Tag Archives: St

21Mar/15

St Paul’s Cathedral

London Stories, , , , , , ,

One thing about St Pauls that always takes your breath away is just how magnificent it is. It’s not just huge, it’s not just majestic and it’s not just tall, St Pauls is a monument on the grandest scale; one man’s vision of how God himself should be housed. We have this world landmark  building within 10min walk of us and it has always inspired. It was once a huge, square Norman church with a tall crossing tower, that glowered over London but the flames of the Great Fire of 1666 were so hot the lead from its roof ran molten down the streets and the church was destroyed. From such destruction came the inspiration to build in a way that would awe even the Romans. The view in the photo on the right is from Canon St across St Pauls Gardens.

When Sir Christopher Wren was given the sole charter to rebuild the churches of London City, he also submitted a plan to redesign the streets in the grand manner of the piazzas of the great cities of Italy. However, local laws and landowners rights overruled him and he had to stay within the existing street patterns. What a difference he would have made to London if he had been allowed! In the event he fudged his plans for St Pauls and made the church much bigger than he had permission for.

St Paul’s Cathedral from Canon St

St Paul’s Cathedral from Canon St

Below is Cardinal Cap Alley on the Bankside end of the Millennium Bridge. Sir Christopher Wren lived in this little white block cottage and often stood in the alley to survey his beautiful, growing creation.

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St Pauls is more than just a building; it is an inspiration on the grandest scale. There are always people sitting, meeting and chatting on its steps. Visitors to London who come to see it are often moved to express themselves and their cultures in the amphitheatre created by its steps and the magnificent background of its columns. This busload of students could not contain themselves and in sheer exuberance leapt from their coach and danced in the sunlight on its steps.

On the steps of St Paul’s

On the steps of St Paul’s

21Mar/15

St Giles In-the-fields

London Stories, , , , , , , , ,

St Giles is called In-the-fields because, like St Martins-in-the-Fields on Trafalgar Square, it was outside the City walls. It must have been a borough in its own right, rather than just a parish, because the street it stands on is called St Giles High Street. One thing I do know; in the 18th and 19th centuries it was the centre of one of the worst slums of London – in a city of slums. The landlords of buildings were allowed to let their rooms by the square foot and by the hour, so they could have a whole collection of people renting space during the daytime and another lot sleeping on those same square feet at night.

If you look up High Holborn, you can see Centrepoint which sits on New Oxford Street, while High Holborn actually swings off to the left. All of that redevelopment was intended to break up the St Giles slum, which was still a festering sore in the early 20th Century.

St Giles-in-the-fields with Centrepoint beyond.

St Giles-in-the-fields with Centrepoint beyond.

John Coleridge Patteson went to New Zealand from here as the first Bishop of Melanesia in the 1860s. He was killed in the Solomon Islands after 10 years in the position and his blood-stained flax blanket hangs in the cathedral in Honiara.

Patteson Memorial

Patteson Memorial

A Tearle family lived in New Compton St in the late 19th Century so you can tell they were very poor; one of them was a taylor’s porter, which I think means he pushed clothes racks around. Nowadays there are few signs of the slum buildings, but the Victorian café, below, on the corner of New Compton Street, gives you a bit of the flavour of the area.

Corner of New Compton St.

Corner of New Compton St.

The drunks, the junkies and the homeless who wander the streets and sleep in the churchyard are the direct descendants of those it has always cared for; the poor and the vulnerable.

The vulnerable, St-Giles-in-the-fields.

The vulnerable, St-Giles-in-the-fields.

Behind the church is a beautiful little garden, called the Phoenix garden, which is loved and cared for entirely by volunteers, like the Copperfield Garden near Union St, where the locals sit and sun themselves in a surprisingly quiet spot and where each plant, bush and tree is chosen from a catalogue of native-only species.

Lunchtime, the Phoenix Garden

Lunchtime, the Phoenix Garden

When you look closely at the blocks of the church, you can see the Victorian grime and soot clinging to the surface, not yet washed away, and still a couple of millimetres thick.

Victorian grime

Victorian grime

This plaque below records a donation by Sir William Cony, who in 1672 gave £50 and asked for the interest from it to be paid “forever” to the poor of the parish, in the form of bread every Sunday, plus eight holy days.

Plaque recording donation by Sir William Cony

Plaque recording donation by Sir William Cony

The rather extravagant memorial to Andrew Marvel, poet and writer. He was good, and I did enjoy his work. You can see here the extent of local affection for him.

Memorial to Andrew Marvel

Memorial to Andrew Marvel

There is also a memorial to John and Charles Wesley, who are remembered as having preached in this church, and used this pulpit below to do so. John Wesley has a statue in the grounds of St Pauls Cathedral and another memorial outside Postmans Park in St Martins le Grand, off Newgate St.

Memorial to John and Charles Wesley

Memorial to John and Charles Wesley

20Mar/15

St Mary le Bow

London Stories, , , , , , , ,

When I was a kid, St Mary le Bow WAS London. We would crowd around the radio (yes, really) in my home town of Rotorua, New Zealand, at dinnertime, 6pm, and we would hear a peal of bells that gave us goosebumps and a calm, carefully modulated male voice would say “From the BBC World Service, this is London calling.” Then would follow the news.

“That’s the sound of the Bow Bells,” said Dad. “My elder brother, Fred, was born in Islington, and he could hear those bells, so he is a true London cockney – born within the sound of the Bow Bells.” I met Uncle Fred several times and he was indeed a cockney. In past times, when there was no roar of London traffic, and the buildings weren’t so tall, you could hear the Bow Bells all the way out to the Hackney Marshes, but in the end it’s the accent that counts and Uncle Fred certainly had it.

The Whitechapel Bell Foundry in London, which made the bells for the Wren church, told me the church was set alight by nearby burning buildings on 11 May 1941. The tower was badly damaged and the bells crashed down, breaking all twelve of them. It took until 1961 for the bells to be restored to their original position and rung again, the new bells being cast from the metal of the old.

St Mary le Bow

St Mary le Bow

No doubt you are familiar with the strange little poem “Oranges and Lemons”; the line “I do not know, said the great bell of Bow,” refers to St Mary le Bow. In Medieval times the bell was rung for the nine o’clock curfew – which probably also meant closing the gate on London Bridge to prevent further traffic to and from the markets of Bankside.

There was a Saxon church on this site in Cheapside, but it was build over by the Normans and the crypt, which dates from 1080, is a sign of how anxious they were to assert their superiority over the Londoners of the time. The spire on the Norman church was a well-known landmark and when the church was destroyed in the Great Fire of 1666, Wren replaced it with this most distinctive spire, which you can see from here. The great bell (number 12) is still called Bow.

The spire of St Mary le Bow

The spire of St Mary le Bow

The body of the church was completely destroyed in the blitz but Wren’s beautiful masterpiece, the tower, had survived and the church as we see it now was rebuilt in new stone, whilst many of the old stones were recycled in the new building and some of the memorials were able to be restored to niches in the walls.

St Mary le Bow

St Mary le Bow, interior