13 August 2022

Saint Dunstan in the East
has a new life as a green
oasis in the City of London

The Church of Saint Dunstan in the East is a tranquil oasis in the heart of the City of London (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2022)

Patrick Comerford

In the evening, the City of London becomes an oddly quite place, as the bankers and hedge fund dealers leaven and peace descends on the City. But even in the day, the bombed-out ruins of the church of Saint Dunstan in the East and its gardens provide a beautiful and tranquil oasis in the heart of the city.

Two of us spent a few hours in the City of London earlier this week, and I found time to visit a number of City churches, including the ruins of Saint Dunstan in the East and its hidden gardens, which remain unknown both to city workers and tourists seeking out the Tower of London and Tower Bridge, or views across the Thames to the South Bank and the Shard.

The Church of Saint Dunstan in the East is a 1,000-year-old ruin and a just stone’s throw from the Tower of London but it is not well-known to tourists and, unlike its famous neighbour, it has the allure of an undiscovered urban sanctuary.

The surviving tower and steeple were added in 1697-1699 to designs by Sir Christopher Wren (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2022)

The church was originally built ca 1100 and was named for Saint Dunstan, a tenth century monk who was Archbishop of Canterbury in 959-988. It was designated ‘in the East’ to distinguish it from Saint Dunstan in the West, in Fleet Street. A new south aisle was added in 1391.

A school attached to the church was recognised in 1466 it was recognised as one of the five grammar schools in London.

The church was repaired in 1631 at a cost of more than £2,400. But, like so much of the City, the church was severely damaged in the Great Fire of London in 1666.

Parts of the damaged church was rebuilt by Sir Christopher Wren in 1668-1671, and a new tower and steeple were added in 1697-1699 to designs by Sir Christopher Wren.

Wren’s tower was built in a Gothic style sympathetic to main body of the church, but with heavy string courses of a kind not used in the Middle Ages. The needle spire is carried on four flying buttresses similar to those of Saint Nicholas Cathedral in Newcastle.

The restored church had wooden carvings by Grinling Gibbons and an organ by Father Smith.

The church was severely damaged in the Blitz in 1941 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2022)

In 1817, it was found that the weight of the nave roof had thrust the walls seven inches out of the perpendicular. It was decided to rebuild the church from the level of the arches, but the state of the structure proved so bad that the whole building was taken down.

The Father Smith organ was moved to Saint Alban’s Abbey, and the church was rebuilt to a design in the perpendicular style by David Laing, then architect to the Board of Customs, with the assistance of William Tite. Wren’s tower was retained in the new building.

The foundation stone was laid in November 1817 and the church re-opened for worship in January 1821. The new church was built of Portland stone, with a plaster lierne nave vault, it was 115 feet long and 65 feet wide and could accommodate between 600 and 700 people. The cost of the work was £36,000.

Later, Charles Dickens described Saint Dunstan in the East as his best-loved churchyard in London.

Saint Dunstan’s College, started by the church in 15th century, moved from the City in 1888 and was re-founded on a new site at Catford, in south-east London.

Saint Dunstan in the East is now a popular venue for parties, receptions and photoshoots (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2022)

During World War II, the church was severely damaged in the Blitz in 1941. Wren’s tower and steeple survived the bombing, and these, along with the north and south walls, are all that still stand today.

The ruin was designated a Grade I listed building in 4 1950. But, in the re-organisation of the Church of England in the Diocese of London after World War II, it was decided not to rebuild Saint Dunstan’s.

The City of London decided in 1967 to turn the ruins and the gardens into a public garden. A lawn and trees were planted in the ruins, with a low fountain in the middle of the nave, and the garden opened in 1971.

Today, trees grow through windows and vines wind themselves around the walls of Saint Dunstan in the East, while palm trees provide a curious tropical addition in this unusual green spot on a sun-kissed summer’s afternoon.

The parish is now combined with the Benefice of All Hallows by the Tower and occasional open-air services are held in the church, such as on Palm Sunday prior to a procession to All Hallows by the Tower along Saint Dunstan’s Hill and Great Tower Street.

The tower of Saint Dunstan’s now houses the All Hallows House Foundation, an independent educational charity that makes grants to benefit young people in the boroughs of Tower Hamlets and the City of London.

Saint Dunstan in the East has become a popular venue for parties and wedding receptions and a stunning spot for moody photoshoots.

• Saint Dunstan-in-the-East, Saint Dunstan’s Hill, London EC3R 5DD. Nearest stations: Tower Hill, Monument. Opening times: All year, daily, 8 am to 7 pm or dusk if earlier.

The City of London turned the ruins and the gardens into a public garden (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2022)

Praying with USPG and the hymns of
Vaughan Williams: Saturday 13 August 2022

Monk’s Gate … the West Sussex hamlet near Horsham where Vaughan Williams first heard the tune he used for Percy Dearmer’s rewriting of John Bunyan’s hymn (Photograph: Pete Chapman/Wikipedia)

Patrick Comerford

Today, the Calendar of Common Worship in the Church of England commemorates Jeremy Taylor, Bishop of Down and Connor, Teacher of the Faith (1667), with a Lesser Festival, and Florence Nightingale, Nurse, Social Reformer (1910), and Olivia Hill, Social Reformer (1912), with commemorations.

Before the day gets busy, I am taking some time this morning for reading, prayer and reflection.

This year marks the 150th anniversary of the composer Ralph Vaughan Williams, whose music is celebrated throughout this year’s Proms season. In my prayer diary for these weeks I am reflecting in these ways:

1, One of the readings for the morning;

2, Reflecting on a hymn or another piece of music by Vaughan Williams, often drawing, admittedly, on previous postings on the composer;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary, ‘Pray with the World Church.’

Jeremy Taylor … wrote about forgiveness as an essential part of Holy Living and Holy Dying

Jeremy Taylor (1613-1667) was born in Cambridge in 1613 and educated at Gonville and Caius College. He was ordained in 1633 and, as the Civil War got under way, he became a chaplain with the Royalist forces. He was captured and imprisoned briefly but after his release went to Wales, where the Earl of Carbery gave him refuge.

He wrote prolifically whilst there, notably The Rule and Exercise of Holy Living (1650) and of Holy Dying (1651). He went to Ireland in 1658 to lecture and two years later was made Bishop of Down and Connor. He found many of his clergy held to Presbyterianism and so ignored him; and the Roman Catholics rejected him as a Protestant. In turn, he treated both sides harshly.

His health was worn down by the protracted conflicts and he died on this day in 1667.

I was invited to preach on Jeremy Taylor at the Eucharist in the Chapel of Saint John the Baptist in Saint John’s Hospital without the Barrs, Lichfield, on 12 August 2009.

Jeremy Taylor, a leading Caroline Divine and Bishop of Down and Connor

Matthew 5: 17-20 (NRSVA):

[Jesus said:] 17 ‘Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfil. 18 For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished. 19 Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, will be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. 20 For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.’



Today’s reflection: ‘He who would Valiant be’

Ralph Vaughan Williams was the composer of symphonies, chamber music, opera, choral music, and film scores, a collector of English folk music and song. With Percy Dearmer, he co-edited the English Hymnal, in which he included many folk song arrangements as hymn tunes, and several of his own original compositions.

From Monday to Friday this week, I have been reflecting on the ‘Five Mystical Songs,’ composed by Vaughan Williams between 1906 and 1911and based on the poems by the 17th century Welsh-born English priest-poet George Herbert (1593-1633).

This morning [13 August 2022], I have chosen the hymn ‘He who would Valiant be’ also commonly known as ‘To be a Pilgrim,’ sung to the tune Monk’s Gate, which the New English Hymnal says was adapted from an old English folk song by Vaughan Williams. The words by Percy Dearmer (1867-1936) are a comprehensive reworking of an earlier, 17th century hymn by John Bunyan (1628-1688), the author of The Pilgrim’s Progress.

John Julian’s great Dictionary of Hymnody, revised in 1907, mentions Bunyan only to say that he did not write any hymns. This is Bunyan’s only known hymn and was first published in 1684 in Part 2 of The Pilgrim’s Progress. It recalls the words of Hebrews 11: 13: ‘… and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth.’

Bunyan’s words were modified extensively by Percy Dearmer for The English Hymnal (1906), with a new tune composed by Vaughan Williams, who used a traditional Sussex melody, ‘Monk’s Gate.’

This popular hymn tune is in 65 65 66 65, and it is the tune rather than the words that have made this hymn so memorable Edward Darling and Donald Davison, in their Companion to Church Hymnal, say it provides ‘a fine example of the use of syncopation and cross-rhythm in a hymn tune.’

Monk’s Gate is a hamlet in West Sussex, on the A281, 4.3 km south-east of Horsham. It was there in December 1904 that Vaughan Williams first heard the tune when he heard Harriet Verrall of Monk’s Gate singing the English folksong ‘Our Captain Calls All Hands.’ Harriet and Peter Verrall, who lived at Thrift Cottage, were also responsible for teaching Vaughan Williams the ‘Sussex Carol’ (‘On Christmas Night all Christians sing’) and the tune known as Sussex (‘Father, hear the prayer we offer’).

The song ‘Our Captain Calls All Hands’ tells of a woman deserted by her sailor lover:

How can you go abroad
fighting for strangers?
Why don’t you stay at home
free from all danger?
I will roll you in my arms,
my own dearest jewel,
So stay at home with me, love,
and don’t be cruel.


Vaughan Williams’s tune was published in the first edition of the English Hymnal in 1906.

Three years later, he heard the same tune being sung at Westhope, near Weobley, Herefordshire, by Ellen Powell with a folk song called ‘A Blacksmith Courted Me.’ This song has the same theme of love deserted:

A blacksmith courted me
Nine months and better
He fairly won my heart
Wrote me a letter.
With his hammer in his hand
He looked so clever
And if I was with my love
I would live forever …

Oh, witness have I none
Save God Almighty
And may he reward you well
For the slighting of me.
Her lips grew pale and wan
It made a poor heart tremble
To think she loved a one
And he proved deceitful …


This second song has been recorded by many of the folk rock bands that emerged from the late 1960s on. Steeleye Span lead off their first two studio albums Hark! The Village Wait (1970) and Please to See the King (1971) with different versions of the song as well as on several live albums. Planxty sing it on their first album Planxty (1973), and Pentangle on the album So Early in the Spring (1989). Maddy Prior of Steeleye Span also sings an a cappella version on her solo album Year (1993).

In the early 1970s, I was enjoying the music of English folk rock bands such as Steeleye Span, Pentangle, Fairport Convention, Lindisfarne and Jethro Thull. Their music provided an interesting bridge to the music of Vaughan Williams, which I was introduced to in rural Shropshire.

The adaptation of Monk’s Gate by Vaughan Williams brought new attention to Bunyan’s much-forgotten poem, which was hidden in the second part of The Pilgrim’s Progress. But the words sung to Monk’s Gate are no longer those penned by Bunyan, whose poem begins:

Who would true valour see,
  Let him come hither;
One here will constant be,
Come wind, come weather.


The version in the English Hymnal is the one rewritten by Percy Dearmer and begins:

He who would valiant be
’Gainst all disaster,
Let him in constancy
Follow the Master.


The Master, of course, is Christ, and Dearmer also introduced explicit references to the Lord and the Spirit, making a Trinitarian hymn of a poem that was written as an allegory and with lyrics that are only metaphorically Christian. But Dearmer also cut out Bunyan’s references to a lion, a hobgoblin and foul fiend.

Bunyan’s original was not commonly sung in churches, perhaps because of the references to ‘hobgoblin’ and ‘foul fiend.’ Some recent hymnbooks have returned to Bunyan’s original, including the Church of England’s Common Praise and the Church of Scotland’s Hymns of Glory, Songs of Praise, and it has been popular with English folk rock artists such as Maddy Prior and the Carnival Band.

The two versions of the hymn are included in the Irish Church Hymnal (No 662), which also uses the tune Monk’s Gate for Herbert O’Driscoll’s hymn ‘Who are we who stand and sing?’ (No 532).

‘To Be a Pilgrim’ is the school hymn for many schools throughout England, and is sung in several school films. In Lindsay Anderson’s film if.... (1968), it characterises the traditional religious education in English public schools in the 1960s. It is also sung again in a public school context in Clockwise (1986), starring John Cleese, who directs all of the members of the Headmasters’ Conference to stand and sing the hymn, as he often would with his own pupils.

This was one of the hymns chosen by Margaret Thatcher for her funeral in April 2013. But the hymn was also one of Tony Benn’s choices on BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs.

The hymn’s refrain ‘to be a pilgrim’ has entered common usage in the English language and has been used in the title of many books about pilgrimage.

From his childhood, Vaughan Williams had been attracted to the sturdy and simple prose of John Bunyan, with its sincerity and spiritual intensity. Vaughan Williams described his Pilgrim’s Progress as a ‘Morality’ rather than an opera, although he intended the work to be performed on stage rather than in a church or cathedral.

Vaughan Williams later made an opera of Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress, although he changed the hero’s name from Christian to Pilgrim. I shall return to Bunyan, Vaughan Williams, and The Pilgrim’s Progress when I invite you to listen with me to ‘The Song of the Tree of Life,’ a song from that opera.



‘He who would valiant be’

He who would valiant be
’Gainst all disaster,
Let him in constancy
Follow the Master.
There’s no discouragement
Shall make him once relent
His first avowed intent
To be a pilgrim.

Who so beset him round
With dismal stories
Do but themselves confound –
His strength the more is.
No foes shall stay his might;
Though he with giants fight,
He will make good his right
To be a pilgrim.

Since, Lord, thou dost defend
Us with thy Spirit,
We know we at the end,
Shall life inherit.
Then fancies flee away!
I’ll fear not what men say,
I’ll labour night and day
To be a pilgrim.



Today’s Prayer:

The Collect:

Holy and loving God,
you dwell in the human heart
and make us partakers of the divine nature
in Christ our great high priest:
help us who remember your servant Jeremy Taylor
to put our trust in your heavenly promises
and follow a holy life in virtue and true godliness;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Post Communion Prayer:

God of truth,
whose Wisdom set her table
and invited us to eat the bread and drink the wine
of the kingdom:
help us to lay aside all foolishness
and to live and walk in the way of insight,
that we may come with your servant Jeremy Taylor
to the eternal feast of heaven;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Saturday 13 August 2022:

The theme in the USPG prayer diary this week has been ‘International Youth Day.’ It was introduced on Sunday by Dorothy deGraft Johnson, a Law student from Ghana.

The USPG Prayer Diary invites us to pray today in these words:

Let us pray for ordinands of all ages. May they be supported at the beginning of their ministry.

Yesterday’s reflection

Continued tomorrow

Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org