Religion
City churches
Martin Sullivan
The City of London, the famous Square Mile, is a village, and a stroll through it in the evening or at the weekend reveals many of its joys. None affords greater pleasure than the thirty-seven churches whose spires and towers bear witness to the faith and present their daily, challenge to the lives of thousands who work in the shadow of them. They are refreshing oases in a concrete desert.
They have a history which can be traced back over the centuries, and . once were the centre of a real community. People lived over their shops and offices, bought their provisions from the local suppliers and worshipped in their parish churches. Today only a few thou' sand live in this closely packed area. People like myself, caretakers, and residents in slightly increasing numbers in places like the Barbican, are now the only resident parishioners. But the churches remain and serve that ebb and flow of people who cross the river in the tubes and buses, or travel on foot to fill the city every morning and empty it again in the evening. The story of these churches is a fascinating and romantic one which has often been told, but never better than in a book just published — Monuments of Another Age, by Malcolm and Esther Quantrill. (Quartet Books).
Beautifully illustrated with a short but telling letterpress about each building, this is a book to possess and an excellent guide to have at hand. The scene is set by a description of the background, including Wren's and Evelyn's plans for the rebuilding of London after the Great Fire. Wren had hoped that no building would be taller than the Chapter House of St Paul's (still there in use on its north side), so that his mighty cathedral might be seen brooding like a hen over her chickens. The authors tell us the story of the eleven existing pre-fire churches, including that impressive abbey St. Bartholomew the Great, and the Temple Church. Wren's own designs number twenty-two. Some were destroyed by the incendiary bombs of the second world war and most beautifully and skilfully rebuilt and restored. Famous names are among them: St Andrew Holborn, the largest of Wren's churches after St Paul's, built on such a scale because at the time it had a thousand houses in its area; St Bride, Fleet Street; St Lawrence Jewry (the Corporation Church of the City); St Margaret Lothbury and St Mary-le-Bow.
There are only half a dozen post-Wren churches. Nicholas Hawksmoor, Wren's distinguished colleague, unfortunately has only one City Church standing to his name, St Mary Woolnoth; George Dance the younger has All Hallows London Wall (not to be confused with Wren's All Hallows by the Tower), and George Dance the elder has given us St Botolph Aidgate, St Dunstan-in-the-West is a fine landmark, notable for the 'ministry of John Donne and file preaching of William Tyndale, the biblical translator.
"Monuments of another age" Dickens called these churches, a phrase these authors use for the title of their book, but they believe these places are much more than that and so do I. They are used regularly by many people for public and private prayer, and their clergy exercise a responsible and important pastoral ministry. This is necessarily unknown and unpublished, and people can come and go to seek ghostly help and comfort in these churches, preserving their anonymity. There are those wild want to reduce the number of these churches, close them and even sell them, arguing that the real work is to be done in areas where people live and not where they work. T. S. Eliot demolished that argument once and for all in his Choruses from 'The Rock':
I journeyed to London, to the timekept City, Where the River flows, with foreign flotations.
There I was told: we have too many churches, And too few chop-houses. There I was told: Let the vicars retire. Men do not need the Church In the place where they work, but where' they spend their Sundays.
In the City, we need no bells:
Let them waken the suburbs.
I journeyed to the suburbs, and there I was told: We toil for six days, on the seventh we must motor To Hindhead, or Maidenhead.
If the weather is foul we stay at home and read the papers.
The church needs a foot in both camps.
Martin Sullivan is Dean of St Paul's
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