St. Martin in the Fields

This is a found slide in an anonymous plastic mount, it shows Church Walk in the grounds of St. Martin in the Fields church looking east with the portico of the old St. Martins Vestry on the left. The building in the background is the west end of Nash’s Strand Improvements fronting onto Adelaide Street. Nash’s 1832 building was renovated in the mid-1970s and it looks complete in the photograph, so this may be the early 1980s. In 2006 Nash’s 19th Century railings on the right were pushed back to make way for a pavilion in which there is a staircase which leads down to a foyer, a box office, the London Brass Rubbing Centre, Café, the Dick Sheppard Chapel and an exhibition area. Further along Church Walk towards Adelaide Street is a large ground window or Oculus which floods the foyer with light. The work on the improvement of the crypt area was completed in 2008. Since the mid 1950s a Harvest Festival service for the Guild of Pearly Kings, Pearly Queens, Pearly Princes and Pearly Princesses has taken place on the first Sunday in October. In 1953 there was a split in the Pearly Kingdom and the Guild was formed to stop just anybody setting themselves up as Pearly Royalty. Another Pearly Association has a Harvest Festival service at the Guildhall in the City of London. The Pearlies were founded by Henry Croft in the 1870s, he was a street sweeper and rat catcher who adopted the Costermonger tradition of sewing pearl buttons along the seams of their clothes. He wore the suit whilst collecting for charity, a theme the Pearlies have continued. There is a statue of Henry Croft in all his finery situated in the crypt of St. Martins, it was originally placed by his grave but was continually vandalised. It would appear that the Pearlies are having a fag break either before or after the service, the Pearly Queen is often referred to as “Donah” which is thought to be a corruption of the Spanish “Doña” which in turn is from Domina, the Latin for Mistress.

Done