Orange Street Congregational Church

Standing trying to shelter from the thin, cold rain in a narrow patch of dry pavement with the puffed-up, dirty pigeons opposite the Orange Street Congregational Church I text my friend to say I wish I was a normal person. She replies she is about to go into her dark cupboard under the stairs and she wishes she was a normal person too. And ps. her girlfriend has gone to TK Maxx. And despite our wishes I think we are both relieved that we are not there.

The boys are away with exexdh and his mum and I feel like an outsider within the day.

It is Remembrance Sunday and I have walked up and past the cenotaph. Stood silent wearing my poppy near Westminster tube. Hurrying, trying to get nearer to the war memorial as Big Ben started chiming 11am, a women's cockney voice came out of a souvenir stall saying 'stand still'. I did. Looking up to Westminster Abbey's rooves and thinking about the bombs raining down. Gathered crowds stood quiet. There is something really powerful to the collective silence. Though I wonder if it is possible to record all the inane thoughts in those few minutes. I find my mind wandering to baking bread and X factor. Then as the silence is coming to an end a South American lady asks me 'Can you tell me what is going on?' I shake my head. She stands, her head on one side, puzzled, staring into my mute face. Finally people begin to pull themselves out of the stillness and I say and my voice seems really loud 'It is the Remembrance Day silence.'
Then because all the roads are blocked off I weave up behind the Ministry of Defense, through narrow streets I have never been before. Over Trafalgar Square. Under the ship in the bottle sculpture on the fouth plinth. Did you ever see the Mark Wallinger Ecce Homo 1999? It was the most beautiful thing. A life sized christ on the plinth, naked apart from a loin cloth and a crown of thorns, his hands tied. Made tiny by the scale of everything surrounding. A vulnerable human standing still and quiet. I have a little picture of it in my bedroom.
'I wanted to show him as an ordinary human being.' Mark Wallinger said.

I think Mark Wallinger is my celebrity crush. (You see perhaps how ill suited I am to work on a celebrity magazine?) I love the humour and humanity to his work. I met him years ago on a Lord Snowdon photo shoot. Should I say well known royal photographer? I'm not sure. I used to work for a Sunday supplement that used Lord Snowdon a lot. It was my job (among other things) to help get the props, help the shoots run smoothly. Snowdon wanted a life sized model of a horse for this shoot. Though I've just remembered he insisted everyone call them 'sittings'. This was before the internet and I remember phoning round every prop house, every lead I had for a horse model. I think it was probably two days work before, just in the nick of time I secured one, arranged for it to be delivered to the studio.
It was around the time of the deterioration of my relationship with U,OL. He was going to Russia. I wanted to get married. Like magnets repelling both desires could not meet. Now I think how young I was, and how silly. But the night before the Mark Wallinger shoot we split up. Finally honest with each other, almost close again as we agreed to part, but we could not sleep, both weeping throughout the night. But a car was booked to take me to the shoot in the morning (I can't remember why - but at this time, with this magazine though not paid very well there were these grand gestures.) and I leave, still weeping. Though this wasn't in fact the end. I think there was another couple of tries before he finally left for Russia.
Anyhow, red eyed and exhausted I arrive at the studio. The huge plastic moulded horse is there. Snowdon is making asides about Mark Wallinger behind his back, saying he is a bit stiff and his paintings are boring, then he decides after a few shots of the artist in jockey silks with the horse that he wants to try the shoot outside. I have one of those out of body moments as I carry a surprisingly light, life sized model of a horse over a zebra crossing, followed by Snowdon limping and Mark Wallinger in jockey gear, my heart broken. When the shoot finishes Mark offers me a lift back to the office, but the few hours of smiling and charm, have been enough for me and I want to have a good cry on the tube before getting back to work. At that point, I don't really like his paintings either. I find them a bit stiff. So I say, no thank you, it will be quicker on the tube. Now I wonder what we would have talked about. Strangely, I imagine him offering me a boiled sweet.

Today, turning the corner into Orange Street the lights are on within the small church and a sign above the door is lit up. Good. I think. It is another old fashioned, smelly looking church, though the building is beautiful, a simple, white, low, one storey chapel. Outside there is a plaque that details the history of the site as a huguenot chapel built in 1686. There are also glass covered notice boards with long tracts about the state of the world and the state of the United Reformed church and some signs of notice of service in chinese. The second coming of Christ is imminent it says and we must repent. I open the door and stand in the narrow porch I can hear the sermon, an angry voice talking about peace. It is a little bit musty smelling but not too bad. I wait there wondering what to do. I can't march in while the service is taking place, so I decide to wait outside and watch for people coming out of the service and then hope I can slip in.

I feel like a private detective standing on the corner, by the back door of the National Gallery in the drizzle waiting. Cold, I walk round the block a few times, up into Leicester Square and back round. I am standing there for about an hour, and when I hear music straining out of the building I think oh good they are nearly finished. But still no one comes out. Then a chinese woman goes in through the door, dithers in the porch and enters. I am so cold I follow her. Though I can hear organ music playing and I am still worried that I am bursting in on something. 'Would it be possible just to have a quick look at the church?' I say smiling. Strangely the tiny church is empty, neat dark pews in rows, only a man, his face hidden behind a curtain playing the organ. Where did they go? I think. But perhaps I missed the congregation leaving when I went round the block. Or maybe there hadn't been a congregation and the man behind the curtain had been shouting about peace on his own.

The walls are bright orange red, and the organ at the end is ornate. I like the simpleness of the space, the old fashioned scrub of it. Though when I look on the internet there are homophobic rants that make my skin crawl. There is a very precise mind working away patching the bible to our world. Another tract which I barely understand is about the israelites, and their ancestors, including the royal family.

The chinese woman who I followed welcomes me kindly but suspiciously. Did I read about the church in a tourist guide? She asks. I say no, I live near here. There is about to be a chinese service she says, the organ still playing, the man covered by the curtain, but if I want to come again, I should come come at 11am on a sunday. Is there a leaflet I could have, I ask but she says no. Though on a revolving stand there are a lot of booklets to buy.

The original Huguenot church was called the Temple of Leicester Fields because it was then, as described before in the St Martins in the Field blog, a place only of fields. Huguenots were the french protestants, who escaped persecution by the Roman Catholics after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685 which had given them religious freedom. Many went to Holland, some to South Africa, even America, and here, thousands to England - in this area and also Spitalfields. They were skilled people, noblemen, intellectuals and craftsmen bringing silk weaving to London. That original church was much bigger than the tiny chapel now. Also I remember looking at old pictures for St Martins in the Fields and realising that this place was initially only the outskirts, along the route between the city and Westminster, a place where religious freedom could be practised, new communities could be built. Sir Isaac Newton lived in the house adjacent and owned by the church. I just looked it up to find out Newton moved to London in 1696, and that he was an MP and also the warden of the Royal Mint. All that and a physicist, mathematician, philosopher, astronomer and theologian. Now I have just found an inventory of everything in this house (even though he wasn't living in it) when he died.

http://www.isaacnewton.org.uk/ntheman/NTMinv

how completely fascinating - a description of a man by his things - his feather bolsters, his sword, forty articles in Dutch.

At the time of the Wesley's the church passed from French protestantism to English protestantism, and the hymn written by the then minister Toplady 'Rock of Ages' was first sung here. In 1787 badly in need of repair it closed, and then passed from the Church of England to the Non Conformists becoming a Congregationalist Church. Just before WW1 Westminster council passed a demolition order first on the church and then on Newton's house. The congregationalists led a nomadic life until 1925 when the council leased most of the site for a library and a temporary chapel was built, the building that still stands.


Walking home, there are old soldiers everywhere and it is really raining. Outside a pub I see two pearly kings drinking with a Chelsea Pensioner. My umbrella is broken and I stop and buy a 'I love London' brolly. It makes me happy.


Amen