restore the buildings to their prewar condition or modernise them. Such refurbishments risk erasing vital and often overlooked layers of a church's history - those that tell a story of postwar resilience and optimism. As an architectural photographer, my work recording churches for heritage organisations has given me a unique perspective on the construction and loss of postwar interventions in historic churches. In this paper I will consider St. John's, Waterloo (the 'Festival of Britain' Church) in particular and discuss it in the context of wider examples in London. In doing so, I will explore the significance of loss in both a historical context and in relation to what we choose to retain and remove in present day refurbishments.