Patrick Comerford
During all the years I worked as a journalist with The Irish Times, I had many working visits to Fleet Street, when the London offices were based in the old PA Building at 85 Fleet Street, a building designed by the architect Sir Edwin Lutyens.
There were colleagues to meet from other newspapers too, and exchanges with the Guardian. In those days, liquid lunches were popular among journalists on the ‘Streets of Shame,’ and at a time when many journalists still worked on Fleet Street, Private Eye developed the character of Lunchtime O’Booze as the archetypal drunken journalist.
But all has changed in recent years, and DC Thomson journalists were the last on Fleet Street until they left in 2016.
During those working visits to Fleet Street, there were visits too to Saint Bride’s, the journalists’ church on Fleet Street, which also had a family link through a former rector, the Revd Edwards Comerford Hawkins (1827-1906), father of Anthony Hope, author of The Prisoner of Zenda. In the 1980s and 1990s, there were constant vigils in Saint Bride’s for John McCarthy, Terry Anderson and other journalists held hostage in Lebanon.
Yet, until last week, I had never visited the Guild Church of Saint Dunstan-in-the-West, next door to the former DC Thompson building on Fleet Street. The church has links with the media barons Lord Rothermere and Lord Northcliffe, who were brothers, and Lord Camrose, and it appeared as the ‘journalists’ church’ in the 2018 TV series Press. But Saint Bride’s, not Saint Dunstan’s, has always been the real journalists’ church on Fleet Street.
Saint Bride’s and Saint Dunstan’s are two of the remaining constants on Fleet Street, reminders of what this street was in the past. Saint Dunstan-in-the-West is impressive inside, with an octagonal nave that creates the impression of a round church. However, this is not the original church, and it was built in the 1830s to designs by John Shaw to replace an earlier mediaeval church demolished to allow for a 19th century street widening programme.
Saint Dunstan-in-the-West is dedicated to Saint Dunstan, one of the most venerated saints in England before the cult of Saint Thomas Becket became popular. He was born in 909 and was taught by Irish monks at Glastonbury Abbey, Somerset. He became Abbot of Glastonbury in 945, and was Bishop of Worcester and then Bishop of London before becoming Archbishop of Canterbury in 960. When he died in 988, he was buried at Canterbury Cathedral.
The Church of Saint Dunstan-in-the-West is first mentioned in written records in 1185, but there is no evidence of the date of its original foundation. Some accounts say it was built by Saint Dunstan or by priests who knew him well. Others suggest a foundation date between 988, when he died, and 1070.
It could be that a church on this site was one of the churches of the Anglo-Saxon settlement of Lundenwic, such as Saint Martin within Ludgate, Saint Martin in the Fields, the first Saint Mary le Strand, Saint Clement Danes and Saint Bride’s, which may pre-date any churches within the walls of the City of London.
King Henry III gained possession of site of Saint Dunstan’s and its endowments from Westminster Abbey by 1237. He then granted them to the Domus Conversorum (‘House of the Converts’) in Chancery Lane, housing converted Jews. This led to neglect of the parochial responsibilities of the church until a separate rector was appointed in 1317.
William Tyndale (1494-1526), an early translator of the Bible into English, was a lecturer at the church. The priest-poet John Donne (1572-1631) was the vicar (1624-1631) while he was also Dean of Saint Paul’s (1621-1631), and preached in the church.
George Calvert, Lord Baltimore, who founded Maryland, was buried in the church in 1632, as was his son.
The church narrowly escaped the Great Fire of London in 1666. In the middle of the night, the Dean of Westminster, John Dolben, woke up 40 schoolboys from Westminster School to form a fire brigade that extinguished the flames with buckets of water. The flames reached a point three doors away.
Samuel Pepys mentions the church in his diary and was a regular worshipper. Izaak Walton (1593-1683), author of the Compleat Angler and biographer of John Donne, George Herbert and Richard Hooker, was a sidesman.
The mediaeval church underwent many alterations over time. Small shops were built against its walls, and the churchyard became a centre for bookselling and publishing: John Milton found a publisher there for Paradise Lost in 1667.
Later repairs were carried out in an Italianate style. Rusticated stonework was used, and some of the Gothic windows were replaced with round-headed ones. The old vaulted roof was replaced in 1701 with a flat ceiling, ornamented with recessed panels.
The London clockmaker and watchmaker Charles Gretton was a churchwarden and was buried there in 1731. The church has a bronze memorial plaque for Thomas Mudge (171516-1794), inventor of the lever escapement and watchmaker to George III.
The mediaeval church was spilling onto what is now the tarmac of Fleet Street, and was removed to allow the widening of Fleet Street in the early 19th century, when a new church was built on its burial ground. An Act of Parliament in 1829 authorised the demolition of the church, and some of the materials of the old church were auctioned off in December 1829 and September 1830.
The new building was designed by John Shaw Sr (1776-1832). The first stone was laid in July 1831 and building went ahead proceeded rapidly. The last part of the old church, left as a screen between Fleet Street and the new work, was removed in August 1832.
Shaw handled the restricted site by designing a church with an octagonal central space. Seven of the eight sides open into arched recesses, the northern one containing the altar. The eighth side opens into a short corridor, leading beneath the organ to the lowest stage of the tower, which serves as an entrance porch. Shaw designed a clerestory above the recesses, with a groined ceiling above the clerestory.
The square tower has an octagonal lantern, resembling those at Saint Botolph’s Church, Boston, and Saint Helen’s Church, Stonegate, York. Shaw died in 1833, before the church was completed, leaving it in the hands of his son John Shaw jr (1803-1870).
The communion rail has survived from the old church. It was carved by Grinling Gibbons when John Donne was the vicar (1624-1631). Some of the monuments from the mediaeval building were kept in the new church, and a fragment of the old churchyard remains between Clifford’s Inn and Bream’s Buildings.
The church survived the London Blitz largely intact, though bombs damaged the open-work lantern tower and the church lost its stained glass. The church was damaged again on the night of 24-25 March 1944.
The church was designated a Grade I listed building in 1950, and it was largely restored that year, when the tower was rebuilt through the generosity of newspaper magnate William Ewart Berry (1879-1954), Viscount Camrose, proprietor and/or editor at various times of the Sunday Times, the Financial Times and the Daily Telegraph.
Saint Dunstan-in-the-West became a Guild Church in 1952, dedicating its ministry to the daytime working population around Fleet Street.
The chiming clock on the façade has figures of giants, said to represent Gog and Magog, who strike the bells with their clubs. It was installed on the previous church in 1671, and may have been commissioned to celebrate its escape during the Great Fire in 1666. It was the first public clock in London to have a minute hand. The figures of the two giants strike the hours and quarters, and turn their heads.
When the mediaeval church was demolished, the clock was removed in 1828 by the art collector Francis Seymour-Conway, 3rd Marquess of Hertford, to Winfield House, his mansion in Regent’s Park, which became known as Saint Dunstan’s. During World War I, Winfield House was a hostel for blinded soldiers, and the new charity took the name Saint Dunstan’s – now Blind Veterans UK.
The clock was returned to the church to mark the Silver Jubilee of King George V in 1935 by the press baron Harold Harmsworth, Lord Rothermere, brother of Alfred Harmsworth, Lord Northcliffe.
There are numerous literary references to the clock, including in Tom Brown’s Schooldays, the Vicar of Wakefield and a poem by William Cowper (1782).
The statue of Queen Elizabeth I above the entrance to the old parochial school in the courtyard is the only one known to have been carved during her reign.
The statue by William Kerwin dates from 1586 and is said to be the oldest outdoor statue in London. It was moved from the old Ludgate when it was demolished in 1760.
In the porch below are three statues of ancient Britons also from the old Ludgate, and said to represent King Lud, the mythical sovereign, and his two sons.
The wall of the church also has a memorial to Lord Northcliffe, co-founder of the Daily Mail and the Daily Mirror. The obelisk was designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens, with a bronze bust by Kathleen Scott, and was unveiled in 1930.
Next to Lord Northcliffe is a memorial tablet to James Louis Garvin (1868-1947) was a journalist, author and editor of The Observer (1908-1942).
Much of the internal fabric predates the rebuilding in the 1830s. The High Altar and reredos are Flemish woodwork dating from the 17th century, and many of the monuments have been retained from the original church.
The church is often associated with the legend of Sweeney Todd, the ‘demon-barber’ of Fleet Street. It was mentioned in the original ‘penny dreadful’, The String of Pearls. According to some sources, Sweeney Todd set up shop as a barber, tooth-puller and surgeon at 186 Fleet Street in 1785.
He is said to have murdered over 100 clients, selling their flesh to Margery Lovett who owned a pie shop in nearby in Bell Yard, and dumping the remnants of their victims in the church crypt.
The church has been associated with the Worshipful Company of Cordwainers (shoemakers) since the 15th century. Once a year the company holds a service in the church to commemorate two of its benefactors, John Fisher and Richard Minge.
The church also has a long association with C Hoare and Co, whose bank has stood facing the church from the other side of Fleet Street since 1690. The Hoare family donated the four-light stained glass window above the high altar and the carved canopies of the altar-piece. The window shows Archbishop Lanfranc, Saint Dunstan beside a roaring furnace into which he has thrust his pincers ready to pull a devil’s nose, Saint Anselm and Archbishop Langton with King John at the signing of Magna Carta.
Members of the Hoare family have been generous benefactors and many have been churchwardens over the centuries. Two have been Lord Mayors of London and a family vault still lies in the church crypt.
Saint Dunstan’s is also home to the Romanian Orthodox Church in London, and serves as Saint George’s Church. The chapel to the left of the main altar has beautiful iconostasis or icon screen, brought from Antim Monastery in Bucharest in 1966.
Behind the iconostasis, high on a wall, is a marble memorial tablet to the 17th century clockmaker Henry Jones (1634-1695), who worked in the Inner Temple, and his wife Hannah.
Saint Dunstan-in-the-West is home to the Anglican and Eastern Churches Association, and is a centre of prayer for Christian Unity. The side chapels contain altars dedicated to various traditions, including the Lutheran Church in Berlin (EKD), the Oriental Orthodox Churches (Armenian, Coptic, Ethiopian, Syrian, Syro-Indian), and a shrine of the Lutheran and Reformed Churches.
Saint Dunstan’s continues in its special role of promoting good relations with Churches outside the Anglican Communion, including through its role as the Diocese of London’s Church for Europe.
Meanwhile, any journalist feeling nostalgic about the ‘Old Fleet Street’ and its memories must be heartened by the news last week that the Tipperary, one of Fleet Street’s best-known and oldest pubs, is to reopen, after closing during the pandemic two years ago and never reopening. Save London Pubs, a social media campaign, reported last week that the Tipperary is to reopen after a refurbishment, with repairs to the exterior and interior, new seating, and work to preserve its old features.
• The Priest-in-Charge of , the Revd James Wilkinson, became Associate Vicar at Saint Andrew, Holborn Circus, last month. Mass is celebrated at 12.30 pm every Tuesday, and the church is open 10am-3pm Monday-Friday. Friends of the City Churches are there from 11am-3pm on Tuesdays to answer questions.
