St Bride's, Fleet street, City of London
THE CHURCH of St Bride's is justly world famous. To enter its doors is to step into 2,000 years of history, which had begun with the Romans some six centuries before the name of St Bride, daughter of an Irish prince, even emerged from legend to become associated forever with the site.
The story of St Bride's is inextricably woven into the history of the City of London. By the time the Great Fire of 1666 left the church in ruins, a succession of churches had existed on the site for about a millennium, and the area had already assumed its unique role in the emergence of English printing. It took nine years for St Bride's to re-appear from the ashes under the inspired direction of Christopher Wren, but for the next two-and-a-half centuries it was in the shadow of the church's unmistakeable wedding-cake spire that the rise of the British newspaper industry into the immensely-powerful Fourth Estate took place.
Then, in 1940, St Bride's fell victim once again to flames as German incendiary bombs reduced Wren's architectural jewel to a roofless shell. This time 17 years elapsed before rebuilding was completed, although a series of important excavations in 1953 amid the skeletal ruins, led by the medieval archaeologist Professor W. F. Grimes, came up with extraordinary results, uncovering the foundations of all six previous churches on the site.
Not only the nation, but the Christian world as a whole, was fascinated by the discovery.
Historians and religious scholars had always accepted that there had been a site of Christian worship alongside the Fleet River and close to the Lud Gate, now known as Ludgate Circus, in the heart of the ancient City of London, for about 1,000 years.
When the Romans established Londinium following the invasion under the emperor Claudius in 43 AD, they dug a mysterious extra-mural ditch on the site of the future church and built a house, which seems likely to have been one of the earliest sites of worship. A Roman pavement can be seen to this day on display in the much-restored crypts of the church.
More than four centuries were to pass before the name of St Bride became associated with the site. But that association was to last throughout subsequent recorded history.
Born in 453 AD, shortly after St Patrick, Bride (or St Brigid) was the daughter of a prince and a druidic slave. As a teenager with an overwhelming desire to do good to others, she gave away so many of her father's possessions - daily necessities such as milk and flour, but also jewellery and swords - that he eventually let her follow her calling and enter the religious life. In 470, she and seven other nuns founded a convent in Kildare which developed into a centre of learning and spirituality, famed for its illuminated manuscripts such as the Book of Kildare.
According to legend, when Bride received her blessing as abbess it was inadvertently read to her as the rite of consecration as a bishop, which could not then be rescinded. Thus Bride and her successor abbesses had authority equal to that of a bishop for the following seven centuries.
She was renowned throughout Christian Europe for her holiness and common sense, and was regarded as a saint during her lifetime. Ironically, in view of the part that flames were later to play in the story of the church, she shared her name with the pagan goddess of fire, who had been noted for her music, her craftsmanship and her poetry - all qualities that have been manifested in and around St Bride's over numerous generations.
A line from a poem attributed to her - "I long for a great lake of ale" - was also an ironic harbinger of one of the Fleet Street's preoccupations in later years.
She died on 1st February 525 and was buried with the remains of Ireland's two other patron saints - Patrick and Columba. This date continues to be celebrated as the Feast of St Bride.
In the early sixth century the first stone-walled church was built here, founded either by St Bride in person or by Celtic monks who had formed a community in London. It was rebuilt many times over the following centuries, with notable structures including those of the Middle Saxons and the Normans.
This period in history was characterised by the urbanisation of Europe, military expansion, and intellectual revival, aided by the conversion of the raiding Scandinavians to Christianity. The 11th, 12th and 13th centuries saw a large increase in London's population - from less than 15,000 to over 80,000.
By the year 1200 Britain's effective capital city was Westminster, then a small town up-river from the City of London, where the royal treasury and financial records were stored.
St Bride's was the first church encountered between London and Westminster. This accident of geography gave it considerable importance; in 1205, the Curia Regis, a council of landowners and ecclesiastics charged with providing legislative advice to King John, and a predecessor to today's parliament, was held in the church. St Bride's influence and its numbers of parishioners grew substantially during the medieval period. From the 13th century onwards London developed through two different seats of power and influence: Westminster became the royal capital and centre of government, while the City of London became the centre of commerce and trade - a distinction evident to this day.
The area between them eventually became entirely urbanised by the end of the 16th century, and it was at the beginning of that century that St Bride's developed its first links with one of the future cornerstones of British society which were to constitute its most enduring claim to fame.
In the year 1500 the church had impressive neighbours - the many members of the clergy who were unable to afford the high cost of living in the very centre of the medieval city, where there was greater protection from thieves. However, they possessed their own powerful insurance against burglars - the fear of excommunication, which freed them to live outside.
So while rich merchants huddled together in the centre for safety, the area around St. Bride's became a haven for the eminent divines who were involved in national life. Salisbury Square, Peterborough Court and Ely Place are among names which have come down through history to remind us of great houses in the vicinity.
Since the clergy possessed almost a monopoly of literacy in those days, they were the printers' best customers. Thus Fleet Street became the cradle of the transformation of the medieval art and mystery of printing into the most influential industry man had yet known.
In the early 1470s, William Caxton had learnt the recently-invented technique of printing in Cologne. He returned to London in 1476 and set up a press by Westminster Abbey. In all, he printed about 100 books, some 20 of which were translated from French or Dutch, on subjects that included history and geography, the lives of saints, fables, and instructional books (for example, on good manners and learning French). His output also included most of the works of Chaucer.
As a well-to-do cloth merchant, Caxton had no need to make his press commercially viable. But after he died in 1491, his apprentice Wynkyn de Worde, who acquired that press, was in different circumstances. Having no other income, printing was his livelihood. So he followed commercial principles and took his goods to the buyer, setting up England's first printing press with moveable type in the churchyard of St Bride's in 1501.
It was a period in history when churchyards were hives of activity, boasting inns, taverns and commercial premises, and Fleet Street proved the perfect place for de Worde's new enterprise.
The publishers of playwrights and poets soon set up competing presses in other local churchyards, and the connection between St Bride's and world of printing and journalism was cemented. Wynkyn de Worde was buried in the church in 1535.
By the 17th century Fleet Street had become an irresistible attraction for the great writers and diarists of the day. A trio of Johns - Milton, Dryden and Evelyn - lived in the vicinity; Samuel Pepys was baptised at St Bride's, and Richard Lovelace buried there.
But then, in the space of 16 terrible months, it all changed.
St Bride's long connections with the colonies in America began when the parents of Virginia Dare, the first child born to English emigrants to North Carolina in August 1585, were married at the church. The event is commemorated in a touching bust of a little girl which can be found by the font in the south-west corner of the church.
One of the most striking features of today's St. Bride's also owes its inspiration to the church's American links. The great canopied oak reredos which enshrines the church altar is a memorial to the Pilgrim Fathers. This connection was made 35 years after Virginia Dare's birth when Edward Winslow (1595-1655) became one of the leaders of the Mayflower expedition in 1620. Winslow, who was three times elected governor of Plymouth, Massachusetts, had served as a boy apprentice in Fleet Street and would have known St Bride's well. His parents were also married there.
At the same time, St. Bride's parish was busily helping to populate yet another English colony. One hundred girls and boys from the Bridewell Hospital orphanage were sent to Virginia in 1619. The project was so successful that the governor requested 100 more. All the youngsters received grants of land on coming of age.
The Great Plague is believed to have first struck the docklands of London in April 1665, and by 6th June the parish of St Bride's was officially notified of an outbreak within its boundaries. It was also known as "the Poore's Plague," and the parish suffered terribly because of the large number of manual workers.
The court of Charles II, together with lawyers, merchants and doctors, fled the city, but the poor could not. St Bride's vicar, the Revd Richard Peirson, remained to witness the devastation to his parish community, including the deaths of his churchwardens.
Searchers of the Dead, usually old women, were paid to go out and inspect a corpse to determine cause of death. They were often bribed not to diagnose bubonic plague, as the entire household of a victim had to be locked in for 40 days, which normally resulted in all their deaths. Terrified residents sniffed nosegays to ward off malodorous airs which were thought to carry the infection. Funeral bells tolled constantly.
The parish distributed relief to stricken families. Watchmen were paid to guard locked houses and attend to the wants of those within. Nurses were dispatched to attend the sick. Two "bearers" were paid to carry corpses to the plague pits. The cost of all of this was partly reclaimed by the "brokers of the dead" who seized the property left in infected houses. So much was gathered that St Bride's had to rent a storehouse.
Many thousands of dogs and cats were culled, as they were believed to spread the pestilence. Flea-infested rats (the real culprits) were thus freed of predators, and proliferated.
In all the plague cost the parish of St Bride's some £581. The human cost was far worse: 2,111 people died in the parish in that fateful year. London lost 100,000, or 20% of its inhabitants.
Plague victims continued to die in smaller numbers until autumn the following year - which proved to be the very moment the City was consumed, literally, by a second dreadful tribulation on the heels of the first.
After a summer of drought, the Great Fire of London began on Sunday 2nd September 1666, and very soon the worried residents of the parish were watching in growing alarm before being put to flight two days later as the advancing flames leapt the narrow alleyways to ignite wooden houses and the often-illegal businesses many of them contained.
St Bride's was equipped with its own fire engine, but had failed to keep the machine "scoured, oyled and trimmed." Soldiers destroyed houses about Fleet Bridge in the vain hope that the Fleet River might stay the advance of the flames. But the relentless east wind drove the fire on: one onlooker described how it "rushed like a torrent down Ludgate Hill."
On Friday, Samuel Pepys made this entry in his diary:
September 7. - Up by five o'clock; and blessed be God!, find all well; and by water to Paul's Wharfe. Walked thence, and saw all the towne burned; and a miserable sight of Paul's church, with all the roof fallen, and the body of the quire fallen into St Fayth's; Paul's School also, Ludgate and Fleete-street, my father's house (in Salisbury Court) and the church (St Bride's), and a good part of the Temple the like.
Two weeks before the conflagration, a new vicar had been inducted at St Bride's. The hapless Paul Boston was to possess a church for no longer than those two weeks of his tenure, though in his will he left it £50; the silver gilt vessels bought with that bequest remain prized possessions today.
The destruction of the medieval St Bride's was so complete that no attempt was made to use the ruins for service, as was done at St Paul's and elsewhere. So, the big question was: would St Bride's be rebuilt?
In 1671 the churchwardens of St Bride's took Mr Christopher Wren (Surveyor General and Principal Architect for rebuilding the City) to dinner at the Globe Tavern. It would take another year before they could convince him of their cause, but their persistence meant that St Bride's was one of the first post-fire churches to be opened.
The blaze had destroyed 87 City churches. Despite Wren's belief that only 39 were necessary in such a small area, St Bride's was among the 51 to be rebuilt. The £500 required as a deposit by Guildhall to get things under way was raised in a month - a remarkable effort, given that most of the parishioners had lost homes and businesses in the disaster. Nor was this the end to the financial demands, as money remained tight. But a combination of Coal Dues, donations and loans eventually met the building's cost of £11,430 5s. 11d.
Joshua Marshall was the main contractor for the works. A parishioner and master mason to the king, like his father before him, Marshall was a wise choice. He also worked with Wren on Temple Bar and the Monument, while one of his assistants was the young Nicholas Hawksmoor, who was to become a renowned architect himself.
As today, the main material for the church was Portland stone. By September 1672, within a year of starting, the walls had reached the upper part of the cornice. The speed of progress was partly ascribed to the fact that the workmen had a hostel by the church, the Old Bell Tavern, built for them by Wren. By 1674 the main structural work was complete, and a year later the church finally reopened for worship on Sunday 19th December 1675.
Though it was open, it was not completed; most notably, the tower remained unfinished. In 1682 the churchwardens again approached Wren, this time about building the steeple. Work did not begin until 1701, and took two years to complete. At 234ft it was Wren's highest steeple, although after it was damaged by lightning in 1764 it was reduced to 226ft during more rebuilding.
Much has been written about the steeple, the most romantic tale of which is surely that of William Rich, apprenticed to a baker near Ludgate Circus. He fell in love with his master's daughter and, when he set up his own business at the end of his apprenticeship, won her father's approval for her hand in marriage.
Rich wished to create a spectacular cake for the wedding feast, but was unsure how, until one day he looked up at the steeple of the church in which the marriage was to be held, and inspiration hit him: a cake in layers, tiered, and diminishing as it rose. Thus began the tradition of the tiered wedding cake.
The year before the steeple was finished, the Daily Courant became the first regular daily newspaper to be printed in the United Kingdom, published on 11th March 1702 by Elizabeth Mallet from rooms above the White Hart pub in Fleet Street. A brass plaque to mark the 300th anniversary of this first edition was unveiled by the Prince of Wales at a special service in St Bride's on 11th March 2002.
Publishers and newspapers now began to spring up with some urgency; of the national papers that are still in existence, the Daily Universal Register (now The Times) was first published in 1785, and The Observer became the world's first Sunday newspaper in 1791.
Many renowned writers tried their hand - Daniel Defoe, for instance, founded the Daily Post.
As numerous regional and provincial titles were founded, they set up London offices in and around St Bride's, as did the first news agencies.
The vast expansion of the printing industry in Fleet Street also drew interest from intellectuals, actors and artists. Anyone who was anyone - Samuel Johnson, James Boswell, David Garrick, Samuel Richardson, Joshua Reynolds, William Hogarth, William Wordsworth and John Keats - would want to be seen in the coffee houses and inns around St Bride's.
Guardian (1821)
Daily Mail (1896)
Sunday Times (1822)
Daily Express (1900)
News of the World (1843)
Daily Mirror (1903)
Daily Telegraph (1855)
Sunday Mirror (1915)
The People (1881)
Sunday Express (1918)
Financial Times (1888)
Morning Star (1930)
With the coming of the 20th century their combined circulations were immense, and the power of press barons such as Northcliffe, Kemsley, Beaverbrook, Astor and Rothermere propelled Fleet Street into the very heart of the British power structure, often shaping news as well as reporting it.
Then came World War II and, in 1940, Fleet Street watched helplessly as the news exploded right at its doorstep. For St Bride's, by now enshrined as the parish church of journalism, it once again brought catastrophe.
The Blitz began in the early autumn as the Germans, their plan for a summer invasion thwarted, sought instead to bomb Britain's cities into submission. Guildsman John Colley, now in his 80s, recalls what it was like to be in a Grub Street at war:
"The nightly bombing to which London was being subjected for those last four months of 1940 made little apparent difference to the way Fleet Street went about its business. The business of producing tomorrow's newspapers was so all-consuming that there was little time to think about what was going on above; and that was true not only of those working in the great buildings housing the Nationals, but also in the basements of the scores of London offices of the big provincial papers.
"That isn't to say there weren't moments of sheer terror when the ominous whistle of a bomb you knew was going to land close by could be heard, but once the immediate danger was over you just got on with the job that had to be done. It was such a familiar situation that one became hardened to it.
"Outside, Fleet Street appeared to be its usual nightly hive of activity and got on with its job as much as circumstances would allow. News vans still dashed off to the London termini; couriers brought Government hand-outs from the Ministry of Information; messengers from picture and news agencies dodged the shrapnel and bombs as they darted from office to office; even the odd tramp made his nightly call to cadge a cuppa.
"With most of the newspapers gathered together in an area all around Fleet Street, the agencies - PA, Reuters, Ex Tel and the rest - sent the majority of their news through cables strung across the Street to tape machines in subscribing offices, all liable to disruption by bomb and blast - which brought more messengers delivering a hand service.
"Night life in the Street at that time centred around the all-night cafes - and there were many of them, all doing good business serving sustaining tea and snacks. Pubs, of course, had to keep to licensing hours, but Fleet Street's two Black and White all-night milk bars did a roaring trade serving hot soup and a great variety of milk shakes.
"Occasionally a fire-fighting party of three dodged from building to building, one carrying a bucket of water, one a stirrup pump and the third a hose on their way to put out an incendiary fire. Air Raid Precaution wardens made their nightly calls and public service vehicles on their way to or from an incident were up and down the Street throughout the night. All in all, there was hardly a quiet moment, either on the ground or up above."
Two days before this grim year ended, St Bride's luck ran out. On the night of Sunday 29th December the Luftwaffe targeted the City of London in a concentrated incendiary raid. Some 1400 fires were started; eight of Wren's churches were destroyed. St Bride's was one of them.
The church, locked after Evensong, suffered incendiary hits which pierced the roof, and the seasoned timbers proved perfect tinder. Some treasures were rescued from the flames, including the medieval gospel lectern which had survived the Great Fire of 1666. But most was destroyed. The famous bells melted and fell, but the steeple, despite having flames pouring from it, prevailed - testament to Wren's design.
Up Ludgate Hill, the Times reported, "the dome of St Paul's seemed to ride the sea of fire like a great ship lifting above the smoke and flames the inviolable ensign of the golden cross."
But all that lay ahead for St Bride's were years of ruined desolation until the war ended and the church's administrators were able to address the question that had faced their predecessors in 1666: How do we rebuild both the church and its congregation?
By the time the austere 1950s came round, services were being held on the site, some in the open air and others in the crypt chapel.
Rebuilding work was scheduled for 1954, thanks to the restoration fund which was a tribute to the dedication of the Rector, Revd Cyril Armitage. The chosen architect, Godfrey Allen, an authority on Wren, studied the master's original plans and produced a faithful recreation. He kept the clear glass Wren loved, but did not rebuild the galleries, instead laying out the stalls in collegiate style.
With rebuilding came excavation as well as restoration. In addition to the astonishing discovery of Roman remains on the site in 1953, the crypts were found to contain thousands of human remains, many of them victims of the Great Plague of 1665 and the cholera epidemic of 1854. The latter claimed 10,000 lives in the City of London, and, as a result, Parliament decreed that there should be no more burials in the City. The crypts were sealed and forgotten about.
One hundred years later the excavations of Professor F.W. Grimes resulted in St. Bride's possessing two almost unique series of human remains. One includes well over 200 skeletons identified by their sex and age at the time of death, thus forming a very important source of research into forensic and other forms of medicine.
The other series, which is estimated by some to include nearly 7,000 human remains, is in a medieval charnel house where all the bones were found in categories - thigh bone with thigh bone and so on - and laid in chequer-board pattern. This is probably evidence of a land shortage in London even that many centuries ago.
On 19th December 1957, on the anniversary of Wren's church being opened for worship 282 years previously, St Bride's was rededicated in the presence of the Queen and Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh.
In 1962, Dewi Morgan inherited the Rector's mantle from Cyril Armitage, and throughout the 1960s and 1970s St Bride's continued its ministry to the newspaper world, hosting baptisms, weddings and memorial services as well as offering regular weekday worship for those working in the area.
In 1967 the church was packed for a service to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Press Association, whose offices were next door. The glass doors at the West End were a gift to mark the occasion. Through the generosity of Sir Max Aitken, Lord Beaverbrook's heir, a permanent exhibition was mounted in the crypt chronicling the history of the site and of Fleet Street, and was renewed with the help of Reuters and the Museum of London 25 years later.
By the early 1980s, however, all was not well in the newspaper business. For years Fleet Street had been living with chaotic industrial relations. Proprietors found the so-called Spanish practices of the print unions intolerable, while the workers rejected management attempts to introduce flexible working, no-strike clauses, new technology, and an end to the closed shop.
National newspapers continued to be produced by the labour-intensive linotype hot-metal method, rather than being composed electronically. Eddie Shah's regional Messenger Group had, however, benefited from the Conservative government's trade union legislation which allowed employers to de-recognise unions, enabling Shah to use an alternative workforce and new technology. Journalists could input copy directly, sweeping away arcane craft-union manning levels and cutting costs dramatically.
On 24th January 1986, some 6,000 newspaper workers went on strike after the breakdown of negotiations with Rupert Murdoch's News International, parent of Times Newspapers and News Group Newspapers. They were unaware that Murdoch had built and clandestinely equipped a new-technology printing plant in Wapping. When they struck, he moved his operation overnight.
Within months the printing dinosaur that was Fleet Street was dead. By 1989 all the national newspapers had decamped as other proprietors followed Murdoch's lead. Computers had consigned Wynkyn de Worde's revolution to history.
Many people at that time feared that the diaspora of the Fourth Estate might result in St Bride's losing its title of the cathedral of Fleet Street. Some even considered that the great church would lose its parishioners. Might Rupert Murdoch's vision bring about what pestilence, fire and the Luftwaffe had failed to achieve?
Fortunately for St Bride's, the national newspapers scattered in every direction rather than congregating in one locality, so that "Fleet Street" remains to this day a generic term for the nation's press, and the church retains its pre-eminent position in the journalistic and media constituency.
During the Middle East hostage crisis of the late 1980s and early 1990s, it hosted all-night vigils for John McCarthy and others, and on their release in 1991 a grand service of celebration was held.
We have commemorated John Schofield, BBC reporter killed in Croatia in 1995; Reuters' Kerem Lawton, killed in Kosovo; Channel 4's Gaby Rado and ITN's Terry Lloyd (Iraq); BBC cameraman Simon Cumbers, murdered by Al Qaeda in Saudi Arabia; and the Wall Street Journal's Daniel Pearl, murdered by Al Qaeda in Pakistan in 2002.
In 2003 we unveiled a memorial to all journalists who died in Iraq, and in 2006 commemorated James Brolan and Paul Douglas, CBS journalists killed in Baghdad, demonstrating St Bride's unique position in journalism throughout the world. When, earlier this year, The Times' driver in Iraq, Yasser, was killed in a bomb blast in Baghdad, it was to St Bride's that senior News International staff came to light a candle.
The Journalists' Altar in the North East corner also carries prayers for reporters who are missing or who have lost their lives in current conflicts.
Newspaper proprietors such as Lord Burnham, Lord Rothermere and Lord Hartwell have been remembered in memorial services. So have editors like Sir Edward Pickering, David Astor, Stewart Steven and Louis Kirby; the Guardian's famed woman's editor Mary Stott; the D-Day war reporter Doon Campbell; BBC figures such as Godfrey Talbot, Louis MacMillan and Leonard Miall; and Fiona MacPherson of Good Housekeeping magazine.
Strong and successful efforts were made by the former Rector, Canon John Oates, to bring into the church's embrace the new occupants of the now-silent newspaper offices - chiefly lawyers, accountants and investment bankers. Twenty years after the last newspaper left, the large number of memorials and carol services we hold every year are evenly split between the "old" and the "new" Fleet Street.
The church today has a light, open feel of symmetry; the floor is paved with black marble from Belgium and white from Italy. This is very much a living church in a modern world.
As a result of a successful funding appeal, new side aisles constructed of English and European oak were installed in 2004, offering significantly better views for large congregations while preserving the beautiful character of the church.
Out of the inferno of that hellish night in December 1940 has emerged something beautiful, which remains the spiritual heart both of the parish of St Bride's and of the journalistic community in Britain and throughout the world.
The church retains strong City links, has built up an enviable musical reputation, and is home to thriving Sunday congregations, as well as being a major tourist landmark. Set back from Fleet Street, only yards from the tremendous bustle of Ludgate Circus, yet seemingly existing in its own peaceful space, St Bride's is one of the most historic, vibrant and beautiful churches to be found anywhere in London.
St Bride's, Fleet street, City of London
THE CHURCH of St Bride's is justly world famous. To enter its doors is to step into 2,000 years of history, which had begun with the Romans some six centuries before the name of St Bride, daughter of an Irish prince, even emerged from legend to become associated forever with the site.
The story of St Bride's is inextricably woven into the history of the City of London. By the time the Great Fire of 1666 left the church in ruins, a succession of churches had existed on the site for about a millennium, and the area had already assumed its unique role in the emergence of English printing. It took nine years for St Bride's to re-appear from the ashes under the inspired direction of Christopher Wren, but for the next two-and-a-half centuries it was in the shadow of the church's unmistakeable wedding-cake spire that the rise of the British newspaper industry into the immensely-powerful Fourth Estate took place.
Then, in 1940, St Bride's fell victim once again to flames as German incendiary bombs reduced Wren's architectural jewel to a roofless shell. This time 17 years elapsed before rebuilding was completed, although a series of important excavations in 1953 amid the skeletal ruins, led by the medieval archaeologist Professor W. F. Grimes, came up with extraordinary results, uncovering the foundations of all six previous churches on the site.
Not only the nation, but the Christian world as a whole, was fascinated by the discovery.
Historians and religious scholars had always accepted that there had been a site of Christian worship alongside the Fleet River and close to the Lud Gate, now known as Ludgate Circus, in the heart of the ancient City of London, for about 1,000 years.
When the Romans established Londinium following the invasion under the emperor Claudius in 43 AD, they dug a mysterious extra-mural ditch on the site of the future church and built a house, which seems likely to have been one of the earliest sites of worship. A Roman pavement can be seen to this day on display in the much-restored crypts of the church.
More than four centuries were to pass before the name of St Bride became associated with the site. But that association was to last throughout subsequent recorded history.
Born in 453 AD, shortly after St Patrick, Bride (or St Brigid) was the daughter of a prince and a druidic slave. As a teenager with an overwhelming desire to do good to others, she gave away so many of her father's possessions - daily necessities such as milk and flour, but also jewellery and swords - that he eventually let her follow her calling and enter the religious life. In 470, she and seven other nuns founded a convent in Kildare which developed into a centre of learning and spirituality, famed for its illuminated manuscripts such as the Book of Kildare.
According to legend, when Bride received her blessing as abbess it was inadvertently read to her as the rite of consecration as a bishop, which could not then be rescinded. Thus Bride and her successor abbesses had authority equal to that of a bishop for the following seven centuries.
She was renowned throughout Christian Europe for her holiness and common sense, and was regarded as a saint during her lifetime. Ironically, in view of the part that flames were later to play in the story of the church, she shared her name with the pagan goddess of fire, who had been noted for her music, her craftsmanship and her poetry - all qualities that have been manifested in and around St Bride's over numerous generations.
A line from a poem attributed to her - "I long for a great lake of ale" - was also an ironic harbinger of one of the Fleet Street's preoccupations in later years.
She died on 1st February 525 and was buried with the remains of Ireland's two other patron saints - Patrick and Columba. This date continues to be celebrated as the Feast of St Bride.
In the early sixth century the first stone-walled church was built here, founded either by St Bride in person or by Celtic monks who had formed a community in London. It was rebuilt many times over the following centuries, with notable structures including those of the Middle Saxons and the Normans.
This period in history was characterised by the urbanisation of Europe, military expansion, and intellectual revival, aided by the conversion of the raiding Scandinavians to Christianity. The 11th, 12th and 13th centuries saw a large increase in London's population - from less than 15,000 to over 80,000.
By the year 1200 Britain's effective capital city was Westminster, then a small town up-river from the City of London, where the royal treasury and financial records were stored.
St Bride's was the first church encountered between London and Westminster. This accident of geography gave it considerable importance; in 1205, the Curia Regis, a council of landowners and ecclesiastics charged with providing legislative advice to King John, and a predecessor to today's parliament, was held in the church. St Bride's influence and its numbers of parishioners grew substantially during the medieval period. From the 13th century onwards London developed through two different seats of power and influence: Westminster became the royal capital and centre of government, while the City of London became the centre of commerce and trade - a distinction evident to this day.
The area between them eventually became entirely urbanised by the end of the 16th century, and it was at the beginning of that century that St Bride's developed its first links with one of the future cornerstones of British society which were to constitute its most enduring claim to fame.
In the year 1500 the church had impressive neighbours - the many members of the clergy who were unable to afford the high cost of living in the very centre of the medieval city, where there was greater protection from thieves. However, they possessed their own powerful insurance against burglars - the fear of excommunication, which freed them to live outside.
So while rich merchants huddled together in the centre for safety, the area around St. Bride's became a haven for the eminent divines who were involved in national life. Salisbury Square, Peterborough Court and Ely Place are among names which have come down through history to remind us of great houses in the vicinity.
Since the clergy possessed almost a monopoly of literacy in those days, they were the printers' best customers. Thus Fleet Street became the cradle of the transformation of the medieval art and mystery of printing into the most influential industry man had yet known.
In the early 1470s, William Caxton had learnt the recently-invented technique of printing in Cologne. He returned to London in 1476 and set up a press by Westminster Abbey. In all, he printed about 100 books, some 20 of which were translated from French or Dutch, on subjects that included history and geography, the lives of saints, fables, and instructional books (for example, on good manners and learning French). His output also included most of the works of Chaucer.
As a well-to-do cloth merchant, Caxton had no need to make his press commercially viable. But after he died in 1491, his apprentice Wynkyn de Worde, who acquired that press, was in different circumstances. Having no other income, printing was his livelihood. So he followed commercial principles and took his goods to the buyer, setting up England's first printing press with moveable type in the churchyard of St Bride's in 1501.
It was a period in history when churchyards were hives of activity, boasting inns, taverns and commercial premises, and Fleet Street proved the perfect place for de Worde's new enterprise.
The publishers of playwrights and poets soon set up competing presses in other local churchyards, and the connection between St Bride's and world of printing and journalism was cemented. Wynkyn de Worde was buried in the church in 1535.
By the 17th century Fleet Street had become an irresistible attraction for the great writers and diarists of the day. A trio of Johns - Milton, Dryden and Evelyn - lived in the vicinity; Samuel Pepys was baptised at St Bride's, and Richard Lovelace buried there.
But then, in the space of 16 terrible months, it all changed.
St Bride's long connections with the colonies in America began when the parents of Virginia Dare, the first child born to English emigrants to North Carolina in August 1585, were married at the church. The event is commemorated in a touching bust of a little girl which can be found by the font in the south-west corner of the church.
One of the most striking features of today's St. Bride's also owes its inspiration to the church's American links. The great canopied oak reredos which enshrines the church altar is a memorial to the Pilgrim Fathers. This connection was made 35 years after Virginia Dare's birth when Edward Winslow (1595-1655) became one of the leaders of the Mayflower expedition in 1620. Winslow, who was three times elected governor of Plymouth, Massachusetts, had served as a boy apprentice in Fleet Street and would have known St Bride's well. His parents were also married there.
At the same time, St. Bride's parish was busily helping to populate yet another English colony. One hundred girls and boys from the Bridewell Hospital orphanage were sent to Virginia in 1619. The project was so successful that the governor requested 100 more. All the youngsters received grants of land on coming of age.
The Great Plague is believed to have first struck the docklands of London in April 1665, and by 6th June the parish of St Bride's was officially notified of an outbreak within its boundaries. It was also known as "the Poore's Plague," and the parish suffered terribly because of the large number of manual workers.
The court of Charles II, together with lawyers, merchants and doctors, fled the city, but the poor could not. St Bride's vicar, the Revd Richard Peirson, remained to witness the devastation to his parish community, including the deaths of his churchwardens.
Searchers of the Dead, usually old women, were paid to go out and inspect a corpse to determine cause of death. They were often bribed not to diagnose bubonic plague, as the entire household of a victim had to be locked in for 40 days, which normally resulted in all their deaths. Terrified residents sniffed nosegays to ward off malodorous airs which were thought to carry the infection. Funeral bells tolled constantly.
The parish distributed relief to stricken families. Watchmen were paid to guard locked houses and attend to the wants of those within. Nurses were dispatched to attend the sick. Two "bearers" were paid to carry corpses to the plague pits. The cost of all of this was partly reclaimed by the "brokers of the dead" who seized the property left in infected houses. So much was gathered that St Bride's had to rent a storehouse.
Many thousands of dogs and cats were culled, as they were believed to spread the pestilence. Flea-infested rats (the real culprits) were thus freed of predators, and proliferated.
In all the plague cost the parish of St Bride's some £581. The human cost was far worse: 2,111 people died in the parish in that fateful year. London lost 100,000, or 20% of its inhabitants.
Plague victims continued to die in smaller numbers until autumn the following year - which proved to be the very moment the City was consumed, literally, by a second dreadful tribulation on the heels of the first.
After a summer of drought, the Great Fire of London began on Sunday 2nd September 1666, and very soon the worried residents of the parish were watching in growing alarm before being put to flight two days later as the advancing flames leapt the narrow alleyways to ignite wooden houses and the often-illegal businesses many of them contained.
St Bride's was equipped with its own fire engine, but had failed to keep the machine "scoured, oyled and trimmed." Soldiers destroyed houses about Fleet Bridge in the vain hope that the Fleet River might stay the advance of the flames. But the relentless east wind drove the fire on: one onlooker described how it "rushed like a torrent down Ludgate Hill."
On Friday, Samuel Pepys made this entry in his diary:
September 7. - Up by five o'clock; and blessed be God!, find all well; and by water to Paul's Wharfe. Walked thence, and saw all the towne burned; and a miserable sight of Paul's church, with all the roof fallen, and the body of the quire fallen into St Fayth's; Paul's School also, Ludgate and Fleete-street, my father's house (in Salisbury Court) and the church (St Bride's), and a good part of the Temple the like.
Two weeks before the conflagration, a new vicar had been inducted at St Bride's. The hapless Paul Boston was to possess a church for no longer than those two weeks of his tenure, though in his will he left it £50; the silver gilt vessels bought with that bequest remain prized possessions today.
The destruction of the medieval St Bride's was so complete that no attempt was made to use the ruins for service, as was done at St Paul's and elsewhere. So, the big question was: would St Bride's be rebuilt?
In 1671 the churchwardens of St Bride's took Mr Christopher Wren (Surveyor General and Principal Architect for rebuilding the City) to dinner at the Globe Tavern. It would take another year before they could convince him of their cause, but their persistence meant that St Bride's was one of the first post-fire churches to be opened.
The blaze had destroyed 87 City churches. Despite Wren's belief that only 39 were necessary in such a small area, St Bride's was among the 51 to be rebuilt. The £500 required as a deposit by Guildhall to get things under way was raised in a month - a remarkable effort, given that most of the parishioners had lost homes and businesses in the disaster. Nor was this the end to the financial demands, as money remained tight. But a combination of Coal Dues, donations and loans eventually met the building's cost of £11,430 5s. 11d.
Joshua Marshall was the main contractor for the works. A parishioner and master mason to the king, like his father before him, Marshall was a wise choice. He also worked with Wren on Temple Bar and the Monument, while one of his assistants was the young Nicholas Hawksmoor, who was to become a renowned architect himself.
As today, the main material for the church was Portland stone. By September 1672, within a year of starting, the walls had reached the upper part of the cornice. The speed of progress was partly ascribed to the fact that the workmen had a hostel by the church, the Old Bell Tavern, built for them by Wren. By 1674 the main structural work was complete, and a year later the church finally reopened for worship on Sunday 19th December 1675.
Though it was open, it was not completed; most notably, the tower remained unfinished. In 1682 the churchwardens again approached Wren, this time about building the steeple. Work did not begin until 1701, and took two years to complete. At 234ft it was Wren's highest steeple, although after it was damaged by lightning in 1764 it was reduced to 226ft during more rebuilding.
Much has been written about the steeple, the most romantic tale of which is surely that of William Rich, apprenticed to a baker near Ludgate Circus. He fell in love with his master's daughter and, when he set up his own business at the end of his apprenticeship, won her father's approval for her hand in marriage.
Rich wished to create a spectacular cake for the wedding feast, but was unsure how, until one day he looked up at the steeple of the church in which the marriage was to be held, and inspiration hit him: a cake in layers, tiered, and diminishing as it rose. Thus began the tradition of the tiered wedding cake.
The year before the steeple was finished, the Daily Courant became the first regular daily newspaper to be printed in the United Kingdom, published on 11th March 1702 by Elizabeth Mallet from rooms above the White Hart pub in Fleet Street. A brass plaque to mark the 300th anniversary of this first edition was unveiled by the Prince of Wales at a special service in St Bride's on 11th March 2002.
Publishers and newspapers now began to spring up with some urgency; of the national papers that are still in existence, the Daily Universal Register (now The Times) was first published in 1785, and The Observer became the world's first Sunday newspaper in 1791.
Many renowned writers tried their hand - Daniel Defoe, for instance, founded the Daily Post.
As numerous regional and provincial titles were founded, they set up London offices in and around St Bride's, as did the first news agencies.
The vast expansion of the printing industry in Fleet Street also drew interest from intellectuals, actors and artists. Anyone who was anyone - Samuel Johnson, James Boswell, David Garrick, Samuel Richardson, Joshua Reynolds, William Hogarth, William Wordsworth and John Keats - would want to be seen in the coffee houses and inns around St Bride's.
Guardian (1821)
Daily Mail (1896)
Sunday Times (1822)
Daily Express (1900)
News of the World (1843)
Daily Mirror (1903)
Daily Telegraph (1855)
Sunday Mirror (1915)
The People (1881)
Sunday Express (1918)
Financial Times (1888)
Morning Star (1930)
With the coming of the 20th century their combined circulations were immense, and the power of press barons such as Northcliffe, Kemsley, Beaverbrook, Astor and Rothermere propelled Fleet Street into the very heart of the British power structure, often shaping news as well as reporting it.
Then came World War II and, in 1940, Fleet Street watched helplessly as the news exploded right at its doorstep. For St Bride's, by now enshrined as the parish church of journalism, it once again brought catastrophe.
The Blitz began in the early autumn as the Germans, their plan for a summer invasion thwarted, sought instead to bomb Britain's cities into submission. Guildsman John Colley, now in his 80s, recalls what it was like to be in a Grub Street at war:
"The nightly bombing to which London was being subjected for those last four months of 1940 made little apparent difference to the way Fleet Street went about its business. The business of producing tomorrow's newspapers was so all-consuming that there was little time to think about what was going on above; and that was true not only of those working in the great buildings housing the Nationals, but also in the basements of the scores of London offices of the big provincial papers.
"That isn't to say there weren't moments of sheer terror when the ominous whistle of a bomb you knew was going to land close by could be heard, but once the immediate danger was over you just got on with the job that had to be done. It was such a familiar situation that one became hardened to it.
"Outside, Fleet Street appeared to be its usual nightly hive of activity and got on with its job as much as circumstances would allow. News vans still dashed off to the London termini; couriers brought Government hand-outs from the Ministry of Information; messengers from picture and news agencies dodged the shrapnel and bombs as they darted from office to office; even the odd tramp made his nightly call to cadge a cuppa.
"With most of the newspapers gathered together in an area all around Fleet Street, the agencies - PA, Reuters, Ex Tel and the rest - sent the majority of their news through cables strung across the Street to tape machines in subscribing offices, all liable to disruption by bomb and blast - which brought more messengers delivering a hand service.
"Night life in the Street at that time centred around the all-night cafes - and there were many of them, all doing good business serving sustaining tea and snacks. Pubs, of course, had to keep to licensing hours, but Fleet Street's two Black and White all-night milk bars did a roaring trade serving hot soup and a great variety of milk shakes.
"Occasionally a fire-fighting party of three dodged from building to building, one carrying a bucket of water, one a stirrup pump and the third a hose on their way to put out an incendiary fire. Air Raid Precaution wardens made their nightly calls and public service vehicles on their way to or from an incident were up and down the Street throughout the night. All in all, there was hardly a quiet moment, either on the ground or up above."
Two days before this grim year ended, St Bride's luck ran out. On the night of Sunday 29th December the Luftwaffe targeted the City of London in a concentrated incendiary raid. Some 1400 fires were started; eight of Wren's churches were destroyed. St Bride's was one of them.
The church, locked after Evensong, suffered incendiary hits which pierced the roof, and the seasoned timbers proved perfect tinder. Some treasures were rescued from the flames, including the medieval gospel lectern which had survived the Great Fire of 1666. But most was destroyed. The famous bells melted and fell, but the steeple, despite having flames pouring from it, prevailed - testament to Wren's design.
Up Ludgate Hill, the Times reported, "the dome of St Paul's seemed to ride the sea of fire like a great ship lifting above the smoke and flames the inviolable ensign of the golden cross."
But all that lay ahead for St Bride's were years of ruined desolation until the war ended and the church's administrators were able to address the question that had faced their predecessors in 1666: How do we rebuild both the church and its congregation?
By the time the austere 1950s came round, services were being held on the site, some in the open air and others in the crypt chapel.
Rebuilding work was scheduled for 1954, thanks to the restoration fund which was a tribute to the dedication of the Rector, Revd Cyril Armitage. The chosen architect, Godfrey Allen, an authority on Wren, studied the master's original plans and produced a faithful recreation. He kept the clear glass Wren loved, but did not rebuild the galleries, instead laying out the stalls in collegiate style.
With rebuilding came excavation as well as restoration. In addition to the astonishing discovery of Roman remains on the site in 1953, the crypts were found to contain thousands of human remains, many of them victims of the Great Plague of 1665 and the cholera epidemic of 1854. The latter claimed 10,000 lives in the City of London, and, as a result, Parliament decreed that there should be no more burials in the City. The crypts were sealed and forgotten about.
One hundred years later the excavations of Professor F.W. Grimes resulted in St. Bride's possessing two almost unique series of human remains. One includes well over 200 skeletons identified by their sex and age at the time of death, thus forming a very important source of research into forensic and other forms of medicine.
The other series, which is estimated by some to include nearly 7,000 human remains, is in a medieval charnel house where all the bones were found in categories - thigh bone with thigh bone and so on - and laid in chequer-board pattern. This is probably evidence of a land shortage in London even that many centuries ago.
On 19th December 1957, on the anniversary of Wren's church being opened for worship 282 years previously, St Bride's was rededicated in the presence of the Queen and Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh.
In 1962, Dewi Morgan inherited the Rector's mantle from Cyril Armitage, and throughout the 1960s and 1970s St Bride's continued its ministry to the newspaper world, hosting baptisms, weddings and memorial services as well as offering regular weekday worship for those working in the area.
In 1967 the church was packed for a service to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Press Association, whose offices were next door. The glass doors at the West End were a gift to mark the occasion. Through the generosity of Sir Max Aitken, Lord Beaverbrook's heir, a permanent exhibition was mounted in the crypt chronicling the history of the site and of Fleet Street, and was renewed with the help of Reuters and the Museum of London 25 years later.
By the early 1980s, however, all was not well in the newspaper business. For years Fleet Street had been living with chaotic industrial relations. Proprietors found the so-called Spanish practices of the print unions intolerable, while the workers rejected management attempts to introduce flexible working, no-strike clauses, new technology, and an end to the closed shop.
National newspapers continued to be produced by the labour-intensive linotype hot-metal method, rather than being composed electronically. Eddie Shah's regional Messenger Group had, however, benefited from the Conservative government's trade union legislation which allowed employers to de-recognise unions, enabling Shah to use an alternative workforce and new technology. Journalists could input copy directly, sweeping away arcane craft-union manning levels and cutting costs dramatically.
On 24th January 1986, some 6,000 newspaper workers went on strike after the breakdown of negotiations with Rupert Murdoch's News International, parent of Times Newspapers and News Group Newspapers. They were unaware that Murdoch had built and clandestinely equipped a new-technology printing plant in Wapping. When they struck, he moved his operation overnight.
Within months the printing dinosaur that was Fleet Street was dead. By 1989 all the national newspapers had decamped as other proprietors followed Murdoch's lead. Computers had consigned Wynkyn de Worde's revolution to history.
Many people at that time feared that the diaspora of the Fourth Estate might result in St Bride's losing its title of the cathedral of Fleet Street. Some even considered that the great church would lose its parishioners. Might Rupert Murdoch's vision bring about what pestilence, fire and the Luftwaffe had failed to achieve?
Fortunately for St Bride's, the national newspapers scattered in every direction rather than congregating in one locality, so that "Fleet Street" remains to this day a generic term for the nation's press, and the church retains its pre-eminent position in the journalistic and media constituency.
During the Middle East hostage crisis of the late 1980s and early 1990s, it hosted all-night vigils for John McCarthy and others, and on their release in 1991 a grand service of celebration was held.
We have commemorated John Schofield, BBC reporter killed in Croatia in 1995; Reuters' Kerem Lawton, killed in Kosovo; Channel 4's Gaby Rado and ITN's Terry Lloyd (Iraq); BBC cameraman Simon Cumbers, murdered by Al Qaeda in Saudi Arabia; and the Wall Street Journal's Daniel Pearl, murdered by Al Qaeda in Pakistan in 2002.
In 2003 we unveiled a memorial to all journalists who died in Iraq, and in 2006 commemorated James Brolan and Paul Douglas, CBS journalists killed in Baghdad, demonstrating St Bride's unique position in journalism throughout the world. When, earlier this year, The Times' driver in Iraq, Yasser, was killed in a bomb blast in Baghdad, it was to St Bride's that senior News International staff came to light a candle.
The Journalists' Altar in the North East corner also carries prayers for reporters who are missing or who have lost their lives in current conflicts.
Newspaper proprietors such as Lord Burnham, Lord Rothermere and Lord Hartwell have been remembered in memorial services. So have editors like Sir Edward Pickering, David Astor, Stewart Steven and Louis Kirby; the Guardian's famed woman's editor Mary Stott; the D-Day war reporter Doon Campbell; BBC figures such as Godfrey Talbot, Louis MacMillan and Leonard Miall; and Fiona MacPherson of Good Housekeeping magazine.
Strong and successful efforts were made by the former Rector, Canon John Oates, to bring into the church's embrace the new occupants of the now-silent newspaper offices - chiefly lawyers, accountants and investment bankers. Twenty years after the last newspaper left, the large number of memorials and carol services we hold every year are evenly split between the "old" and the "new" Fleet Street.
The church today has a light, open feel of symmetry; the floor is paved with black marble from Belgium and white from Italy. This is very much a living church in a modern world.
As a result of a successful funding appeal, new side aisles constructed of English and European oak were installed in 2004, offering significantly better views for large congregations while preserving the beautiful character of the church.
Out of the inferno of that hellish night in December 1940 has emerged something beautiful, which remains the spiritual heart both of the parish of St Bride's and of the journalistic community in Britain and throughout the world.
The church retains strong City links, has built up an enviable musical reputation, and is home to thriving Sunday congregations, as well as being a major tourist landmark. Set back from Fleet Street, only yards from the tremendous bustle of Ludgate Circus, yet seemingly existing in its own peaceful space, St Bride's is one of the most historic, vibrant and beautiful churches to be found anywhere in London.