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• Introduction
• St Bride
• Great Plague
• Great Fire
• Wren's Vision
• 29 Dec 1940
• Crypts
• Printing & the Press
• US connections

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


  

The Crypts

We are indeed fortunate that when the time came to rebuild St. Bride's after the war there was a band of visionaries, led by the then incumbent, Cyril Armitage, who ensured that Fleet Street should have a twentieth-century church worthy of its long history. But there is also another romance which must be recorded.

Medieval Chapel
The medieval Chapel
The ill wind of mass bombing was not without its good. When Wren designed his church he built it over the remains of the six previous churches thus forming extensive crypts. These were subsequently used for burials. But in 1854 London was ravaged by plague in which no fewer that 10,000 people died. Parliament accordingly ordained that there should be no more burials in the City of London. Since the crypts were no longer of very obvious use, the authorities of the day sealed them up and they had become less than a hazy memory. Everyone accepted that the history of St. Bride's had begun in the eleventh century. The need to investigate the foundations before the present church could be built led to the discovery of these crypts, thus adding more than a thousand years to the known history of the site.

Them bones, them bonesThis also resulted in St. Bride's having two almost unique series of human remains. These, which are not open to the public, include well over 200 skeletons which are identified in regard to their sex and age at the time of death and thus form a very important source of research into forensic and other forms of medicine. The other series which is estimated by some to include nearly seven thousand human remains, is in a medieval charnel house where all the bones are put in their categories, thigh bone with thigh bone and so on, and laid in chequer-board pattern. This is probably evidence of a land shortage in London even many centuries ago.

Throught the generosity of Sir Max Aitken, the crypts not only display all their ancient archaeological remains but also house a visual statement, designed by John Lansdell, of two thousand years of Church and community in Fleet Street.

The crypt plays a central role in worship at St Bride's: at 8.30am on Monday, Wednesday and Friday there is a service of Holy Communion, and on Tuesday and Thursday, morning prayer. On Sunday mornings it hosts our busy Sunday School.