Friday, March 29, 2013

THE CITY OF LONDON CHURCHES (8); Queen Victoria Street and Cheapside




[This is the eighth of 10 articles briefly describing the 39 functioning historic Anglican churches in the City of London]

In this piece, I want first to cover two rather overlooked churches All Hallows–on-the --Wall and St Nicholas Cole Abbey:  then two major churches St Mary Aldermary and famous St Mary-le-Bow.

All Hallows-on-the-Wall

All Hallows-on-the-Wall is rather a straggler in my series, as it does not fit in easily geographically. The church we see was built in 1765 by George Dance the Younger in the Georgian manner when he was 24, although there had been a church on this site since the 12th century. It is plain brick with a cheerful tower in Portland stone; internally there is striking Italianate decoration on the barrel-vaulted ceiling. Services are rare at this church as it has for some time been principally used as offices for a selection of church charities.

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Half-way down Queen Victoria Street is the handsome church of St Nicholas Cole Abbey, designed by Wren in 1671, with a particularly fine tower and lead spire. To the North is the splendour of St Paul’s Cathedral and to the South the walkway across the once shaky bridge to Tate Modern. St Nicholas is now on a spacious site but this is mainly thanks to the 19th century building of wide Queen Victoria Street, sweeping away the old narrow alleys and the 1940-41 Blitz which flattened the whole area.

But St Nicholas always struggled to keep a congregation as a parish church. The neighbouring river wharves declined as London’s docks were developed and the local population plummeted. After the Blitz the devastated church was maybe quixotically rebuilt. It has been closed as an active church for some years and is the headquarters of the Culham Institute, an Anglican religious education organisation. Currently a notice on the door promises it will reopen soon offering “workplace ministries”...Do not hold your breath!


st Nicholas Cole Abbey
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Walking up Queen Victoria Street towards Bank soon takes you to the elegant Gothic tower and fine church of St Mary Aldermary, rebuilt after the Fire by Wren in 1682.


St Mary Aldermary in Wren Gothic
 The original church was Gothic and the rich parishioners wanted to retain the Gothic. style after the Fire; so uniquely, Wren set aside his usual Baroque and invented his own cheerful version of Gothic. The tower is pleasing but the most spectacular feature is internally with Wren’s version of fan vaulting. This comprises circular saucer domes and semi-circles with the spaces in between filled with quatrefoil panelling.

St Mary Aldermary's Fan Vaulting
 Wren has created a joyful place. The church currently is very active and has become the home of the Moot Community, a new Anglican monastic order. It also hosts the Syriac Orthodox Church, a mainly Indian sect, which has a regular Sunday service there.

On a recent visit to St Mary I unexpectedly saw the Lord Mayor, in scarlet robes, attended by two bewigged Sheriffs, his Sword-bearer and his Mace-bearer attired in a gorgeously embroidered tunic. The Bearer told me the gold mace dates from just after the Great Fire of 1666. The Lord Mayor was there for a service relating to the City Ward elections for Common Councilmen. The church is in Cordwainer Ward and the ancient Cordwainers (shoemakers) Livery Company is closely associated with St Mary Aldermary.

This pageantry with its historic continuity is one of the most attractive features of the life of the City.

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From St Mary Aldermary it is but a short walk up narrow but bustling Bow Lane to the most renowned City church St Mary-le-Bow. Famously a London “Cockney” is defined as one born within earshot of the sound of Bow Bells and though the bells fell from their tower in the Blitz, they were re-hung when the gutted church was rebuilt after the war.

Wren had remodelled the church after the Fire in the 1670s and paid special attention to the tower. As most of the City Churches were hemmed in by shops, the towers were often the most visible feature and the skyline, especially from the Thames, was carefully orchestrated. The tower of St Mary-le-Bow is particularly splendid.

St Mary-le-Bow
 The gutted interior was lavishly renovated by Laurence King in blue, white and gold. A large Rood, a gift from West Germany in 1962, hangs before the altar. There is striking modern stained glass. The unusual twin pulpits have often been put to good use for lively adversarial debates on ethical and political subjects. There is also a majestic rusticated doorway from Cheapside

St Mary-le-Bow interior
 There is a strong Australian connection as Admiral Arthur Phillip, founder of Sydney and first Governor of New South Wales was a parishioner and has a memorial in the church. Another parishioner, whose statue graces the churchyard, was Captain John Smith of Jamestown (1580-1631), who explored Chesapeake Bay, promoted the colonisation of Virginia and coined the phrase “New England”.

Statue of Captain John Smith at St Mary-le-Bow

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SMD
29.03.13


Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2013



















Wednesday, March 27, 2013

THE CITY OF LONDON CHURCHES (7): Smithfield and Holborn



  
[This is the seventh of 10 articles briefly describing the 39 functioning historic Anglican churches in the City of London]

Smithfield (a corruption of Smooth Field) was in medieval times outside the old City of London walls. It was a place for rowdy weekly fairs, revelry (Cock Lane nearby hosted the only licensed brothels) and a livestock market; but it was also a place of execution. It is a particularly melancholy place for a Scotsman as it was the site of the cruel traitor’s death meted out to the Scots patriot William Wallace in 1305. During The Peasants’ Revolt, Wat Tyler was fatally stabbed here by the Lord Mayor in 1381 and in Tudor times many Catholic and Protestant martyrs were hideously burnt at the stake.

In the 12th Century a Hospital connected to a large Augustinian Priory was founded by Rahere in Smithfield, now known as St Bartholomew the Great, and although much diminished, it remains the most significant Norman church in London.

Interior of St Bartholomew the Great

Rahere had seen a vision of St Bartholomew on a pilgrimage to Rome and both the Hospital and Priory were credited with miraculous cures. In the 16th century a Prior inserted an elegant oriel window within the church so that supposedly he could spy upon the monks.  At the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1543 the nave of the Priory was pulled down and all that remains is the ancient choir and chancel with some traces of the cloisters. The Priory became a parish church, with a half-timbered Tudor entrance. The church was neglected and was heavily restored externally by prolific Ashton Webb in the late 19th century. Yet uniquely among the City churches, with its Norman piers and soaring triforium, St Bartholomew the Great exudes medieval sanctity and devotion. I have attended several Livery services there and the atmosphere is spine-tinglingly memorable.

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The splendid St Bartholomew’s Hospital (always known as “Barts”) flourished after the Dissolution and it is the oldest hospital in London and a distinguished teaching establishment. It was unaffected by the Great Fire and beautified by James Gibbs and William Hogarth in the 18th century.

There were various chapels within the medieval precincts but the Hospital’s own parish church, St Bartholomew the Less, retained the 15th century tower but was built in 1793 within the shell of just such a chapel. This small but airy church, by George Dance the Younger, has a pleasing octagonal shape. There are monuments to many distinguished physicians and, as Catholics are also allowed to worship here, there was a distinctive aroma of incense when I recently visited.

Dance's Octagonal St Bartholomew the Less

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Opposite the Old Bailey on Holborn Viaduct stands the church of St Sepulchre-without-Newgate, one of a trio claiming to be the largest in the City.


St Sepulchre-without-Newgate
 There was a Saxon church here, then a Crusader Church before a 15th century rebuilding, only for that church to be gutted by the Great Fire. There was further remodelling in the 18th century and an extensive Victorian restoration. The end result is rather odd internally; the proportions seem out of key with the side aisles perhaps too wide and with rather a clutter of monuments. Externally it is more elegant although the watch tower area beside the fine doorway looks out of place.

The church has long been associated with musicians with Henry Wood, John Ireland and Nellie Melba being commemorated. The church was outside the New Gate of the City and Newgate Prison stood where now The Old Bailey, otherwise the Central Criminal Court, asserts its impartial authority.  The bells of St Sepulchre tolled every morning a miscreant was to be hanged and within the church is a hand-bell rung by a sexton on the eve of an execution who cried out the dubiously comforting words “Prepare you, for tomorrow you will die”. The last public execution was at Newgate in 1868.

St Sepulchre is today a busy City church with traditional Livery and Regimental connections. The amusing writer and Daily Telegraph commentator Peter Mullen was recently Rector here.

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Almost up to the City border at High Holborn and not far from the jewellery streets of Hatton Garden stands St Andrew Holborn, the largest City church designed by Christopher Wren. A church site of some antiquity, the medieval wooden St Andrew Holborn was replaced by a stone church in the 15th century. Although it survived the Great Fire of 1666, it was in poor repair and Wren rebuilt it anyway. Thanks to a 14th century legacy St Andrew was well-endowed then and remains so to this day.

St Andrew Holborn

The Church has a fine tower and a plain, airy and Protestant interior in the typical Baroque Wren manner. It has a gallery and impressive organ: the church was gutted in the Blitz but faithfully restored.

Like many City churches, St Andrew is plagued by beggars. I recall a persistent lady claiming to be a refugee from Kosovo, being turfed out of the church unceremoniously by a rather beefy church-warden; apparently she was a well-known professional beggar, a resident of Southend!


SMD
27.03.13

Text Copyright Sidney Donald 2013

Tuesday, March 26, 2013

GORDON BROWN AND EDINBURGH LABOUR; Scots in UK Politics (4)




Gordon Brown is currently one of the most unpopular politicians and least regarded former Prime Ministers in Britain’s history. The Economic Crisis hit the country on his watch, after he had been effectively in charge of the economy for 11 years, so he inevitably carried the can. Yet history may take a more generous view of his career, which for a period was admirable for its imagination and prudence.

Although he had a charming and genial side, Brown became a rather prickly colleague and he was not the centre of a loyal circle. Two other substantial Scottish figures at least shared Brown’s origins in Labour Party politics in Edinburgh. Robin Cook soared like a bright comet in the political sky before sadly burning out. Alistair Darling was Brown’s Chancellor and performed difficult tasks with confident dignity.

Brown the Jovial

Brown the Baleful
       
Gordon Brown was born in Glasgow in 1951, his father being a Presbyterian Church of Scotland minister, making Gordon the archetypical “son of the manse”. The family moved to the Fife industrial town of Kirkcaldy, (once renowned for the manufacture of linoleum). Bright and hardworking Gordon was fast-tracked at Kirkcaldy High School and was accepted by Edinburgh University at the early age of 16. In the same year Brown lost the sight of his left eye after a rugby accident.

He threw himself into left-wing student politics and became a student leader graduating in history in 1975 but staying on for a doctorate writing a thesis on the inflammatory and extremist “Red Clydeside” leader in the 1930s James Maxton, whom Brown admired. So prominent at Edinburgh University was Brown that he was elected Rector in 1972-5 at the age of 21. The older Scottish Universities retain the largely ceremonial office of Rector, usually held by someone connected to the university or otherwise celebrated – Brown was preceded by actors Alistair Sim and James Robertson Justice, TV pundit Malcolm Muggeridge and politician Jo Grimond and was succeeded by the likes of politicians David Steel and Tam Dalyell and TV journalists Magnus Magnusson and Muriel Gray - but unlike the others, young prodigy Brown’s eminence was yet to come.

After a period as a lecturer and a TV journalist, and after unsuccessfully contesting an Edinburgh seat in 1979, Brown entered Parliament as MP for Dunfermline in 1983. At Westminster he shared a room with unknown but personable Tony Blair, a middle class Englishman educated at the prominent public school Fettes in Scotland, who went up to Oxford, became a lawyer and represented a constituency in the North of England. Their careers were to be closely entwined, as they worked together to create the modernised (and electable) New Labour.

This was a weary wilderness period for Labour but Brown progressed to shadow Chief Treasury Secretary before joining the shadow cabinet first as Trade Secretary and then as shadow Chancellor in 1992. Surprisingly Brown largely kept out of the Scottish devolution debate declining to join the favoured “Yes for Scotland” campaign yet not joining Robin Cook and others in the “No” one. Robin Cook and Gordon Brown felt great mutual animosity: both were ambitious and driven personalities. When Labour leader John Smith asked Frank Dobson to try to reconcile them. Dobson reported back: “It cannot be done: You were right. They hate each other”.

Brown and Blair: Close Colleagues and Deadly Rivals

Brown worked hard on his economic brief, reading voraciously and meeting leading economic academics. Once in office he conferred with the then highly rated Alan Greenspan, head of the US Federal Reserve. Brown was very well-informed about the US and read its literature deeply. For years he took holidays at Cape Cod and was generally an Atlanticist, fostering close US-UK links and taking a cautious view of the European Union. He hobnobbed with Democratic politicians from the Kennedy clan to Al Gore.

When Labour leader John Smith died suddenly in 1994 Blair and Brown were said to have come to an understanding over a meal at the Granita restaurant in Islington. Supposedly Brown gave Blair a clear run at the leadership provided he had an untrammelled position at the Treasury. This much seems to have indeed been agreed: a second part whereby Blair promised to step down in favour of Brown after a reasonable time seems more uncertain. In retrospect, much bile and resentment could have been avoided if both protagonists had openly stood for election, eschewing backstairs deals, with a clear verdict delivered.

Brown did indeed become Chancellor of the Exchequer at the Labour landslide in 1997. The UK economy had an unprecedented period of growth from 1994 to 2008, partly attributable to the firm foundations laid by Tories John Major and Ken Clarke but principally thanks to Brown’s initially prudent stewardship during his record 10-yearspan at the Treasury from 1997 to 2007. Brown introduced a series of reforms; the Bank of England won independence from government interference: the City became regulated by the FSA: changes in the way advance corporation tax was collected particularly taxed pension funds: His early budgets were almost Thatcherite, but from 2001 the purse-strings were loosened and vast sums were spent on the NHS and welfare provision: a complex system of tax credits helped the lower paid. All this was the typical Labour “tax and spend” policy and Brown added an idealistic drive to forgive the debt of underdeveloped economies, mainly in Africa.

Mistakes were inevitably made. In hindsight regulation of the City was too lax but it followed the US model. Government overspent and debt steadily rose leaving the UK badly exposed when the Economic Crisis struck. In a gesture of modernity, Brown sold a large part of the UK’s gold reserves from 1999 to 2002, disastrously timed as the price of gold has increased 6-fold since then. Yet Brown mastered his office and, even if his speeches on economics were uncharismatic and heavy with jargon, he was well respected among international finance ministers.

Prime Minister Brown and his Chancellor Darling
 Brown’s personality seemed to undergo a change. He brooked no opposition from colleagues and was described as “Stalinist”, morbidly suspicious of competitors and plotting their overthrow. His office became notorious for its “spin”, presenting data in a tendentious form. His own temper was volcanic and he routinely abused civil servants and aides. He was generally a poor manager of people and many commentators spoke of his unsuitability for the Premiership. His face became puffy and he was out of condition. Long a bachelor, he finally married dignified Sarah Macaulay in 2000. Sadly their first child died soon after birth and of their two sons, the younger suffers from cystic fibrosis.

Brown did render one signal service to his country. He kept the UK out of the Eurozone, despite Blair and many others being keen on entering. In 1998 he formulated 5 tests that the UK economy had to meet before entry and they were never met. Whatever Brown’s motives, staying out of the dysfunctional Eurozone with all its later crises was a substantial blessing.

After 2005 especially, Brown’s impatience with Blair became obsessional as Blair hung on to office, but at last Blair stepped down in 2007 and Brown succeeded to the Premiership and leadership of the Labour Party without any contested election. It was a poisoned chalice. The US sub-prime mortgage jitters hit the UK in 2007 with a run on Northern Rock; soon enough RBS and Lloyds had to be rescued by the taxpayer as the financial system went globally into meltdown with the 2008 collapse of Lehman Brothers. Brown acted decisively but company failures, sharp limitations on credit and retail depression undermined voter confidence and Brown’s brief premiership ended in electoral defeat in 2010.

Gordon Brown had many qualities and was a conscientious public servant; as Prime Minister he was a good man in the wrong place with the wrong temperament.

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One of Brown’s many enemies within the Labour Party (although they were finally reconciled) was Robin Cook (1946-2005). Older than Brown, more experienced in Labour local and national politics, a more penetrating debater and a much better speaker, Cook had all the requisites of a successful politician, except good looks.

Ill-favoured Robin Cook
 The gods had played s cruel trick on Cook. In this telegenic age, Cook most resembled a startled garden gnome. I recall an Edinburgh taxi-driver, always proud of their celebrity fares, confiding that he “had never seen an uglier man” Cook saw the sad truth in this and declined to stand for the leadership when John Smith died in 1994

The son of a schoolmaster from Fraserburgh in the North East, Cook first attended Aberdeen Grammar School before a family move to Edinburgh took him to the Royal High School. An early ambition to be a Church of Scotland minister ended when he became a lifelong atheist. He studied English Literature at Edinburgh University and married Margaret Whitmore in 1969. He became a teacher and a local councillor before entering Parliament as MP for Edinburgh Central (and later, Livingston) in 1974. He was 28.

Cook soon made his mark as a formidable debater of pronounced left-wing views. He joined the Tribune Group, encouraged shambolic Michael Foot’s leadership campaign and advocated unilateral nuclear disarmament, though he was pro-European. Later he managed Neil Kinnock’s successful leadership campaign. Cook rose through the ranks to become shadow Social Services spokesman, Health Secretary and later held the shadow Trade portfolio. In this guise he greatly impressed both sides of the House when he mauled Ian Lang, the Tory Trade Secretary, over the Scott Report on the arms to Iraq scandal. Given only two hours notice, Cook absorbed the essence of the 2,000 page Report to general admiration.

A late convert to devolution, Cook worked in a Lib-Lab committee on constitutional reform preparing the ground for the many changes during the Blair ministry. In 1994 Cook became shadow Foreign Secretary, .taking on this portfolio when Labour swept to power in 1997. He tempted fate by announcing his belief in an “ethical” foreign policy; in the event he oversaw the dubiously ethical interventions in Kosovo and in Sierra Leone: he upset Israel by publically condemning Jewish settlements in the Left Bank while on an official visit. Cook blotted his own ethical copybook by clumsily admitting to an affair with his assistant Gaynor Regan and leaving his wife Margaret amid ugly recriminations: he duly married Gaynor in 1998.

Blair demoted Cook from the Foreign Office to the Leadership of the House of Commons in 2001, a happier hunting-ground for Cook. He energetically reformed its working practices. In March 2003 Cook resigned from the cabinet in protest against Britain’s involvement in the invasion of Iraq. His resignation speech was one of the most strikingly eloquent in Parliamentary history and was given a unique standing ovation by both sides of the House. He demolished the argument about weapons of mass destruction and regretted the crucial lack of support from the Security Council of the UN. This speech was the apogee of Robin Cook.

Cook was hill-walking in the Highlands with Gaynor in 2005 when he suddenly died of a heart attack. He would certainly have been recalled to senior office in due course but it was not to be. Cook was a great parliamentarian and a fine Scotsman.

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My final politician in the Edinburgh orbit is Alistair Darling (1953- ), whose political career is by no means over. Darling is the great nephew of the Scots Unionist (Tory) grandee Sir William Darling, wartime Lord Provost of Edinburgh. His father was a civil engineer and he was educated at the notable public school Loretto, at Musselburgh, by Edinburgh. In his youth, remarkable in one now thought of as a moderate, Darling was a member of the Trotskyite International Marxist Group. He studied law at Aberdeen University, became a solicitor and then read for the Scottish bar, admitted as an advocate in 1984. He was a leftist member of Lothian Council, defying the rate-capping laws, before becoming MP for Edinburgh Central (later Edinburgh South East) in 1987. 

Alistair Darling: Marxist to Moderate
                                      
 His competent and calm style brought him quick promotion and he joined the shadow cabinet in 1996. He was one of only three politicians (the others being Gordon Brown and Jack Straw) to hold cabinet office throughout the 1997-2010 Labour administration. He was successively Treasury Chief Secretary, Social Security, Work and Pensions, Transport, Scotland and Trade and Industry Secretary earning a reputation as “a safe pair of hands”.

In June 2007 Gordon Brown appointed Darling as Chancellor of the Exchequer. In September the financial chickens came home to roost with the first run on a UK bank since 1860, as depositors besieged Northern Rock. Henceforward Darling was fighting a prolonged rearguard action, with leading banks having to be nationalised, the Bank of England dragging its feet over the provision of liquidity and City figures in denial about the mess they had created. Darling presented 3 budgets mainly aimed at raising income tax, none bringing much cheer. Darling and Brown acted decisively winning some plaudits. It fell to Darling to inform Hank Paulson, US Treasury Secretary, in 2008 that the FSA would not permit Barclays to buy parts of Lehman Brothers, undermining a hoped-for US rescue and lighting an explosive fuse under the swollen global financial system. Unlike Brown, Darling did not get blamed for the subsequent debacle.

Out of office in 2010, Darling has retreated to the back-benches. He is currently taking a leading position in the cross-party Better Together campaign aimed at persuading Scotland to vote against the insane siren calls for Scottish Independence at the fateful Referendum on 18 September 2014.

Darling will earn the eternal thanks and respect of Scotsmen of all parties if his campaign succeeds.


SMD
25.03.13

Text Copyright © Sidney Donald


Thursday, March 14, 2013

THE CITY OF LONDON CHURCHES (6): Eastern and Northern Approaches




[This is the sixth of 10 articles briefly describing the 39 functioning historic Anglican churches in the City of London]

I describe in this piece four churches on the periphery of the City. All Hallows-by-the-Tower is related most closely to the Tower of London and St Olave, Hart Street is very near the old Port of London Authority building and maritime London. St Botolph Aldgate has a decidedly East End feeling while St Giles Cripplegate is marooned awkwardly amid the unrelenting modernity of the Barbican.

All Hallows by the Tower

All Hallows is the oldest Church in the City founded in 675. Its proximity to the Tower gave it royal connections; more gruesomely the headless bodies of executed victims were temporarily buried here like those of Sir Thomas More, Archbishop Fisher and Archbishop Laud. Pepys witnessed the 1666 Great Fire from its tower. The church was gutted in the Blitz and rebuilt in a rather uninspiring modern idiom, although the modern steeple spike is pleasing. The great treasure within is the 1682 baptismal font cover by Grinling Gibbons with exquisite carved cherubs.

The Grinling Gibbons font cover

“Tubby” Clayton, once an Army padre, was the admired Vicar for 40 years from 1922 to 1962, best known as the co-founder of Toc H, the organisation promoting fellowship among soldiers and ex-servicemen.
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St Olave Hart Street has more of its neighbouring City shipping feel. It is medieval and the present Perpendicular Gothic building dates from 1450. It just avoided the Great Fire thanks to Admiral Penn (father of William Penn of Pennsylvania) whose prompt creation of a fire-break saved many buildings in the area.


The cheerful interior of St Olave Hart Street

St Olave has been described as an English country church in the City and it has a homely village air, with its walls charmingly decorated, good woodwork and plenty coloured glass. The many tombs and memorials include those of Samuel Pepys and his long-suffering wife; the church was Pepys’ favourite.

The churchyard adjoining is entered through a portico crowned by three grinning skulls, a common enough memento mori in earlier times, but an arresting sight to our sanitised eyes.


Skulls above entrance to St Olave's churchyard

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St Botolph Aldgate is at the bottom of Bevis Marks (home of the historic Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue) and retail Houndsditch; Petticoat Lane is not far away, so it is an East End rather than a City location. Jack the Ripper once terrorised the nearby streets.

St Botolph Aldgate

Built by George Dance the Elder in 1741, internally the church is a conventional airy Georgian galleried church with lavish plaster ceilings and additional adornments by JF Bentley, the late Victorian architect of Westminster Cathedral. St Botolph is an unremarkable but busy parish church effectively a mission to the East End with a youth club in the crypt.

St Botolph Aldgate with Renatus Harris organ
The church also possesses what is said to be the oldest church organ in Britain, built by Renatus Harris in 1702. It was recently carefully restored to its 1744 specification and reinstalled in 2006.

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Historic St Giles Cripplegate stands rather oddly in the middle of the Barbican development to the North of the City, once a huge bomb-site and now a place of high-rise flats and a fine theatre, cinema and concert centre. Before the Blitz, Cripplegate was a busy thoroughfare outside the original City wall. There had been a church here since the 11th century, in the Saxon, Norman and then Gothic manners. Fires (though not the 1666 Great Fire) had damaged the church over the years and there were various reconstructions. The 1940 Blitz gutted the church and it was rebuilt internally in the Perpendicular Gothic style using the plans of 1545.

St Giles Cripplegate

St Giles is most renowned for its historic associations. John Foxe, author of The Book of Martyrs is buried here as is Sir Martin Frobisher, a hero of the Spanish Armada and the supreme poet John Milton (1674). Oliver Cromwell was married here in 1620 and both Daniel Defoe and John Bunyan were parishioners. All are commemorated within this splendidly surviving church.


SMD
14.03.13

Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2013







Monday, March 11, 2013

THE CITY OF LONDON CHURCHES (5): Undershaft to Bishopsgate


The area around Undershaft is dominated by Shipping and Insurance. Lloyds of London functions in nearby Leadenhall Street and there are dozens of busy brokers and insurance offices in the adjoining streets. The Baltic Exchange used to have a trading floor broking shipping freight space in St Mary Axe but its building was devastated by an IRA bomb in 1992 and now all this market’s business is transacted over the phone, though freight rates are reported daily. Amid this frantic commercial whirl stands St Andrew Undershaft, dating from 1532 in the Perpendicular Gothic style, a rare survivor of both the Great Fire and the Blitz although the IRA bomb blew to smithereens a large Tudor stained glass window

St Andrew Undershaft
John Stow's Memorial

   
The tower of St Andrew is visibly off-centre from the nave: the church is overlooked by the massive “Gherkin” office bloc and by the St Helens skyscraper, once known as the Aviva Tower. The interior of St Andrew is determinedly modern and evangelical Anglicans come by at lunchtime to study the Bible piled on a range of reading tables. No doubt even the words of Jeremiah, Amos and Habakkuk give some relief from their dismal trade of premium calculating, loss adjusting and cover limitation.

In a corner at the East end is the monument to John Stow, the 1598 early chronicler of London. Every year the Lord Mayor changes the quill pen held in Stow’s hand, a pleasing tradition.

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Moving towards Bishopsgate takes us to the historic church of Great St Helens, another survivor of the Fire. St Helen’s, said to be the largest church in the City, (although St Andrew Holborn claims the same distinction) is rather odd architecturally. It has two wide naves as it was once partly a Priory housing in the 14th century a community of Benedictine nuns. They were screened off from the parishioners who occupied the other nave. The two parts were united after the Reformation and there are Laudian additions of door porticos and a pretty wooden tower. The church has a great wealth of tombs and monuments from the 16th and 17th centuries, the finest in the City. The most famous is the 1579 tomb of Sir Thomas Gresham, the Elizabethan City grandee who founded the Royal Exchange and whose grasshopper device is still to be seen on the frieze and weather-vane of the rebuilt Royal Exchange. It was also adopted as the sign of Martins Bank (since absorbed by Barclays) and the ironwork grasshopper sign still hangs quaintly in Lombard Street.

Great St Helens double entrance


St Helens was badly damaged by the St Mary Axe bomb in 1992 and a second IRA bomb in Bishopsgate in 1993. The opportunity was taken to renovate the church and end some of the double nave confusion by raising floors and to tidy up the many monuments. The neo-Classical architect Quinlan Terry duly unified the different parts of the church and made it liturgically an evangelical preaching church, to the protests and consternation of many church conservationists; but Terry prevailed. A well-loved church had radically changed its character.

Great St Hlens after restoration

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Reaching Bishopsgate, it would be easy to walk past and not notice tiny St Ethelburga Bishopsgate. It is a curious survivor of the Great Fire and of the Blitz but it did not survive the 1993 IRA Bishopsgate bomb, which caused its complete collapse. Happily it was rebuilt. It is of humble ragstone and reading from the pavement up, David Piper, in his excellent Companion Guide to London, tells us: door late 14th century: window 15th: turret perhaps 18th century but weather-vane 1671. It had a plain interior mainly by Sir Ninian Comper, with an old clock ticking peacefully away from the tumult outside. Since rebuilding, it now houses The Centre for Reconciliation and Peace.

St Ethelburga's Bishopsgate

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Further down Bishopsgate we come to the handsome brick church of St Botolph without Bishopsgate, founded in about 1212: the present building dates from 1725, the work of James Gold, an obscure pupil of George Dance. Perhaps because the architect is not one of the great names, this splendid church is not widely praised.

The interior is light and airy with fine galleries; the barrel vaulted roof is plastered in white and there are agreeable Victorian furnishings. The playwright Ben Jonson was buried and the poet John Keats baptised here. The Church is also regularly used by the Antiochian Orthodox Church whose devotees hail from Syria and Lebanon.

Beside the church is a charming 1840 red brick church hall, once a school, and there used to be 18th century statues of charity children in the niches, currently removed.
Imposing St Botolph Bishopsgate
Airy interior of St Botolph Bishopsgate


SMD
11.03.13

Text Copyright Sidney Donald 2013

Sunday, March 10, 2013

GOOD EGGS



I declare from the start that I am inordinately fond of eggs, boiled, poached, fried, scrambled or folded into wonderful omelettes, believing them to be the most nutritious and delicious of foods; I consume them with gleeful enthusiasm. Yet in my curious household, I am in a minority of one. My dear wife claims she cannot abide the smell of boiling eggs; two of my charming sons hardly ever touch them in any form while a third falls into a theatrical faint at the very mention of these splendid comestibles. So if I eat an egg at home I have to do so surreptitiously, as if I were indulging in some solitary vice. I might understand if we were talking about drinking camel’s milk, devouring haggis or chewing barbecued platypus, but eating an innocent egg?  Oh, Gordon Bennett! Do me a favour!

Boiled eggs and toasted soldiers
Fried eggs and bacon


                               


 Allow me a brief paean of praise on eggs. What is more tempting than two soft 2-minute boiled eggs (OK, three would be even better) with toasted soldiers dipped in their yolky goodness: or fried eggs, sunny side up, surrounded by crispy bacon, mushrooms, sausage and for special occasions, black pudding? Need I expatiate upon the wonders of scrambled eggs – my talented mother made them light and buttery: or delicate poached eggs, when the stomach craves something undemanding? The restaurant world (the New York Waldorf-Astoria no less) invented Eggs Benedict at the turn of the last century combining poached eggs, bacon, muffins and hollandaise sauce: there are a hundred variations on this delightful dish. Omelettes are of French origin and there are cooked to sans rival perfection: Spanish vegetable omelettes are terrific too and one of my favourites is Omelette Arnold Bennett featuring Finnan haddock, the invention of London’s Savoy Hotel Grill and named after its novelist instigator. What delicious foods!

When I was a young man, the Egg Marketing Board urged us to “Go to Work on an Egg” – excellent advice in my view, encouraging us to set ourselves up with at least one egg a day and a generation did just that. Yet eggs have been under sustained bombardment for some years. We are told by the usual “experts” that eggs are heavy in damaging cholesterol, clogging up our arteries and shortening our otherwise happy lives. In fact the amount of cholesterol ingested via eggs is infinitesimal.  The unmissed Tory Mata Hari, Edwina Currie, informed us, when a Health Minister in 1988, that all UK eggs are contaminated with the harmful bug salmonella. This was a travesty of the truth and she soon resigned, but the damage had been done. Eggs do harbour salmonella but this element disappears if the eggs are cooked. Only the benighted or the heavily hung-over eat raw eggs, a tiny minority. Concern about poultry animal rights in battery hen-coops is probably well founded but the change to free-range production is quickly solving that issue and egg consumption is not affected. In short, forget about health scares, eggs are as safe as houses.

Egg consumption globally is increasing every year. The largest per capita consumption in the world is in Mexico but much the largest overall consumer is China, with Japan in second spot. The Chinese do not yet sit down to a plate of ham and eggs, but they are huge consumers of pasta and noodles, both of which require eggs. A busy laying hen will produce 300 eggs per year and there are millions of them. The US is a very large egg producer and consumer too but its rather over-zealous health concerns make it wash and disinfect eggs before sale, not much helping the taste. Countries have distinctive egg colour preferences – Europe liking brown eggs while Brazil will only eat white ones.

Easter is not too far away and eating large quantities of hard-boiled eggs is one of its many pleasures. This year I will be in London for the Western Easter on 31 March and in Athens for the Orthodox Easter on 5 May, so I will have double egg rations – yummy! In Greece Easter eggs are always dyed red and you crack them with a partner for good luck. Years ago King Constantine, as Commander in Chief, always held an Easter Sunday parade and, instead of presenting arms, his soldiers presented eggs which His Majesty genially cracked. As a child I rolled boiled eggs down a hill at Easter and imagine this carefree custom lingers on in Britain.

Red hard-boiled Easter eggs
As an egg aficionado, I wholly approve of the expression “A Good Egg” to describe someone thoroughly reliable and pleasant. It is not used for the dynamic or the ultra-successful but for solid pillars of the community. It is an epithet to which I happily aspire.


SMD
10.03.13

Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2013

Saturday, March 9, 2013

THE CITY OF LONDON CHURCHES (4): Monument to Leadenhall Street




[This is the fourth of 10 articles briefly describing the 39 functioning historic Anglican churches in the City of London]

Old London Bridge forded a much wider Thames than we now see. In Victorian times; embankments were raised and a new bridge was erected to the detriment of St Magnus the Martyr, whose tower acted as a portico to the church and stood over the footway of the old bridge. But the fine white Portland stone church, by Wren 1687, stands proudly with its splendid tower while its interior is one of the finest in the City. T.S Eliot’s lines still evoke its grandeur.

St Magnus the Martyr

“Where Fishmen lounge at noon: where the walls
Of Magnus Martyr hold
Inexplicable splendour of Ionian white and gold.”

The Fishmen have gone since Billingsgate market closed but a recent renovation gives us plenty Ionian white and gold.

St Magnus the Martyr interior
                                                 
The medieval, Tudor and Stuart church had a distinguished history. Dedicated to a 12th century Orkney king and martyr, St Magnus was a prominent church, a convenient stopping place for pilgrims to Canterbury and the scene of many religious controversies over the years. Myles Coverdale, the first translator of the complete Bible into English printed in 1535, was Rector 1564-6. Sadly the church was very near to Pudding Lane, the seat of the Great Fire of 1666 and was one of the first churches to be consumed.

The present church is a standard-bearer of the Anglo-Catholic wing of the Anglicans and is much involved with the Fishmongers and Plumbers Livery Companies.

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Not far away in narrow Lovat Lane stands St Mary-at-Hill at one time one of the most attractive City churches. Betjeman rated it very highly and I recall its beautiful woodwork, especially a pulpit and sounding board with a long wooden staircase with a carved balustrade. There were box-pews, communion rails, sword rests and floral wall decorations. Much of the wood-carving was Victorian by the masterly Gibbs Rogers.

Alas, a fire in 1988 seriously damaged the church, closing it for several years. Although the ceiling, plaster and the organ case were repaired, the surviving woodwork and all the furnishings were put in store and have not re-appeared. Inertia and bureaucracy has paralysed restoration and a virtue is made of the empty space left behind, used for rehearsals, meetings or as a lunchtime shelter on a cold day. When I was there recently, primary children were learning about the nearby Monument (311 narrow steps, not for the lame and the halt!). Restore St Mary-at-Hill soon, please!

A spartan St Mary-at-Hill
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A few steps from Lovat Lane over Eastcheap take you to the handsome Wren church of St Margaret Pattens in Portland stone with its 1684 Wren-Gothic spiky lead spire. The name “Pattens” supposedly derives from the wooden clogs (pattens) made nearby or left at the church door by women parishioners on entering the church. St Margaret’s position parallel to busy Eastcheap and surrounded by huge office blocs makes it easily overlooked and undervalued.


St Margaret Pattens interior

It has an airy interior with many clear glass clerestory windows. There is a gallery to the West, with much dark wooden wainscotting and a charming pulpit contrasting with the painted white and gold. The church has a comfortable late 17th and 18th century atmosphere which is most appealing.
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A short walk to Leadenhall Street to the North takes us to the unusual and splendid Caroline church of St Katherine Cree. The church was far enough east to miss the Great Fire and it escaped the Blitz too.
                                        
St Katherine Cree, Leadenhall Street
The original church was built on the medieval site of Christ Church Priory (“Cree” is a corruption of “Christ Church”). It became unsafe and was rebuilt in 1631 with only the Tudor (1508) tower surviving. The church displays the transition between Tudor and Classic styles with classic arcades with Corinthian columns supporting a Gothic clerestory with very characteristic plaster rib vaults.

St Katherine Cree interior

At the East end there is an attractive St Katherine wheel rose window, the glass said to be original.

To the right of the altar is a side chapel devoted to William Laud, dominated by his portrait.  Archbishop William Laud, patron of the church, was shamefully executed in 1645 during the Civil War by the Puritans who execrated his High Church practices. The chapel is supported by the Society of Charles King and Martyr, surely rather a lost cause these days.

In the same side chapel is the elaborate tomb of Nicholas Throckmorton, who died in 1570 after a notable career as Queen Elizabeth’s envoy, perilously trying to keep the peace with the Spanish and Mary, Queen of Scots.

The rich variety and interest of the City Churches is always remarkable.


SMD
9.03.13

Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2013