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 Medieval lectern survived Great Fire & Luftwaffe
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"The Cathedral of Fleet Street"There are places where history passes by with a step as light as gossamer, leaving no trace. St. Bride's, 'the cathedral of Fleet Street', is not one of them. This site spans two thousand years' development of an island people - seven previous churches have occupied the site. Little of importance that has happened in England's story has not been echoed in St. Bride's. From the time when the Romans built here through the rise and fall of its seven previous churches, this place has been nationally, and indeed, internationally, involved. Celts, Romans, Angles, Saxons, Normans, so many peoples, made this place. Today, in the exchange of news, it is parish pump to the world. For seventeen years after a wartime bomb had left the church a smouldering shell, Fleet Street had only a makeshift in place of the church it had always called its own. But there was a dramatic reward for this deprivation. For restoration meant excavation and this gave the archaeologists, led by Professor W. F. Grimes, the chance to explore. As a result of their efforts nearly a thousand years were added to St. Bride's known history. In this place the Romans dug a ditch soon after they reached Londinium and it is now one of London's earliest known Roman remains. Here was a mysterious second century building, here was a Christian church fourteen centuries ago, here happened the miracle of the transformation of print from a medieval 'mistery' to a mind-moulding mass communicator, here grew up England's theatre, here congregated the English men of letters, here was fought the battle for freedom of speech, here nothing human has been alien and all that is divine has been cherished. Here, where so many generations have left a distinctive mark, is an epitome of the story of man and more especially of his growth as a creature who communicates. |
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