Christianity from the 43 bus: 15. The Old Priory

Concluding a journey through London on the 43 bus route - with a Christian eye.  The whole series is viewable on the '43 bus route' tag below.

Leaving the City of London, the 43 bus heads over the current London Bridge, a bridge lacking any of the excitement of its ancient predecessor.  Just as it turns left into the bus plaza of London Bridge Station the 43 passes our final Christian observation - and a very large one - Southwark Cathedral.

London - Greater London that is - has many Cathedrals. Almost any Church that has Cathedrals has adherents in this world city so various redundant churches have been repurposed as cathedrals for Ukrainian Orthodoxy, Russian Orthodoxy, Greek Orthodoxy and so on.  Even limiting it to Catholics and Anglicans London has four Cathedrals (plus Westminster Abbey - a former Cathedral).  Two of them are in Southwark, which has thereby tried more than once to gain City status, without success.

Southwark (C of E) Cathedral is very old, but it is not very old as a cathedral (1905).  It can be seen on old pictures of London and began life as a Priory, later becoming St Mary Overie (i.e. over the river).  Here was founded the Hospital which has now become St Thomas's - one of London's most conspicuous hospitals, now over the river from Westminster and the Houses of Parliament.

Leaving its liberal-on-steroids theology aside I think Southwark Cathedral is the nicest in London - more homely than its Catholic counterparts and the far more famous St Paul's.  Yet still with the grandeur of a cathedral in the midst of bustling Borough Market.

What is perhaps most astonishing to the modern observer is that, like St Clements (see blog 14.) on the London side of London Bridge, this building, then a parish church, was eyed for demolition when plans for London Bridge's new structure were made in the 19th Century.  Yes, that's right - just pull it down for the new road.

It is a sobering note with which to finish our journey.  London has little time for romanticism unless it can make money out of it.

Christianity from the 43 bus: 14. The Bells of St Clements. Perhaps.

Continuing a journey through London on the 43 bus route - with a Christian eye.  The whole series is viewable on the '43 bus route' tag below.

King William Street takes the 43 bus from the Bank of England to the City end of London Bridge, a wide straight road that therefore cannot be old and dates from (unsurprisingly) the reign of King William, immediately prior to Queen Victoria. 

Probably far above the various offices there is a flat or two, but on the face of it nobody seems to live in King William Street these days.  Yet at the other end of it from St Mary Woolnoth is another C of E Church, St Clement.

St Clements Lane, on which corner the church stands, is a tiny apology of a road off Eastcheap.  Eastcheap was one of the main thoroughfares of the old city, long before the likes of King William Street were built.  Eastcheap is seriously old dating back to Anglo-Saxon times!

The famous old nursery rhyme goes . . .

Oranges and lemons

Say the bells of St. Clement's

You owe me five farthings

Say the bells of St. Martin's

When will you pay me?

Say the bells of Old Bailey

When I grow rich

Say the bells of Shoreditch

But is this that St Clements? It is a dispute with St Clement Danes which plays the nursery rhyme tune on its bells to assert its point.

Squeezed between office buildings with next to no residents the existence of this church is a point of remark.  More surprising still in that in the early 1800s - when King William Street was built - there was a cull of City churches.  The population was moving to the new suburbs and there were churches - but not residents - everywhere in the old City.  St Clement very narrowly survived.

An obvious question is what is the usefulness of this church in the 21st century.  From the noticeboard above we can see that, like all City churches, it has its full complement of Alderman, Clerks, Beadle, Priest-in-charge and Councilmen.  Then there is the other noticeboard:

This board is in better shape than most churches I preach in, and quite cool. It is a reminder that the Church of England has operated imaginatively with its City of London church buildings.  A handful operate as normal parish churches but many otherwise.  Both St Mary Woolnoth (previous blog) and St Clement are part of three churches under the Imprint branding, providing contemporary ministry among London's many young professionals.

For me, this illustrates exactly the problem with my own Baptist 'tribe' and other non-conformists.  Under our umbrellas this church would simply have closed, greedy central funds drooling at the real estate value incoming.  St Clement lives on - for God's sake.

Christianity from the 43 bus: 13. John Newton

Continuing a journey through London on the 43 bus route - with a Christian eye.  The whole series is viewable on the '43 bus route' tag below.

Although the 43 bus route has often been changed over the years, and is due to change again shortly, conveniently for my blog it heads down Moorgate into the City of London, passing the west side of the Bank of England.  There it enters King William Street.

There on the first corner it comes to another candidate for the ugliest church in London (see THIS EARLIER BLOG), this time St Mary Woolnoth.   It is one of the almost unimaginable number of Church of England churches serving the City of London (and its population of less than 9000).

What sets St Mary Woolnoth apart is one of its former incumbents, John Newton.  Though famed as the sea captain of slaving ships who was dramatically converted and became vicar of Olney in Buckinghamshire, Newton was latterly the minister of St Mary Woolnoth.  He was famed in his day, and history has given him - and his hymn Amazing Grace, more fame still.

Wisely, perhaps, he chose to write his own epitaph, which to this day is on the church wall inside:

John Newton, 

clerk, 

once an infidel and libertine, 

a servant of slaves in Africa, 

was by the rich mercy of 

our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, 

preserved, restored, pardoned, 

and appointed to preach the faith

 he had long laboured to destroy.

Christianity from the 43 bus: 12. Bunhill Fields

Continuing a journey through London on the 43 bus route - with a Christian eye.  The whole series is viewable on the '43 bus route' tag below.

If you've followed through this blog series you will be starting to understand how many amazing Christian stories litter the 43 bus route.  But one place, opposite John Wesley's house, has so many stories that a long blog series would be needed to tell them.  That place is Bunhill Fields.

For people like me, at least, it contains so many figures whose writings I have come across - but most notably perhaps Isaac Watts (so many hymns), Daniel Defoe (As in Robinson Crusoe etc.) and William Blake (Author of the hymn Jerusalem).  The Wesleys mother Susannah is buried here as well as other worthies like the three Johns: John Owen, John Rippon and John Gill.  The reason for this galaxy of non-conformist names is that this was a convenient burial place just outside the City of London available to non-Anglicans for burial.

The grave that catches the eye - mainly because of its prominent position - is that of John Bunyan.

For someone who spent so much of his life in Bedford gaol - which we have to thank for his unequalled Pilgrim's Progress - this seems an unlikely place to be buried.  A preacher of such brave heroism I felt sure I would discover an amazing story, matching his writings, of how his death came about in London.  Perhaps if I were wiser I would have considered that there is probably a reason why I have never heard a story about Bunyan's actual death.

Anyhow, here it is.  He rode his horse from Reading to London in very heavy (August) rain.  He got soaked.  He fell ill at his friends house as a result.  His cold turned to a fever.  He died.  In summary, he was killed by the British Summer . . .

Christianity from the 43 bus: 11. John's House

Continuing a journey through London on the 43 bus route - with a Christian eye.  The whole series is viewable on the '43 bus route' tag below.

Across the insanity that is Old Street roundabout, the 43 bus passes the house of John Wesley.  Not of course the only place he lived in his 87 years, but one he built for himself in the grounds of his London Chapel and his home for his final decade or so.

It is the house where he died after an astonishing ministry that echoes across the world still today in the form of Methodism.  In his bedroom here - you can visit it still - he said his final words, "The best of all is, God is with us."

No matter how much we do, the Christian's greatest joy is whose we are.

Christianity from the 43 bus: 10. The Leysian Mission

Continuing a journey through London on the 43 bus route - with a Christian eye.  The whole series is viewable on the '43 bus route' tag below.

The 43 heads out of the centre of Islington down City Road towards the City of London.  City Road is probably most famous for Moorfield's Eye Hospital, one of the world's major centres for eye surgery.  These days the road is populated with many contemporary high-rise glass buildings, but at its end comes this building.

Looking the part as a rival to Harrods it is an eye-turning place despite being near central London's many grand exteriors.  It was The Leysian Mission.

The Leys School in Cambridge was a Methodist School designed to prepare non-Anglicans to enter degree study at Cambridge University - something only made possible in the 1870s.  Graduates of this elite school set about the improvement of the wretched social needs of London's East End.  Originally deep in the East End, this was the second, grander property, at the very edge of the East End but wielding a wide influence.

The story is even better than the building, but perhaps inevitably it is today apartments.

Christianity from the 43 bus 9. People History

Continuing a journey through London on the 43 bus route - with a Christian eye.  The whole series is viewable on the '43 bus route' tag below.

St Mary's Church, Islington has a bus stop so it is hard to ignore from the 43 bus.  Were it not for that, though, it might be thought to be just another of a plethora of churches along the route.  It lacks the grandeur of Union Chapel, not far up the street.  

But this church has more history via its people than any short blog could ever tell.

Think Charles Wesley, for example.  The hymnwriter of such predominance that even in the fragmented Western church worship patterns of the 21st century all of us still sing his hymns in some form.  Charles, together with George Whitfield, were invited preachers by the minister of this church and preached regularly.  Complaints were made to the Bishop of London, and it was here that both of them were forbidden to preach in Churches.  Instead they adopted the open air preaching already embraced by John Wesley and the rest is (Methodist) history.

A hundred and fifty years earlier, this was the Church where Robert Browne was the preacher, the generally recognized founder of Congregationalism and therefore in some ways the inspiration for the Pilgrim Fathers setting out for the New World.  They were dubbed Brownists.  So that's two denominations that owe their identity somewhat to this parish church.

But Anglicanism too has history here.  The first black African priest was ordained here in the 1700s, that's right, the 1700s..  The man who later became the first Bishop of Nigeria was trained here.  The founder of the Lord's Day Observance Society was vicar here before becoming Bishop of Calcutta.  The England cricketer - later Bishop of Liverpool - David Sheppard was a curate here while still playing cricket for England!

And the list goes on.  This is not a church building to turn the head on a 43 bus, but its story surely would.

Christianity from the 43 bus: 8. Gigs and God

 Continuing a journey through London on the 43 bus route - with a Christian eye.  The whole series is viewable on the '43 bus route' tag below.

Like many London churches our church building sees its fair share of concerts and the like.  As a beautiful space in the community church buildings lend themselves to this, especially as other London venues are likely booked up or prohibitively expensive.

Both our building and its concerts pale into insignificance over against the monumental Union Chapel Islington.

This Congregational Church started life in a typical North London way - as a 400 seater chapel for the expanding suburb.  Islington grew at a phenomenal rate in Victorian days and so did the chapel, eventually being rebuilt with four times the original capacity.

It is one of the greatest surviving examples of the rise of non-conformity in Victorian England.

How has it survived?

Well, it cannot claim too much credit for that because at one point the Chapel's plan was to demolish itself.  A local outcry saved it.

From that came the notion of using it for entertainment and notably music.  Big time.  In this respect, being in Islington clearly helps.  Although it leads to several strange anomalies. 

The theology of the Chapel is wildly liberal, but that doesn't actually make for much of a congregation.  Ironically its founders largely derived from people leaving the parish church in order to operate on sounder Biblical principles.

In a kind of full circle it is currently used for the development of Gospel Music having previously been more 'out there' in its content.  It is just an amazing story; more fascinating than spiritually heart-warming, but undoubtedly a reflection of Islington past and present.

Link: You can watch a fascinating video of the Chapel's story here 

Christianity from the 43 bus: 7. Caledonian Church

Continuing a journey through London on the 43 bus route - with a Christian eye.  The whole series is viewable on the '43 bus route' tag below.

These days are not auspicious ones for the Church of Scotland, declining at a breathtaking rate.  There are two Churches of Scotland in London - presumably to offer a purer form than the supposed English version buried within the even-more-rapidly declining United Reformed Church.

Neither of the C of S churches are on the 43 bus route.  But one long closed was, and lends a surprising tribute to an entity that will perhaps forever be part of the London namescape.

Today it is the Ramsay Scout Centre.  This is an unlikely spot for a scout centre, but once on this site stood Caledonian Church of Scotland.  It had a Scout Group in large numbers and Mr Ramsay was enterprising enough to secure the derelict site for the scouts' use as a centre.

Caledonian Church may seem an obvious name for a Scottish Church, but it was not that simple.  Caledonian Road nearby - with an Underground Station of the same name - vaguely points north toward Scotland but that isn't how it got it's name either.  Then there is Caledonian Market - but it doesn't really sell kilts.

All these Caledonianisms owe their existence to a school (an asylum in old terminology) for the children of poor Scots, not from this area but from the whole of London.  The Caledonian Church was a spin-off to provide a spiritual outlet and support for what became (thanks to Queen Victoria) The Royal Caledonian School.

So one way or another, this site owes more to children past and present than to adults. 

I like that.