Saturday 17 August 2013

St Dunstan in the West

Sitting at my opposite neighbour's table drinking good coffee and trying to get my bearings in a mirror version of our own flat I listen to a truly terrible tale of betrayal.   I find out too, almost in passing that the other neighbour on our landing is David Bowie's stylist.    I feel like a Stella Street fantasist writing these words for it seems so extraordinarily unlikely though it appears to be true.
In this scruffy block I am sandwiched above and below by gentle single mother's of grown up daughters  - who barely conceal their timid but thorough disapproval of me and my noisy boys.  Opposite on our landing there used to be a very nice gay couple but one partner returned to Australia and though the other man was meant to join him he never went.  After a while a trans - something ( not sure if transvestite or transgender pre or post op? ) woman/man moved in too though somehow I sensed he/she was a lodger rather than a partner.   Squeezed between us is the tiny flat with the single, charming, confident and warm man who is never there.   He lives mainly in New York only coming back very occasionally.  Perhaps understandably Exh has always been annoyed that this man leaves the flat empty and seems to lead a glamorous life elsewhere but this was before this new SUPER piece of information and I just daren't fuel his irritation by telling him - though he would love the second hand proximity to a superstar.

I have always been slightly miffed that none of the gay guys want to be my friend as I could do with an occasional cup of tea/glass of wine friendly neighbour though I think my tired face and truculent boys don't make me look a good bet as a fun pal.    But I had tipped off the man opposite when Peabody came to our door asking questions about who lived there so now I am here in the looking glass flat listening to his terrible tale.    Having escaped Croatia from the war 'I saw people killed', he studied art in the UK and has lived in this flat ( a friend's)  for 12 years.   When his boyfriend returned to Australia he believed he would join him later but was dumped by Skype.   Shortly after he found out he had cancer - and around about this time offered the spare room to the trannie he only refers to as her.   When the tenancy-holding friend put up the rent a few months ago 'she' was furious - believing my neighbour to be double crossing her and making a profit himself.    She took her things and left owing the rent and a really nasty letter.   Worse she stole bank statements and took everything as proof to Peabody - proving that the flat was sublet and that he lived there illegally.   Consequently he is losing his home of 12 years - being instructed to leave in only a couple of weeks.

I return to my own flat having discovered all this and start writing - it seems to be given to me on a plate - with the jaw dropping opening that David Bowie's stylist lives next door.   But as I write I am not sure what I am allowed to say - could an ardent fan work out exactly where it was and stalk my neighbour -  - though to be honest he really is never here so it seems unlikely.   Am I somehow monstrous to sit sympathetically at my neighbour's table to return to write such a terrible tale so gleefully.
It seems increasingly the same with the children - recently my eldest son said accusingly peering over my shoulder 'Why did you write about Sparky's death?'  In principle it all seems fine - I write warmly and anonymously about them -  but I wonder how advisable it really is - what the cut off point should be?   I am their Mum not a reporter on family life and I don't want to turn into Julie Myerson.


It is nearly the summer holidays and I have a daily school uniform crisis - somehow one son has ended up with almost no wearable school trousers and the other with no shirts.   I probably should just buy extra items but I am trying just to get through before the summer growing break - it means I am washing one pair of 10 year old trousers every night and mending rips on the 7 year old's shirts.   Also for a few months I was in a sock regime where my eldest son wore socks with the name of the day on - oh my for a few months I was good - monday meant monday socks, tuesday tuesday etc and it gave me a feeling of well being and organisation to the daily rituals but a few socks got worn then a few lost - and now I am fobbing him off with crazy mix of tuesday and thursday socks ON A WEDNESDAY.    Then finally the weather turns hot and they both wear shorts that for once I was organised enough to buy when they were still in stock but as the cold summer drifted on I had given up hope of being worn.


I go to St Dunstan's in a hot lunch break.   The exterior is a lovely deep sand colour with fine carved details, a small courtyard with one of those coffee stalls and a few tables set out.  There is a huge clock with giants that move to hit bells on the hour and the bells of the church are ringing out.    I see all this as I cycle around and around searching for a bike docking bay.   In the hot weather it is always much harder to find somewhere to park but this is the worst I have ever experienced.   I am cycling around for  over half an hour getting hotter and more frustrated - I had planned to sit and have a coffee in the shady old courtyard but it looks increasingly likely that I will have to just ride back to work without getting into a church at all.   I try all the docking bays - near St Mary le Strand, up near St John Soames house, on Carey street - this area that I didn't know at all until recently but it is now becoming familiar.  Though I turn one corner onto Fetter Lane and see a castle like building - that I have never ever seen before though like Lincoln's Inn Field it seems unlikely that such a huge building or area could remain tucked away out of my sight -  later I find out it is King's college Maughan library.

Finally a man takes out a bike at the first bay I tried - the one I used for Temple church and St Bride's too - we smile and chat about the hopelessness of finding a space now the weather is good.

In the church I had almost hoped to catch some sort of service - what were the bells rung out for?  But there are just two women church wardens who smile in welcome.   The light in the church is pigeon grey an unexpected contrast after the warmth of the sandy stone outside.   The church is octagonal,  a little bit jumbled somehow uglier or more ordinary than I had imagined despite the odd shape .   I patrol the edges.   The two women are talking somehow competitively of tracing family history - I am at the end of their church warden welcome stint and hear them pack up and their elegant tales of the trails of dead relatives disappear with their footsteps.

In the clutter of plaques there are some beautiful things - including a male and female kneeling bronze with a kind of speech bubbles appearing from their mouths ( later I find out they are probably the earliest monuments left from a much earlier church ), a bouncer like bust of Cuthbert Fetherstone and a marble likeness of a very poetic young man, curls resting on his stone pillow, hand on his heart.   Edward James Auriol 'was drowned in The Rhone at Geneva on the morning of the 19th of August, having just completed his 17th year.......Bright, loving and dutiful, in simplicity and Godly sincerity by the grace of God, he had his conversation in the world.'

Looking him up I find this very odd piece:
http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Conversing+with+spirits%3A+as+the+days+grow+shorter+and+autumn+prepares...-a0137361973

There is an ornate carved wooden altar screen sandwiched into an alcove next to the main altarpiece to the side.   I discover the church has hosted the worship of the Romanian Orthodox Church of London since the sixties and that this iconostasis ( a perfect fit ) was brought from the Church of Antim Monastery in Bucharest in 1966.   Strangely in the side chapels there are other altars too - Roman Catholic , Assyrian, Oriental (Armenian, Coptic, Ethiopian, Syrian, Syro-Indian) and Lutheran for the Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Geoffrey Fisher in the 60s conceived of St Dunstan's as a centre of prayer for Christian Unity - a meeting place for Western and Eastern churches.


I look around the church quickly with no time for the coffee I had hoped for - though I clamber around the small tables packed into the courtyard to see a fine Queen Elizabeth statue above the arched doorway at the side of the church.    Back on a bike over Blackfriars bridge I am disappointed somehow by the jumble of the church, disappointed not to sit in the warm shade.

Later I discover the church was rebuilt on the site of an early medieval church in 1831.  The original church was built in honour of St Dunstan - who was elected Archbishop of Canterbury in 960AD though he had previously been a hermit at Glastonbury - he 'sought peace with the aggressive Danes and the promotion of monastic living which had calamitously declined.   A bookish man, he also established the library at Canterbury Cathedral.'   The church is believed to have been built between the death of St Dunstan and the consecration of Archbishop Lanfranc in 1070 though the earliest reference is from a document held in Westminster Abbey dated 1180.    The church escaped the Great Fire of London in 1666 when the Dean of Westminster woke forty royal scholars ofWestminster School in the middle of the night and they brought water buckets and extinguished the flames which had come within three doors of the church.   However the church was pulled down in 1829 and re built.  The tower later badly damaged in the Blitz though rebuilt in 1950.

Pepys worshipped occasionally at St Dustan's though his report from 1667 seems to hold little devout prayer:
'Being wearied turned into St Dunstan's Church where I heard an able sermon of the minister of the place; and stood by a pretty modest maid, whom I did labour to take by the hand and the body; but she would not, but got further and further from me; and at last I could perceive her to take pins out of her pocket to prick me if I should touch her again - which seeing I did forbear and was glad I did spy her design.  And then I fell to gaze upon another pretty maid in a pew close to me, and she on me; and I did go about to take her by the hand which she suffered a little and then withdrew.  So the sermon ended and also the church broke up, and my armours ended also.'

Paradise Lost was first printed here - in the first edition its title page inscribed as printed 'under St Dunstan's Church in Fleet Street, 1667.   Sweeney Todd the fictional murdering barber 'lived' next door to the church at 186 Fleet Street cutting the throats of his clients and then selling their flesh to Margery Lovett the owner of a pie shop on Bell Yard though there appears to be a nudging belief that the tales are true and that the bodies were disposed in the crypt of St Dunstan's the guide book quoting a book with the Attorney General saying -  'Into old coffins, the tenants of which had mouldered to dust, there had been thrust fresh bodies with scarecely any flesh remains on them.'

I also find out that the statue of Queen Elizabeth came from the nearby demolished Ludgate - the entrance through the city walls into the City of London and that I had missed seeing the statues of King Lud and his two sons from the same gateway that are tucked under the side doorway beneath her statue - crumbly mysterious figures in the photographs like worn teeth.

I really want to see them - to finish this blog before going on holiday - though time is running out and I am super stressed and feeling really down.   The tax credit investigation has taken up my time - preparing documents to send - finding unobserved time at the end of the day to print out months of bank statements at work - though I am mortified to find an american heiress that I work with standing at the photocopier reading them - surely bemused by the lurching lunacy of my overdraft.   There is also a sinking feeling that the truth cannot be seen that however true my claim is that I have no proof.   With the documents sent I wait and wait.  Eventually I phone  -  it takes over an hour hanging on the phone to speak to anyone  - though a nice helpful woman tells me when I finally get through that more phone lines have been added - as more people are being investigated - though she has no news she can give me.    Finally just before going on holiday a man rings to say just as I feared that they do not believe my claim - that I have no proof that exh does NOT live here - for foolishly I have let him keep his bank and work details going through this address - though when I think logically about it I suppose I have wanted to help keep him on the straight and narrow through the chaotic days, the hostel years and now at his illegal industrial address.  I have kept him involved in the boy's lives - on their side at least - and the policy has really worked for all of us really -  despite a really terrible anxiety dip in May he is doing really well - still not drinking- a much more centred man.  When I take the final call telling me I am not believed, that I need to pay the money back I am making the beds in the boys room and I howl like a dog on the phone  - I am doing the best I can I sob - I have worked so hard - to keep everyone going - what on earth am I going to do  - the man on the phone softens slightly - you can pay the money back slowly he says - but I haven't done anything wrong I wail.

On a trip after work to Piccadilly Sport's Direct to buy cheap hand luggage wheelie bags for we are going by Ryanair to Sweden - to stay in a friend's house - I think cunningly that I could stop quickly and have a look - it seems really important - some sort of key to what I am writing that I see the statues.  But when I cycle past the gate is locked and I can't see anything at all in the shadowy archway set back from the road.
I find out however that:
"Ludgate is commonly accepted as having been named after the mythical King Lud, who according to legend founded London. King Lud who is said to have been buried at Ludgate appeared in texts such as Geoffrey of Monmouths (born circa 1100 – died circa 1155) Historia Regum Britanniae (The History of the Kings of Britain).
Lud, the eldest son of King Heli is supposed to date from around 66BC. Though he in turn is supposed to have had two sons, Androgeus and Tenvantius, they were not old enough to succeed him when he passed away and Lud’s younger brother Cassibelanus became King. According to medieval tradition the two princes assisted in the defence of Britain against the Roman legions of Julius Caesar, Androgeus as Duke of London (Trinovantum) and Tenvantius, Duke of Cornwall. The eldest of the two, Androgeus, followed Caesar back to Rome and following the death of Cassibelanus, Tenvantius finally gained his fathers throne.
Lud’s name has been linked, by some, either rightly or wrongly with the etymology of London itself in the form of Ludd-deen (Valley of Ludd) or Caer Ludd (Ludd’s Fortress). Ludd’s original settlement was said to be in the area of Ludgate Hill, where St Paul’s Cathedral now stands. This hill was one of the three ancient hills around which London was formed and Lud Gate was the principal of the ancient six gates into London. There are other explanations and arguments to the origins of the name Ludgate however: ‘According to old Geoffry of Monmouth's fabulous history of England, this entrance to London was first built by King Lud, a British monarch, sixty-six years before Christ. Our later antiquaries, ruthless as to legends, however romantic, consider its original name to have been the Flood or Fleet Gate, which is far more feasible. [Walter Thornbury in Old and New London: Volume 1 (1878)]
Cementing the link with Ludgate and Lud in 1260, King Henry III (born 1 October 1207 – died 16 November 1272) had the Lud Gate decorated with iconic images of the legendary king and his two sons Androgeus and Tenvantius. These statues were beheaded during reign of King Edward VI (born 12 October 1537 – died 6 July 1553) and repaired a short time later during the reign of his successor and catholic sister Queen Mary (born 18 February 1516 – died 17 November 1558). Then in 1586, during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I (born 7 September 1533 – died 24 March 1603), the aging Lud Gate was rebuilt afresh and new statues of King Lud and his sons were put on the eastern side.
Beside the gatehouse was the famous Ludgate prison. After being severely damaged during the Great Fire of London in 1666, the prison and gate were demolished in 1760. The statues of Lud, Androgeus and Tenvantius were then gifted to the City of London by Sir Francis Gosling. Unused the statues were eventually bought by the Marquis of Hertford and can now be found, along with a statue of Queen Elizabeth I (made at the same time as the Lud family statues in 1586 and could be found on the west side of the gate) in the courtyard of the church of St. Dunstan-in-the-West, Fleet Street.'

Back from holiday - Sweden and camping in Dorset - a really lovely time - the boys really happy and well - the eldest finding a really decent ammonite specimen in the cliffs of our campsite, the youngest producing like a rabbit from a hat - a skill for story telling.   Though in the shock of going back to work and climbing back onto the saddle of my complicated and stressful life I think - ah it is the gateway opening into the city - I am nearly into the old history - though I also think - how am I going to find the time to balance all the elements - the druids, the romans, the whole history of the City.

Checking facts in Peter Ackroyd's London the biography I find out a woolly mammoth was discovered in 1690 beside what has become King's Cross - though Dryden had written earlier of this invisible landscape of London

'Yet monsters from thy large increase we find
Engender'd on the Slyme thou leav'st behind'

marking other discoveries found in the clay of London - sharks in the East End, the skull of a wolf in Cheapside and crocodiles in Islington.

Like scale I find the enormity of time an obliterating twist of focus of a microscope.   I thought I had put this up already but OL sent it to me again recently so maybe I hadn't:

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap120312.html


Amen.

2 comments:

  1. looking forward to the next one. keep it up! it's good stuff!

    OL

    ReplyDelete
  2. Would at least like to read you, if I can't talk to you anymore!

    OL

    ReplyDelete