The area south of the Thames in London was slower to develop than the North side due to its frequently waterlogged ground in winter. Across the river, Londinium was quickly established as a major centre of trade, commerce and administration in the Roman Empire, while the south side was just one road you travelled to reach the only bridge to the City. As centuries rolled on, the south bank, being outside the jurisdiction of the City, gained a reputation as a centre for all kinds of entertainment: by the Middle Ages, gambling, cock fighting, bear baiting, theatre-going and brothels were all on offer. All these things were seen as vices (even the theatre!) so for centuries you were able to live your respectable life on the North side of the River, head over to the South side to the ‘Liberty of the Clink’ to indulge your pleasures and vices, and come back home to the City with a clear conscience. I’ll talk more about these shocking double standards a little later, but I’ll start with two churches, the first no longer used as a place of worship but with an interesting history:

St Thomas’s, Southwark

Still looking very church-like on the outside, St Thomas’s now has two very different functions: it houses The Old Operating Theatre of St Thomas’s Hospital, and is also a bar, Amazing Grace! Firstly, some history: the first church on this site was part of the original St Thomas’s Hospital, an infirmary and Augustine priory in the precincts of St Mary Overie (now Southwark Cathedral), established in 1212. The present church was built by the Hospital Governors in 1703, and had a garret at the top in which were stored boxes of medicinal herbs – ‘The Herb Garret’. In 1822 part of the Herb Garret was converted to a purpose-built operating theatre for the hospital; previously operations had taken place on the wards (scary!) St Thomas’s use as a church became redundant in 1899 when the parish merged with St Saviours (now the cathedral.) It is now a museum of surgical history and one of the oldest surviving operating theatres. I’ve visited the museum and it’s not for the faint-hearted! Other parts of the building were used as office space and in 2010 it became the HQ of the Cathedral Group Property Development Company. Also in the building is the Amazing Grace live music venue and bar which retains many of the church’s original features, and actually looks pretty cool, I popped inside to get some pics.

Source: Wikipedia

St George the Martyr, Southwark

According to tradition, St George was a soldier in the Roman Army and was killed by order of the Emperor Diocletian for refusing to persecute Christians and for confessing his own Christian faith. The earliest reference to the church in Southwark is in 1122; at this time legends of St George and the dragon were popularised by Norman crusaders. This was the first church in London dedicated to the Saint. The present church, the third on the site, was rebuilt between 1734 and 1736 and later enlarged so by 1852 had a capacity of 1,000 congregants. The Anglican evangelist William Cadman became Rector of the church in this year, but on his arrival it was reported that services were largely empty. Cadman set about making St George’s a ‘centre of operations’ from which volunteers worked in the local community: teaching in a Ragged School which he established and encouraging parishioners to attend ‘adult schools’ of worship and Bible Study. The church has literary connections: Charles Dickens lived nearby in Lant Street, lodging in a house belonging to the Vestry Clerk of St George’s. One wall of Marshalsea Prison still stands, bordering the churchyard, and in 1824 Dickens’ father, John, was incarcerated for debt which he could not repay. Twelve-year-old Charles had to leave school and go to work in the ‘blacking factory’. He went on to write ‘Little Dorrit’ which is set in and around St George’s church. In the novel, Amy Dorrit’s father is imprisoned in the Marshalsea for debt, so this experience in his young life obviously had a profound effect on him.

Sources: Wikipedia, Church website

Bishops of Winchester Palace, Southbank

This was one of the largest buildings in mediaeval London, also one of the most important, being home to the powerful Bishops of Winchester. Built in the early 13^th century, it was destroyed by fire in 1814, with the exception of two walls, part of the Great Hall. The site of the remains of the Palace is designated a Schedules Ancient Monument and is maintained by English Heritage, who have created a garden in the floor of the Great Hall. So why is the Palace of the Winchester Bishops in London? The reason is that the office of Bishop at the time was more than just a clerical role. He would have served as the King’s Royal Treasurer, equivalent to today’s Chancellor of the Exchequer and was required to attend Parliament with other bishops and abbots, so apparently they needed a huge, comfortable, high-status palace as their London residence (the palace contained a tennis court, bowling alley and pleasure gardens.) These early bishops were also major landowners in the London area, receiving rents from the gambling houses, cock and bear pits, theatres – and the brothels. From the 12^th to the 17^th century the Bishop of Winchester had the right to license and tax Southwark’s prostitutes, who became known as ‘Winchester Geese’. So high-ranking church officials were living off ‘immoral earnings!’ More about the Winchester Geese in the next section…..

Source: Wikipedia, English Heritage website

Crossbones Cemetery, Southwark

Crossbones is believed to have first been established as an unconsecrated graveyard for prostitutes or ‘single women’ as they were known. They could not be buried in the consecrated ground of a church because they were prostitutes: John Stow, in his Survey of London (1598) writes: ‘I have heard of ancient men, of good credit, report that these single women were forbidden the rites of the church, so long as they continued that sinful life, and were excluded from Christian burial’. So let’s think about this: the Bishop of Winchester took rent and taxes from the brothels, licensing them to continue offering their services to the male population of London, but the Church did not allow them a Christian burial on sacred ground because of their sins. But the men who paid for the service, well, somehow their sins don’t count when they leave the Liberty and return to the respectable City…..I’ll leave it there. By 1769 Crossbones had become a pauper’s cemetery and was closed in 1853, having become overcrowded with the dead and falling below the public health standards of the day. The land was sold as a building site in 1884 following the removal of the remains to other cemeteries. However, in 1991 the Museum of London Archaeology Service began excavating the site and uncovered 148 graves dating from between 1800 and 1853; tests showed that those buried had suffered from smallpox, tuberculosis, osteoarthritis and vitamin D deficiency. Over 40% were babies, the adults were mostly young women. Today the cemetery is a garden, a permanent memorial to the generations of marginalised and excluded people once buried there: ‘the Outcast Dead’.

Source: Wikipedia

Continuing the theme of churches in the London boroughs, this month I visited Hampstead in the London Borough of Camden. This pretty village in NW3 has for 300 years been a favourite of artists, musicians, writers and other celebrities of the day. Because Hampstead is only four miles from Charing Cross, it was considered to be ‘in the country’, situated as it is on the edge of the 790-acre Hampstead Heath. Still favoured by celebrities and media figures today, Hampstead has more millionaires than any other area of the UK. The earliest record of Hampstead is a grant to the monastery of St Peter’s, Westminster (now Westminster Abbey) in AD986, and it is mentioned in the Domesday Book (1086). Hampstead is an interesting place to visit, even if you’re not seeking out churches….so I’ve included some local historical bits and pieces.

Source: Wikipedia

St John’s-in-Hampstead

This church is situated in Church Row, described as ‘the show piece of Hampstead’ Beautifully preserved Georgian houses line the street leading up to St John’s and its picturesque churchyard. The current building was completed in 1747 but the first record of a church on the site are from 1312. The original small church was replaced several times until in the early 1700s Hampstead grew in popularity as a fashionable, out of town health resort frequented by people who wanted to get out of the smoky, bustling city. The subsequent new-build of 1747 was again too small by 1827 as the population of London expanded outwards so it was extended, adding 524 seats. In 1871 plans were considered to demolish the tower as part of a ‘beautifying and improving’ project but this was protested by the likes of William Morris, Holman Hunt, Anthony Trollope and Ford Madox Brown among others, the glitterati of the day. I’m with them, I don’t see how knocking down a tower can improve a church! The churchyard is the final resting place of artist John Constable, architect George Gilbert Scott, comedian Peter Cook and Labour Party leader Hugh Gaitskell. I happened to visit on the public holiday for the King’s coronation and the church was open for festivities.

Source: Wikipedia

St Mary’s Hampstead

This pretty little church, formally a chapel, is located in Holly Place, part of a terrace of Georgian cottages and standing no taller than its neighbours, apart from the bell tower. The beautiful façade with bell tower and statue of the Virgin and Child, was designed by architect William Wardell. Originally the church had a plain frontage; the bell tower was added when the law was changed to allow bells to be rung from Catholic churches in 1852. St Mary’s was the first Catholic church to be established in Hampstead after the English Reformation in the 16^th century. The first minister was a refugee from the French Revolution, who arrived in England in 1792.  Abbe Jean Jacques Morel’s first role was to act as chaplain to the many French families in exile in the village. After the defeat of Napoleon and the return of the refugees to France, Abbe Morel accepted an offer by the many other Catholics living in the area to be the Parish Priest of a newly-built chapel dedicated to St Mary in 1816. He made education a priority and quickly established two schools, one each for boys and girls, supported by wealthy parishioners. The sanctuary of the church is beautifully decorated with tile mosaics; I like the contrast with the plain white walls.

Source: Literature in the church; Wikipedia

St John’s, Downshire Road

The other St John’s in the area is the only remaining Proprietary Chapel in the Diocese of London, and one of a handful left in England. A proprietary chapel is one that once belonged to a private person or a group of people, but was open to the public. They were common in the 19^th century, being established to cope with rapid urbanisation. They were often set up by evangelical philanthropists to spread Christianity in cities where the expanding population could no longer be served by the parish church. As a proprietary chapel, St John’s is financially independent of the Church of England; all the ongoing running costs are provided entirely by the congregation. The land on which the church is built was purchased from the Manor of Belsize in 1812, and construction was completed in 1823. The former home of the poet John Keats is nearby in Keats Row. He lived there from 1818 until 1820, so he would have seen the construction of the church. In 1821, Keats relocated to Italy because of his failing health and never returned to Hampstead; he died later that year in Rome from tuberculosis, aged just 25.

Source: Wikipedia

Christchurch, Hampstead

I was not able to go inside this church, which is a shame because it has been extensively restored and repaired, inside and out, as part of a Grand Restoration programme since 2015. But I love its tall, elegant tower and its location at one of the highest points in London. The church has long historical connections with the old village of Hampstead and the Heath, much of which is within the parish. The church was built in 1852 by architect Samuel Dawkes in the early English Gothic style. It’s situated in a very pretty square, Hampstead Place, and established its own school in 1855, originally just for infants, but now a primary and nursery school. Just two streets away from the church is a road leading to the confusingly named Vale of Health, not Vale of Heath, as I thought it was! This is a group of large villas entirely surrounded by the heath. The name the Vale of Health may have been coined as a deliberate attempt to change the image of the area: once a wet, marshy area, it was drained in 1777 by the Hampstead Water Co. and by the 1830s had become a desirable place to live for the romantic poets and other media figures of the day. Byron, Shelley and Taylor Coleridge all resided there at one time, and of course, Keats lived just down the road.

Source: Wikipedia; Hampstead: Vale of Health/British History

As my good friend Ric observed: ‘Spring always delivers!’ Daffodils are everywhere just now, looking beautiful and heralding Spring. So here’s another crop of ‘churches with daffodils’; I love it that these seasonal blooms don’t need any attention, they just ‘spring’ into life when the days get longer.

St Margaret of Antioch

This photo was taken over a month ago, in February half-term break, and already the daffs are looking good! St Margaret’s is the Abbey Church of Barking Abbey which I visited for last month’s post. The church dates back to 1215 and has served the ancient town of Barking as a centre of worship, education and community for eight centuries. As I mentioned last month, the Abbey was mostly destroyed in the Dissolution of the Monasteries of the 1530s but the church itself survived as by then it was a Parish church. I’m going to focus on community, as this is very much in evidence in the 21^st century. The St Margaret Centre was commissioned by the then Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr George Carey and was opened in 1992. The Centre serves as a Warm Space three days a week, with a lounge, workspace and Wi-Fi. The Community Café offers low cost lunches and home made cakes and free hot drinks. There’s also a Rough Sleepers breakfast on Tuesday mornings. Walking round the ruins of the Abbey reminded me that centuries ago, the thriving Abbey would have provided similar food and shelter to the community, particularly those in need. In the mid-1800s Barking was a large and important fishing port, with a fleet of 110 fishing vessels. Tradition has it that the roof of the church was designed and constructed by local fishermen to resemble an upturned boat; there’s also a lovely sea-themed stained-glass window.

Sources: Information Booklet; Wikipedia; Church website

St Nicholas, Sutton

This ancient parish church is recorded in the Domesday Book of1086. The original mediaeval church was rebuilt in brick in 1864 at a cost of £7,600, to accommodate the increase in population. The church was designed by Edwin Nash, a Victorian architect in the Gothic style, and dressed with flint and stone, a popular style of the time.  The church contains several monuments taken from the old church, including a stone Mediaeval sacred basin, a ‘piscina’ used to rinse the vessels that held the bread and wine for Holy Communion. Also inside the church are two ‘Charity Boards’ recording charitable bequests in past centuries, going back to 1550. These bequests are all for specific purposes: the education of the children of the parish, the upkeep of the highways, to buy shoes and stockings for the poor, to buy bread and coal and blankets and clothing to be distributed to the poor of the parish. On the North side of the church the windows are plain glass instead of stained-glass as a reminder of the bomb which fell in the churchyard on the night of 24^th September 1940. All the windows on this side were blown out, but this was the only significant damage to the church. Unfortunately, I was not able to go inside and see all these interesting things, as the church is only open one morning in the week. The pictures of the outside of the church almost make me think I’m in a country churchyard, not in a busy South London town.

Source: Church website

St Mary’s, Beddington

I make no apology for featuring our beautiful St Mary’s again, looking her best in the Spring sunshine. The present building was mainly built in the late 14^th and early 15^th century and there is evidence of a wooden church on the site in 1085, as referenced in the Domesday Survey. The church was extensively restored in the Victorian era in the then popular Arts and Crafts style, including wall and ceiling stencilled paintings. I recently enjoyed a latte in the Tower Coffee Shop which serves hot and cold drinks, home made cakes, snacks and ice cream. The café’s seating area is in the central aisle of the church, a wonderful atmospheric setting. St Mary’s has received National Lottery Heritage funding for a new project: Restoring and Celebrating the Arts and Craftmanship of St Mary’s Beddington. This will be used for important capital repairs to the building and also to support the local community through a programme of activities centred around the artwork and artefacts within the church. St Mary’s – beautiful, inside and out!

Source: National Churches Trust

To finish, here are a few other local churches displaying glorious Spring daffs, two pics of each church: St Peter’s, Woodmansterne; St Margaret of Scotland, Carshalton; The Welsh Church, Sutton.

Here are four more ancient sites of Christian worship and community, dating from the 600s to the 900s AD. Their origins are obscure and surrounded in myth and legend; little remains of the original buildings and the only evidence we have of their existence is documents from the time and stories handed down through the generations. But it was good to visit these sites and imagine myself back in time…..

Westminster Abbey

The site of Westminster Abbey ( officially the Collegiate Church of St Peter) has been considered sacred for well over 1,000 years. ‘A document of 785 describes it as “that terrible place which is known as Westminster” – terrible, in this context meaning sacred or holy terror.’* The first recorded origins of a Christian site are of a monastery dedicated to St Peter in the 960s AD, probably founded by a Christian Saxon King, Sebert. There is also a legend/tradition that a young fisherman had a vision of St Peter (once a fisherman himself!) on Thorney Island; at one time the site was a small island in the Thames. Between 1042 and 1052, King Edward the Confessor began replacing the original wooden buildings with the new Abbey of St Peter, to provide himself with a royal burial church. The earliest remaining parts of the 11^th century building are the Chamber of the Pyx and the Chapter House (see below.) The Abbey later became known as Westminster Abbey to distinguish it from the ‘East Minster’, St Paul’s Cathedral, and in the last 900 years, has been the location of 39 coronations, burial site of 18 English, Scottish and British monarchs, and at least 16 royal weddings.

*London The Biography, Peter Ackroyd, Vintage, 2000. Other sources: Wikipedia, Westminster Abbey website, notices in the Pyx Chamber and Chapter House

The name ‘Pyx’ refers to small boxes containing the official samples of gold and silver coinage kept here. Newly-minted coins were annually tested against these samples in a public ‘Trial of the Pyx.’ The Pyx Chamber also served as a strong room, like a safe, containing valuable items belonging to the monarch.

‘England’s oldest door’, made for Edward the Confessor, was not in situ but elsewhere in Westminster Abbey. The beautiful Mediaeval wall paintings in the Chapter House show scenes from the Book of Revelation.

Southwark Cathedral

The Cathedral and Collegiate Church of St Saviour and St Mary Overie stands at the oldest crossing point of the River Thames; for many centuries this was the only entrance to the City situated across the river.  This has been a site of Christian community for more than 1,000 years but was only designated as a cathedral in 1905 with the creation of the Diocese of Southwark. As usual, its origins are surrounded in mystery; the 16^th century historian John Stow suggests that the first establishment on the site was a community of nuns founded in 606AD by St Swithin, which may well be true. But the first verified reference is of a ‘minster’ in the Domesday Book of 1086. In 1106 the church was ‘re-founded’ as an Augustine priory. The church was dedicated to St Mary and known as St Mary Overie – ‘over the river’ – to distinguish it from all the other Mary churches on the City side. The Augustine cannons founded a hospital next to the church which was the direct predecessor of today’s St Thomas’ Hospital which stands today near Lambeth Palace. At the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1539, the church became the property of Henry Vlll who rented it to the congregation! A group of merchants bought the church in 1611 for £800 from the then King James l. Small beginnings for a Cathedral whose diocese it serves has a population of two and a half million people, served by over 300 parishes.

Source: Southwark Cathedral website

Barking Abbey

Travel East out of the City on the District Line and you reach Barking and its once-magnificent Abbey, although all that remains are a footprint of stone walls and the Curfew Tower. Its founder was St Erkenwald, Bishop of London, who in 666AD established a nunnery for his sister St Ethelburga, who became the Abbess. The siblings were of royal heritage and the Abbey was under the patronage of the Royal House of the East Saxons. Barking was a ‘double house’ of both nuns and monks in separate living quarters but sharing the church and public areas; both houses were ruled by an Abbess. Good to see gender equality flourishing in the 7^th century! In 871 the small town of Barking was attacked by Vikings and came under the pagan Danelaw system; the Abbey was sacked and then abandoned. In 909 it was rebuilt as a female-only nunnery after the Saxons regained control of Essex. Following his coronation in 1066, King William 1^st of England ruled from the Abbey for a while and gave the incumbent Abbess a royal charter. However, the Abbey’s glory days ended in 1539 as part of Henry VIII’s Dissolution of the Monasteries. Most of the stonework was taken away and used to build Henry’s palaces at Greenwich and Dartford.

Sources: Barking Abbey, Heritage Booklet 2016, Information boards at the site

Remains of the Abbey, not my photo as I visited in half term and there were children playing everywhere on Abbey Green, so I couldn’t risk getting them in the photo! Credit: Wikipedia Commons.

St Clement Danes

St Clement Danes stands on an ‘island’ in The Strand, next to the Royal Courts of Justice, just West of the City and just East of Aldwych – ‘old port’. Its origins date back to the 9^th century but there are two theories about how it was established and how it got its name. 1. Danish settlers who had married English women remained in the area near to the port and took over an existing Saxon church, dedicating it to St Clement, the patron saint of mariners, hence it became known as St Clement of the Danes. 2. Alfred the Great drove the Danes out of the City of London but then stipulated the building of a church at Aldwych for those of them who had accepted Christianity. In both cases, the Danes being a seafaring nation, the church was named for St Clement. The original wooden church was rebuilt by William the Conqueror and escaped being damaged in the Great Fire, but by the 1600s it was in poor repair so our friend Sir Christopher Wren was invited to rebuild the church in his signature style. However, in May 1941, one of the worst nights of the German Blitz, the church received a direct hit and was almost completely destroyed, apart from the outer walls and the tower. The ruined building lay abandoned until 1958, when it was rebuilt and reconsecrated as the Central Church of the RAF. (more about that in a later post – ‘Military Churches.’) A charming tradition of the church is that several times a day, the bells chime the tune ‘Oranges and Lemons say the Bells of St Clements’, and I was lucky enough to be there at midday to hear it!  

Sources: Wikipedia, St Clement Danes website