I think it is the tube strike but it isn't. I get the wrong day, the day before, not the actual day. A little bit like weather reports I find it hard to take in such details. Listening to the news I think ok, concentrate it is coming - rain or winter coat? And then I blink, or turn the tap on to wash up, and the report has gone, and yet again I make an ill informed guess, just looking out of the window and we are down the flights of stairs, late for school and standing outside, the children and me under blue skies and sunshine in thin clothes feeling a little bit cold. If we go fast we'll be alright I say.
This day though, I go to Notting Hill on the bus thinking I have been really clever and aren't I lucky because it isn't too packed for a tube strike day. I have an appointment with a counsellor I have started seeing and I didn't want to miss it. For some reason I don't really want to write this. Though perhaps it is just another truth barrier to go through. Angry children. Counselling through a domestic abuse charity.
The day I rang the domestic abuse charity it was well after the worst - after separating, after the drinking stopped. I had been given the leaflet initially by the woman who came after I phoned for help after exdh disappeared drunk driving the children around and held onto it, though I can remember well before that looking at the poster on the wall at a toddler group thinking that is what it feels like. But there was never any physical violence so I was unconfident that it described what it was. But exexdh had shouted and sworn and ranted at me one more time and after soothing the children back to bed, back to sleep I lay on the floor and sobbed and thought I cannot allow this to carry on anymore. This is my home. The next morning shaky and weary I took the children to school and then came back, took the phone into bed, lay under the covers and phoned the number. I told my tale to a kind, warm voiced woman.
I have always felt that I was a powerful person so it is a surprise to be or have to tell this.
She said you need a solicitor. She said yes, you need to talk through what has happened to you for you have been so strong and you have had no support. Yes. You do not have to live in this way.
So on this tube strike day that isn't - I think - I know, I can walk back through the parks afterwards and then onto a church. I can go and have a look at the Anish Kapoor sculptures. What a treat, I think, and the day is beautiful, warm, crisp blue skies and the autumn trees are strutted peacocks, flame coloured in amazing display.
This is beautiful. I am glad of everything that has put me there at exactly that moment. Not knowing it isn't really a tube strike yet.
In a bit of Hyde Park I don't know very well I find the first sculpture. A Rothko dark pink curved disc in a grey pond. Reflected clouds moving across the sheen of metal and swans and geese scudding beneath, like their home just got a satellite disc. Quite nice I think and move to a huge curved rectangular mirror. But the concrete base it is on causes a funny angled reflection and the scrub of mud and worn grass where people have walked round is ugly. Ho, ho, ho I think at the fairground fattening and upside down of behind but mainly I'm just not sure, not convinced as I tack back across the park to the robocop liquid metal of a spire reaching up. OK. It is OK, for I like the heaven reference, the church reference and I am reading John Betjeman 'On Churches.' But I am surprised by my friend's recommendation. Then, walking down to the lake I see the huge disc like a landed moon, clouds made monumental by their framing, energetic, like thick painted brushstrokes. Oh, I think oh. It is beautiful, And then I turn behind to see the red disc now glowing like a red orb. I feel in a constellation between the two. Earth and the sky combined unexpectedly into wonder.
How much art can you take? Passing the Serpentine Gallery I dither about going in, worried I have got to get everything done and I am working 4 days this week not 3 and time is tight and I still have to get into a church. But, I reason as I am here I might as well just whizz in. An exhibition by Klara Liden.
In a dark room a grainy projected film shows a man ( I think ) but it turns out to be a woman, the artist, slipping slowly backwards, feet sliding a moonwalk through night time streets. It is haunting and repetitive, her journey ending back where she started. A loop. A circumference.
In another room, the same fleshy youth, the artist, beats a bicycle with a stick. It starts out just a knocking, like finding a note, almost a sensual tracing of the form, then increases, but not so much, for the violence is sidelong, casual, a little bit sly, loses momentum and then gathers again. There is no real frenzy to it. Though the bike does topple over, does break into pieces but it never seems inevitable.
These are just observations. I am not sure what I want from them.
I buy some postcards and set off across the park again. It is a long walk and eventually I take a Boris bike from Hyde Park Corner to Trafalgar Square. I feel I am playing hookey on my own life to fit so much beauty into one morning.
I know St Martin's in The Field's has a cafe and has a lot of concerts but I don't know if I will be able to get in, I don't know if the actual church will be open.
But, walking up the steps, admiring the sky and view of Trafalgar Square which is so beautiful, letting light and space come into the heart of London, the doors are open. Though I still peer suspiciously in from the vestibule doors into the church. There are people sat at pews. I see people inside welcoming others. And walk in.
'There is a free concert.' The kind faces say. It starts at one o'clock. I am tempted to stay but think I will decide as I look around.
The church is beautiful. A huge space. Like an American church. I think, and then find out later that it's 1721 design was copied across North America Simple wood pews, a balcony above with more wooden pews, ornate chandeliers, and baroque white plaster ceilings with gold decorations and an amazing modern window at the end that later I find out to be by the Iranian artist Shirazeh Houshiary. It has clear leaded glass that shapes into a patched cross in a hazy, optical illusion. As if there is a shimmer, a movement to it, like a vibration.
The first official reference to a church on the site was in 1222, when The Archbishop of Canterbury decided that William, the Abbot of Westminster had authority of the church over Eustace the Bishop of London. That church was surrounded by fields in an isolated position between the cities of London and Westminster. Imagine! Trafalgar Square! Though excavations in 2006 led to the discovery of a Roman aged grave from about 410. This body, so far outside the limits of Roman London burial has led to ideas that it was an early Christian centre. (possibly reusing the site or building of a pagan temple).
Much later Henry V111 around 1542 built a new church and extended the parish boundaries to keep plague victims being carried through his palace and this was enlarged in 1607 and then pulled down in 1721 to be replaced by the current building. designed by James Gibb. The Vicar of St Martin's Dick Shepherd during the WW1 saw St Martin's as 'the church of the ever open door' following the example of the patron saint St Martin a roman soldier, who became a christian and is remembered for giving half his cloak to a beggar, Dick Shepherd allowed soldiers to rest in the church on the way to France in WW1. And his open door policy led to the work with homeless people, then later the chinese population that arrived in the 1960s and this busy feeling of committed welcome that is apparent this day.
I discover too, on the internet that there is a CD of recordings from WW2 - THE BLITZ Vol 1 (1939-41)
Audiobook 2xCD on CD41 label
ISBN: 978-1-906310-00-4
'An evocative double-disc set, The Blitz (Vol 1) features 145 minutes of rare material recorded 1939 and 1941. Most of the 44 tracks cover the period of night air raids in British cities between September 1940 and May 1941, including the heavy raids on London known as Black Saturday (7 September 1940) and the Second Fire of London (29 December 1940). All the featured recordings are first-hand accounts made at the time, and include civilians, evacuees, ARP and civil defence personnel, RAF pilots, AA gunners and politicians, as well as actuality recordings made during raids and inside shelters.'
With a report from 'CBS correspondent Edward R. Murrow from St Martin in the Fields on Trafalgar Square during an air raid alert on 24 August 1940. The crypt of this famous church was used as a public shelter. On this night German aircraft bound for Rochester and Thameshaven instead dropped bombs over Central London, causing the first damage from enemy bombs since 1918.'
I am fascinated that I might be able to just choose to play tracks of this. That I can buy it like a greatest hits. Though I will.
Reluctantly I think I really don't have time to stay for the concert but I follow an open door down some steps to explore what there is. In the basement, in this space where people sheltered night after night from bombs, the cafe is packed under vaulted bricks. It is lunchtime. I move on to a huge modern underground expanse of space where there is a shop and a brass rubbing centre, then a sprial staircase that goes back up to the street. I have seen a mention of the Dick Shepherd chapel available for private prayer at any time and follow the arrows to find it. At the back, down some stairs, very quiet, behind glass is a modern simple chapel, two candles either end of a table and some chairs. I look through the glass, to a space cutaway in the earth under the pavement of busy feet, a very very peaceful room. Even walking home tonight from work, thinking oh, oh I am behind writing this, how will I finish it, and then I just remember the peace of that room deep within the building.
But now, just finishing, I hear something creaking and moving in the kitchen. I am not sure what it could be. I listen intently. I feel slightly frightened that unexpectedly a mouse or rat or just something could somehow, not sure, have mangaged to get up here. Then there is a muffled flat bang. It is a balloon bursting within a paper mache mask we were making for halloween and didn't finish, it is such a peculiar sound, such a strange tectonic movement in our flat, that I laugh.
Amen
Showing posts with label the Blitz. Show all posts
Showing posts with label the Blitz. Show all posts
Tuesday, 2 November 2010
Sunday, 24 October 2010
Guard's Chapel, Birdcage Walk
My guilty pleasure on Sunday mornings is Radio 2 Love Songs. While the children watch Teenage Mutant Ninja turtles ( I have a feeling that letting them do that should be on my guilt list too?) I clear up or put the washing on and turn the dial from R4 and sing. l love the combination of cheesy tunes and heartfelt messages. Everything I would have sneered at in my pre children, arty world seems really valuable and valid. 'To my darling wife. I love you so very much.' To my loving husband you are a great dad and a wonderful husband.' 'Through the ups and downs, through thick and thin we have made it together.'
Well done. I think. Well done. Like listening to shiny medals of courageous love.
I don't even think I have envy, I just appreciate the possibility, the 'proof' of a solid thing, a celebrated partnership. Care and kindness at the core.
Afterwards, the boys and I play playmobil - creating an expedition to rescue endangered species from a far flung land. Though, somehow there is a restaurant for monkeys to eat bananas with the money they made from selling the provisions for the voyage and a king who drives a police car with his friend the squirrel.
Exexdh arrives to take over because I have made the arrangement to slip out to go to the Guard's Chapel. I have broken my own rules and checked on the website, though it gave me no detail beyond a rather vague instruction that there is a service every sunday at 11am and sometimes at midday too. Though imagine my relief that the public are welcome. Otherwise I would have had to try and muscle my way in on a soldiers church!
The day is beautiful. Blue crisp sky, autumn light. A treat to be out, on my own, doing something I want to do. I enjoy this feeling briefly before remembering that this rarely won treat might be better spent reading a book with a delicious cup of coffee, or going to an exhibition, not dreading getting into a church.
Have you ever been to St James's Park? It is the most ludicrously pretty park in London. Squirrels sit on the railings and nuzzle nuts from your fingers ( not mine - I'm too hesitant - but the boys love it), there are really beautiful and thoughtfully planted flowerbeds, a bridge that crosses the man made lake, with views of the war office that look like a grown up Disney land ( tricky to imagine, but true! Go!) and ( I feel there should be a drum roll.........) Pelicans. Yes Pelicans! They are so completely bonkers a species. But here. Being photographed, ( or even weirder to imagine - asleep, in the dark , sitting on a nest, or still on the water) as you read this. In central london! Finally, a playground where you can push your kid in a swing and look to see if the flag is flying on Buckingham Palace, and wonder if the queen is lonely, and watching you, from her bedroom window.
However, I walk around the side of the park, by now, hesitant. I hope I can find the church easily for I never walk this way, have never actually seen it, only know it to exist from my compulsive map reading, for as early as my 1869 map it says 'Garrison chapel'. But it is easy - set back behind the railings a beautiful simple, unexpectedly-concrete building with a cross on it. Then posters that advertise the guardsmen's museum, and also a soldiers shop for children, and tanks at the gate.
On the steps of the chapel is a soldier in a kilt with bagpipes talking on his mobile. He says as I near, ' I better go, I will be playing shortly.' But remains chatting on his phone. I am trying to peer through the glass of the entrance, I can hear music but it looks dark within. Suddenly I realise it is packed. Men in the thick weave of uniform, stood, so close to the glass they cause the dark. I keep peering in, moving along the glass to work out the space, I catch a glimpse of the nave and a golden altar area, and then a door is pushed open from inside in invitation, an order of service is pushed into my hand and a handsome black guy in uniform has stepped aside to let me have a chair.
I am in a service!
The church is packed. The music is beautiful. Everyone is singing a hymn. There are dense pockets of only soldiers but many dignitaries too, standing tall, shoulder to shoulder. I am so amazed to come out of my own life to this, to this solidarity, and high soaring choir and strong men singing that I nearly cry, but I don't, unexpectedly I join in.
The chapel is beautiful. The main structure is plain smooth concrete, high walls up to a wooden ceiling and flags hanging down. At the end, is an amazing old, golden, painted apse, which doesn't make sense in this sixties building but looks beautiful. We are into the National Anthem. Everyone straight backed. Then:
O Trinity of love and power
Our brethren shield in danger's hour:
From rock and tempest, fire and foe,
Protect them wheresoeer they go;
Thus evermore shall rise to Thee
Glad hymns of praise from land and sea.
Sung with such resolute demand.
I don't know about anything. But inside that church there is a certaintity and I think it is this: We are brave. We have survived in great adversity. Not everyone does. We give thanks. (I sometimes feel all of those things but I haven't been to war and even I can see it sounds trite.) This was a homecoming for the London Regiment of the Territorial army, back from Afghanistan. Men from all walks of life - estate agents, postmen, business consultants, who have gone on a tour of duty.
I found these quotes from people setting out:
Lance Corporal George Anderson- An estate agent working for Kinleigh Folkard & Hayward who described civilian life as “mincing around London making money for someone else”. and “The most exciting thing that happens all week is getting a parking ticket.”
Lieutenant Pete Quentin, 26, a Cambridge graduate and former research fellow at the think-tank Civitas, said the threat gave him a better perspective on life and made him appreciate his family and friends.
As if there is an evolutionary dead end to being safe. As if there is a sense of 'real' in these extremes. These men have been to the edge of that safety, to the rough terrain, to the skirmishes of life and death and returned. Here they are safe with their families and singing in this church. Their war carrying on a long, long way a way - a hazy, incomprehensible distance from us.
My favourite anti war story is seeing a sloaney middle-aged woman with a head scarf and a harvest festival-style, good-works basket on the tube years ago when I was a student. Pinned to her cardigan was a homemade badge, biro-scrawled, wonky writing on feint lined paper, and then wrapped in shiny sellotape wound round and round it said 'I don't like the armed forces.' Just that. It seemed an unlikely and mildly ridiculous protest but utterly heartfelt.
And when London stopped still and the estimated 2 million marched against going into war in Iraq, h and me went with our new tiny baby to Hyde Park and stood with a Picasso dove placard in the crowd. Though, beyond a lazy, ' I don't really like war ' and perhaps 'I don't think the truth is being told about the motives for this.' I didn't exactly know what I felt, and worried that it had been more of photo opportunity for a much photographed new baby and it's proud parents, though later we realised with disappointment that we hadn't put a film in the camera and there were no pictures.
We lived then, in the small peabody flat, near Chelsea Barracks, and witnessed one night, craning our heads, in the dark, above street lights, the military departing. Traffic lights stop-starting the column of camouflaged tanks, trucks, light guns, landrovers that rumbled on and and on, for a very, very long time. I imagined somebody, their head out of a window in Iraq watching their arrival with true fear. My own slightly sentimental anxieties for this world and my baby son, felt rather luxurious that night.
I am not certain what I think. The power in that church was incredible. It was like a world I had never known. True belief, belted out. Though what was being believed in I wasn't sure.
Later I discover Guard's Chapel, initially built in 1838 was bombed in the blitz and then again on 18th June 1944, later rebuilt in 1963. I have got used to these phrases, almost got used to how much was bombed around here. But, and I think there should be a careful pause here. I discover in 1944 it was bombed on a sunday morning, just after the service had started at 11 o'clock when the church was packed. A distant buzzing was heard by the congregation that grew louder and turned into a roar, drowning out the hymn. Then the engine cut out and the V1 glided down and exploded on the roof of the chapel. The whole roof collapsed. 121 military and civilians were killed and 141 seriously injured. Only the Bishop of Maidstone conducting the service was totally unhurt for the altar was covered by a portico (the one still in the church today,)and it had sheltered him from the blast. It was said that after the explosion the alter candles were still burning.
It took 2 days to dig the dead and injured out of the devastation. News of this awful tragedy was suppressed although rumours of the disaster soon spread across London.
I meant to write with grave concern about David Cameron, his cuts, the businesses already closing around here and the tense faces of the civil servants on their way to work but unexpectedly this, this terrible tale was provided, almost ready made.
Amen
Well done. I think. Well done. Like listening to shiny medals of courageous love.
I don't even think I have envy, I just appreciate the possibility, the 'proof' of a solid thing, a celebrated partnership. Care and kindness at the core.
Afterwards, the boys and I play playmobil - creating an expedition to rescue endangered species from a far flung land. Though, somehow there is a restaurant for monkeys to eat bananas with the money they made from selling the provisions for the voyage and a king who drives a police car with his friend the squirrel.
Exexdh arrives to take over because I have made the arrangement to slip out to go to the Guard's Chapel. I have broken my own rules and checked on the website, though it gave me no detail beyond a rather vague instruction that there is a service every sunday at 11am and sometimes at midday too. Though imagine my relief that the public are welcome. Otherwise I would have had to try and muscle my way in on a soldiers church!
The day is beautiful. Blue crisp sky, autumn light. A treat to be out, on my own, doing something I want to do. I enjoy this feeling briefly before remembering that this rarely won treat might be better spent reading a book with a delicious cup of coffee, or going to an exhibition, not dreading getting into a church.
Have you ever been to St James's Park? It is the most ludicrously pretty park in London. Squirrels sit on the railings and nuzzle nuts from your fingers ( not mine - I'm too hesitant - but the boys love it), there are really beautiful and thoughtfully planted flowerbeds, a bridge that crosses the man made lake, with views of the war office that look like a grown up Disney land ( tricky to imagine, but true! Go!) and ( I feel there should be a drum roll.........) Pelicans. Yes Pelicans! They are so completely bonkers a species. But here. Being photographed, ( or even weirder to imagine - asleep, in the dark , sitting on a nest, or still on the water) as you read this. In central london! Finally, a playground where you can push your kid in a swing and look to see if the flag is flying on Buckingham Palace, and wonder if the queen is lonely, and watching you, from her bedroom window.
However, I walk around the side of the park, by now, hesitant. I hope I can find the church easily for I never walk this way, have never actually seen it, only know it to exist from my compulsive map reading, for as early as my 1869 map it says 'Garrison chapel'. But it is easy - set back behind the railings a beautiful simple, unexpectedly-concrete building with a cross on it. Then posters that advertise the guardsmen's museum, and also a soldiers shop for children, and tanks at the gate.
On the steps of the chapel is a soldier in a kilt with bagpipes talking on his mobile. He says as I near, ' I better go, I will be playing shortly.' But remains chatting on his phone. I am trying to peer through the glass of the entrance, I can hear music but it looks dark within. Suddenly I realise it is packed. Men in the thick weave of uniform, stood, so close to the glass they cause the dark. I keep peering in, moving along the glass to work out the space, I catch a glimpse of the nave and a golden altar area, and then a door is pushed open from inside in invitation, an order of service is pushed into my hand and a handsome black guy in uniform has stepped aside to let me have a chair.
I am in a service!
The church is packed. The music is beautiful. Everyone is singing a hymn. There are dense pockets of only soldiers but many dignitaries too, standing tall, shoulder to shoulder. I am so amazed to come out of my own life to this, to this solidarity, and high soaring choir and strong men singing that I nearly cry, but I don't, unexpectedly I join in.
The chapel is beautiful. The main structure is plain smooth concrete, high walls up to a wooden ceiling and flags hanging down. At the end, is an amazing old, golden, painted apse, which doesn't make sense in this sixties building but looks beautiful. We are into the National Anthem. Everyone straight backed. Then:
O Trinity of love and power
Our brethren shield in danger's hour:
From rock and tempest, fire and foe,
Protect them wheresoeer they go;
Thus evermore shall rise to Thee
Glad hymns of praise from land and sea.
Sung with such resolute demand.
I don't know about anything. But inside that church there is a certaintity and I think it is this: We are brave. We have survived in great adversity. Not everyone does. We give thanks. (I sometimes feel all of those things but I haven't been to war and even I can see it sounds trite.) This was a homecoming for the London Regiment of the Territorial army, back from Afghanistan. Men from all walks of life - estate agents, postmen, business consultants, who have gone on a tour of duty.
I found these quotes from people setting out:
Lance Corporal George Anderson- An estate agent working for Kinleigh Folkard & Hayward who described civilian life as “mincing around London making money for someone else”. and “The most exciting thing that happens all week is getting a parking ticket.”
Lieutenant Pete Quentin, 26, a Cambridge graduate and former research fellow at the think-tank Civitas, said the threat gave him a better perspective on life and made him appreciate his family and friends.
As if there is an evolutionary dead end to being safe. As if there is a sense of 'real' in these extremes. These men have been to the edge of that safety, to the rough terrain, to the skirmishes of life and death and returned. Here they are safe with their families and singing in this church. Their war carrying on a long, long way a way - a hazy, incomprehensible distance from us.
My favourite anti war story is seeing a sloaney middle-aged woman with a head scarf and a harvest festival-style, good-works basket on the tube years ago when I was a student. Pinned to her cardigan was a homemade badge, biro-scrawled, wonky writing on feint lined paper, and then wrapped in shiny sellotape wound round and round it said 'I don't like the armed forces.' Just that. It seemed an unlikely and mildly ridiculous protest but utterly heartfelt.
And when London stopped still and the estimated 2 million marched against going into war in Iraq, h and me went with our new tiny baby to Hyde Park and stood with a Picasso dove placard in the crowd. Though, beyond a lazy, ' I don't really like war ' and perhaps 'I don't think the truth is being told about the motives for this.' I didn't exactly know what I felt, and worried that it had been more of photo opportunity for a much photographed new baby and it's proud parents, though later we realised with disappointment that we hadn't put a film in the camera and there were no pictures.
We lived then, in the small peabody flat, near Chelsea Barracks, and witnessed one night, craning our heads, in the dark, above street lights, the military departing. Traffic lights stop-starting the column of camouflaged tanks, trucks, light guns, landrovers that rumbled on and and on, for a very, very long time. I imagined somebody, their head out of a window in Iraq watching their arrival with true fear. My own slightly sentimental anxieties for this world and my baby son, felt rather luxurious that night.
I am not certain what I think. The power in that church was incredible. It was like a world I had never known. True belief, belted out. Though what was being believed in I wasn't sure.
Later I discover Guard's Chapel, initially built in 1838 was bombed in the blitz and then again on 18th June 1944, later rebuilt in 1963. I have got used to these phrases, almost got used to how much was bombed around here. But, and I think there should be a careful pause here. I discover in 1944 it was bombed on a sunday morning, just after the service had started at 11 o'clock when the church was packed. A distant buzzing was heard by the congregation that grew louder and turned into a roar, drowning out the hymn. Then the engine cut out and the V1 glided down and exploded on the roof of the chapel. The whole roof collapsed. 121 military and civilians were killed and 141 seriously injured. Only the Bishop of Maidstone conducting the service was totally unhurt for the altar was covered by a portico (the one still in the church today,)and it had sheltered him from the blast. It was said that after the explosion the alter candles were still burning.
It took 2 days to dig the dead and injured out of the devastation. News of this awful tragedy was suppressed although rumours of the disaster soon spread across London.
I meant to write with grave concern about David Cameron, his cuts, the businesses already closing around here and the tense faces of the civil servants on their way to work but unexpectedly this, this terrible tale was provided, almost ready made.
Amen
Monday, 12 July 2010
Christ Church, Westminster
I have started to feel like a detective but I'm not sure of what.
Christ Church. No longer a church at all. Initially called the New Chapel built 1651, then demolished and re built in 1843, a chapel of ease to St Margaret's. The church bombed out in the war, now only a garden, the fragment of a burial ground left. It is a scrap of grass where office workers eat sandwiches and fat pigeons eat their crumbs. Alongside, the drinking homeless gather like greasy, injured birds. But this morning on the tube going to work, just when I thought this blog wasn't working - no one reads it, I wasn't brave enough to get into churches most of the time, this was no longer a church, unexpectedly this is what I read:
'In the early morning of the 17th many incendiaries dropped on and around the Christ Church, Victoria. Prompt action from wardens and other helpers extinguished most of these, and incidentally saved the tower- but above the altar there was fire on the roof that could not be reached. The Fire Service was summoned, with a call for high ladders. Meanwhile under the burning roof the heavy embers were falling , wardens - including women - risked themeselves to extricate the Bible and altar pieces. But by chance an ember dropped into an organ - setting up instantly a great blaze. Then the main roof caught fire. The Fire Service arrived and set to work at a height with one of their 100-foot turntable ladders - those extendable steel ladders complete with hose that are commonly called water towers'. For a time the sky above seemed quiet. Then the urgent spasmodic note of a Luftwaffe engine was heard, and a single plane circled above the church. It seemed to retreat, and then to come nosing back again. At last, as if scenting its chosen flower, it dived. A small high explosive came down to its horrid nest on the precarious water-tower reaching up towards it. One fireman was killed and five others received terrible injuries that resulted in death' 'The Blitz, Westminster at War.' William Sansom.
How terrifying - not just the bombing, but the circling, the coming back, the finishing of the job. Watching this happen. Feeling completely helpless.
Piecing things together I went to Westminster City Archive, just to see, just to start. I wanted to know who had lived in our flat. To find out about this place before it became our life. Coming out of the lift on the fifth floor, into a quiet room with sky lights, and view of Westminster rooftops tucked behind bookshelves. No food or drink. The peace of only pencils.
Holding my breath I turned the pages of the 1918 electoral register. It was the earliest they had. I had wanted to start at the beginning. But here, I feel like I am inviting unknown guests to live alongside us.
1918 Amy and Robert John Smith
1939 Vera May Smith and Richard Alfred Smith
1946 Harriet and Harry Powley
1949 Harriett and Harry Powley
Suddenly all of us jostling together, all of us trying to use the bathroom that probably did not exist. All of us calling this place home. But perhaps that is just what history is.
There have been a lot of discoveries, I am starting to become obsessed. Our street - ' Duck Lane ( now St. Matthew Street) was identified as one of the worst slum areas during the eighteenth century- named the ‘Devil’s Acre’ by Charles Dickens. Our block of flats built on that site 1885 (alongside another built in 1860), nearly the first social housing built in London (the world?) I keep thinking of the first tennants. How proud and pleased they must have been. Nearby - another garden, another park just near the boys schools with big gravestones stacked against a wall known as 'England's foulest graveyard.' Bodies looted, pistol armed guards stationed. Am I cramming too much information in here? I have started finding all this out and it is coming thick and fast.
But writing the names, sitting here in this solid walled, cleverly designed small flat, the living room tucked like a secret nest in the centre, doors opening all the way round so that it is possible to run either way shouting 'meet you there' as a game, I feel like I'm summoning something, some proprietorial eyes on this home I keep, some of the decisions I have made. These are people's relatives, people's friends. I sleep in their bedroom. I sit at this computer and write. I clean and clean and clean the same space they cleaned. Dust tucked in the same corners. It is a profound revelation to realise how safe they would think my life was. How easy. Though perhaps also how nonchalant of my safety I have acted, how careless I have been.
Did the Smith's keep the flat for generations - only to move out in or after the war? I don't know yet how to trace them but I would like to try. Another big bomb went off on our street,11th November just after 4pm a cold drizzly day, wiping out a printing works killing 25. The rescue operation took 4 days.
I buy a 1755 map of Westminster on my way out of the Archive Library. A copy of a beautiful hand inked drawing showing flourished curly writing and a large village clustered to the Thames. It cost £2.50. I have already maps from 1869, 1894, and 1916 but they look like the London we know. With no edges. But this map shows New Chapel at the edge of marshland at the border of etched human activity. Just round the corner from the workhouse. Human endeavour creeping on, building more, reclaiming the land.
At night when we sleep in this hot weather, marshland mosquitoes unheard, unknown bite our cheeks, and toes and ankles.
Christ Church. No longer a church at all. Initially called the New Chapel built 1651, then demolished and re built in 1843, a chapel of ease to St Margaret's. The church bombed out in the war, now only a garden, the fragment of a burial ground left. It is a scrap of grass where office workers eat sandwiches and fat pigeons eat their crumbs. Alongside, the drinking homeless gather like greasy, injured birds. But this morning on the tube going to work, just when I thought this blog wasn't working - no one reads it, I wasn't brave enough to get into churches most of the time, this was no longer a church, unexpectedly this is what I read:
'In the early morning of the 17th many incendiaries dropped on and around the Christ Church, Victoria. Prompt action from wardens and other helpers extinguished most of these, and incidentally saved the tower- but above the altar there was fire on the roof that could not be reached. The Fire Service was summoned, with a call for high ladders. Meanwhile under the burning roof the heavy embers were falling , wardens - including women - risked themeselves to extricate the Bible and altar pieces. But by chance an ember dropped into an organ - setting up instantly a great blaze. Then the main roof caught fire. The Fire Service arrived and set to work at a height with one of their 100-foot turntable ladders - those extendable steel ladders complete with hose that are commonly called water towers'. For a time the sky above seemed quiet. Then the urgent spasmodic note of a Luftwaffe engine was heard, and a single plane circled above the church. It seemed to retreat, and then to come nosing back again. At last, as if scenting its chosen flower, it dived. A small high explosive came down to its horrid nest on the precarious water-tower reaching up towards it. One fireman was killed and five others received terrible injuries that resulted in death' 'The Blitz, Westminster at War.' William Sansom.
How terrifying - not just the bombing, but the circling, the coming back, the finishing of the job. Watching this happen. Feeling completely helpless.
Piecing things together I went to Westminster City Archive, just to see, just to start. I wanted to know who had lived in our flat. To find out about this place before it became our life. Coming out of the lift on the fifth floor, into a quiet room with sky lights, and view of Westminster rooftops tucked behind bookshelves. No food or drink. The peace of only pencils.
Holding my breath I turned the pages of the 1918 electoral register. It was the earliest they had. I had wanted to start at the beginning. But here, I feel like I am inviting unknown guests to live alongside us.
1918 Amy and Robert John Smith
1939 Vera May Smith and Richard Alfred Smith
1946 Harriet and Harry Powley
1949 Harriett and Harry Powley
Suddenly all of us jostling together, all of us trying to use the bathroom that probably did not exist. All of us calling this place home. But perhaps that is just what history is.
There have been a lot of discoveries, I am starting to become obsessed. Our street - ' Duck Lane ( now St. Matthew Street) was identified as one of the worst slum areas during the eighteenth century- named the ‘Devil’s Acre’ by Charles Dickens. Our block of flats built on that site 1885 (alongside another built in 1860), nearly the first social housing built in London (the world?) I keep thinking of the first tennants. How proud and pleased they must have been. Nearby - another garden, another park just near the boys schools with big gravestones stacked against a wall known as 'England's foulest graveyard.' Bodies looted, pistol armed guards stationed. Am I cramming too much information in here? I have started finding all this out and it is coming thick and fast.
But writing the names, sitting here in this solid walled, cleverly designed small flat, the living room tucked like a secret nest in the centre, doors opening all the way round so that it is possible to run either way shouting 'meet you there' as a game, I feel like I'm summoning something, some proprietorial eyes on this home I keep, some of the decisions I have made. These are people's relatives, people's friends. I sleep in their bedroom. I sit at this computer and write. I clean and clean and clean the same space they cleaned. Dust tucked in the same corners. It is a profound revelation to realise how safe they would think my life was. How easy. Though perhaps also how nonchalant of my safety I have acted, how careless I have been.
Did the Smith's keep the flat for generations - only to move out in or after the war? I don't know yet how to trace them but I would like to try. Another big bomb went off on our street,11th November just after 4pm a cold drizzly day, wiping out a printing works killing 25. The rescue operation took 4 days.
I buy a 1755 map of Westminster on my way out of the Archive Library. A copy of a beautiful hand inked drawing showing flourished curly writing and a large village clustered to the Thames. It cost £2.50. I have already maps from 1869, 1894, and 1916 but they look like the London we know. With no edges. But this map shows New Chapel at the edge of marshland at the border of etched human activity. Just round the corner from the workhouse. Human endeavour creeping on, building more, reclaiming the land.
At night when we sleep in this hot weather, marshland mosquitoes unheard, unknown bite our cheeks, and toes and ankles.
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