OLD LONDON CHURCHES

New Zealand Times, Volume LII, Issue 12151, 30 May 1925, Page 11

OLD LONDON CHURCHES

SCENE OF MANY FAMOUS EVENTS. Certain Londoners have been discuss* ing the demolition of the city churches of London, which mean churches in that small, chiefly business area, the “City” proper, says the New York “Times.” Some of these churches may be cracking, but others stand stoutly. Upon the eastern side of St. Paul’s churchyard, running parallel with Cannon street, is Watfing street, crowded most of the day with railway vans, motor trucks, and horse-driven drays. You are* almost bound, in passing one of these obstructing vehicles on the left side, to rub your coat against the blackened, ancient masonry of St. Faith and St. Augustine on the other 6ide. It is one of the oldest of the city churches. At a glance it does not look eoclesiastical, cheek by jowl with modern warehouses and offices of commerce, but when St. Faith’s was erected, it towered distinctively. Defoe and John Evelyn have left chronicle of pesilence and fire, and through these trying periods the value of St. Faith’s ministrations were inestimable. During the humid summer of 1665, when so few inhabitants walked abroad, the grass grew rank in the narrow cobbled streets, and every daymore houses were marked with the fatal red cross. The deep carts drew pathetic burdens of plague victims to the pits. One pit was as near as Moorgate, and St. Faith’s Church became an overcrowded hospital. Fire swept and plagued, a half-emptv city in the following year, but St. Faith’s survived. Sir Christopher Wren’s great achievement, St. Paul’s, was .built upon the ashes of the old cathedral. The massive structure is reported in danger from undermining, yet St. Faith’s, the chapel at ease, retains without a crack, its antique solidity