Slender steeple, creepy crypt
The graceful tower of St Bride’s Church is often said to have been the model for wedding cakes. A close look raises doubts about this. The tower and steeple, 71 metres high, consist of a square base, five octagonal storeys, and an obelisk at the top. Even if a baker succeeded in copying this slender, complex construction, the proportion of icing sugar would be far too high to make an edible cake.
St Bride’s is one of the most admired works of Sir Christopher Wren. Its magnificent interior was reconstructed following damage by fire bombs which left only the outer walls and the tower standing in December 1940. Restoration, which renewed the masterly wood carving on the altar and choir stalls, gilded rosettes and marble floor, was supported by newspaper magnates, as St Bride’s lies just off Fleet Street and has been associated with the press for 500 years. One of London’s first printers, Wynkyn de Worde, worked next to the church in around 1500, and was buried in St Bride’s.
Info
Address Fleet Street, near Ludgate Circus, EC4Y 8AU | Public Transport Blackfriars (Circle, District Line) | Hours Mon–Fri 8am–6pm, Sat various times, Sun 10am–6.30pm; guided tours: Tue 2.15pm| Tip An outstanding choir consisting of twelve professional singers can be heard during church services twice each Sunday (for the programme, see www.stbrides.com).
Wren’s church of 1675 had six predecessors. There is a tradition that the first of them was founded in the 6th century by the Irish St Bride herself. Before that, a Roman house occupied the site. In 1210 Parliament met in the church. The diarist Samuel Pepys was baptised here, and the poet Milton belonged to the parish. Traces of many periods can be seen in the crypt, where excavations revealed forgotten burial vaults, one packed to the roof with 300 skeletons, and another containing bones and skulls carefully arranged in a chequerboard pattern. Among the items in the exhibition below the church is a patented iron coffin that was designed to foil body snatchers.
Until 1832, public executions were the only legal source of bodies for dissection, so the requirements of the medical profession for experiments and teaching had to be met by a gruesome trade in stolen corpses.
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