Reflections on
St Bride's

Christopher McKane
Executive Editor
Times Newspapers

George Pitcher
Founding Partner of Luther Pendragon

Canon David Meara
Sermon at Marketor's Annual Service

Heart of Fleet Street

Since 1500, when the first Printing Press was brought to what is now the south east corner of St Bride's Churchyard, Fleet Street has represented the heart of the nation's printing industry and, for more than two hundred years, has been synonymous with the national press.

St Bride's Church, built by Sir Christopher Wren in the 1680s, is a Parish Church - its congregation numbers 150 or so on a Sunday morning and it is a lively mix of worship, music and tourism during the week. But its Parish is not defined simply by geography- its constituency is that of Fleet Street in its generic sense. Over the last twenty years, the press has dispersed north, south, east and west - to Wapping, Canary Wharf, the South Bank and Kensington. But Fleet Street, and St Bride's Church, remains at the heart. Indeed, our relationship with the press remains as strong as ever - weddings, baptisms and memorial services are, if anything, more frequent now. In 1998, Viscount Rothermere, owner of the Daily Mail and Evening Standard, lay in rest in our medieval chapel, ironically refurbished two years earlier thanks to a donation from the Daily Mail, after his death until his funeral was held in the church a few days later.

St Bride's also represents the worldwide communion - you may recall that a vigil was held for John McCarthy, Terry Anderson and other journalists held hostage in Lebanon in the eighties and early nineties. After four young Reuters journalists- one American, two Africans and one German - were hacked to death in Somalia in 1993, Reuters came to us as the church for journalists everywhere to put together a Service of Thanksgiving for their lives and work. The journalists' altar in the church's north aisle - where McCarthy's vigil was held arid where a plaque sits to commemorate those four men - is dedicated to those named and unnamed, renowned or otherwise, who have lost their lives in pursuit of bringing us the news.

Today's occupants of the newspaper buildings are lawyers, bankers and financiers but this has provided a further opportunity for St Bride's to promote its role as a community resource. Our annual EC4 Music concert comprises talented amateur singers and instrumentalists from firms in London EC4 who, perhaps potential professional musicians, have chosen another career path but who, nonetheless, keep honing their talents and showcase them for us. A thirty three year old merchant banker who died in a motor accident recently, was remembered by her colleagues in a special Service and, more happily, as many people who get married at St Bride's are working in the geographical parish as those working in the wider parish of "Fleet Street".