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.