Lunch with Nigel without his photo.

I arrived a bit early at Caffe Nero and grabbed a coffee and a table and waited for my good friend Nigel to arrive for an afternoon chat session. Nigel had been away on holiday with his family and I waiting to hear all the news of time spent with his lovely wife Gwynne, two sons and daughters-in-law and four grandchildren who he and Gwynne love spending time with. While waiting for him, I took this picture and sent it to him and to keep as a memento of the first cay of what has become a week of summer weather for the beginning of September in London. We had a great afternoon solving the world’s problems. It ended with us sharing a good walk to the Tottenham Court Tube Station where he started his journey home.

Searches for Churches (aka “At least I’m Getting My Steps In”)

My plan was to start with a chapel and a church, easy peasy, as one of my NRC colleagues used to say. So, I loaded the Google Maps directions into trusty phone and headed off to find “The Chapel,” somewhere in Fitzrovia, a neighborhood bordering my own Bloomsbury. It was the first day of London’s September 2023 heatwave and I must admit to being quite disappointed to arrive at the interesting sounding address of 1 Old Buildings, London and not finding a chapel, but finding a Territorial Army (equivalent to the Reserves in the US) with a locked gate. See below. After circling the block, a few times, I did find an

an entrance to a hidden internal courtyard that led me to “Lincoln’s Inn Chapel,” a rather elaborate two story building that I believe I have visited before. It has a lower level which is open with an interesting vaulted ceiling and stairways on either side that lead to massive doors that were locked because the chapel is temporarily closed. I assume the good lawyers of Lincoln’s Inn do not need the Lord’s guidance at this particular time of year. Here are a few images of the parts I could see.

So, with one down, I figured I would head back up to Bloomsbury and check out Saint George the Martyr Anglican Church on Queen Square. I figured since it was right near a hospital, it had to be open in case people wanted to go over and “storm the heavens,” as my mother used to say. Well, mom, if you were still with us in this vail of tears, you would have been as disappointed as I was to find St. George’s doors padlocked too. But here is a picture of it, in case you are ever in the neighborhood of Queen’s Square.

Another Day, and More Church and Chapel Adventures.

I was on a roll now and decided that, since it was the one day of the week that the “Middlesex Hospital Chapel,” now formally know as the Fitzrovia Chapel, was open to the public, I would visit it and another church that was in the area. My friend Ellain had told me about this chapel that was designed by John Loughborough Pearson as the chapel for the Middlesex Hospital complex which formerly stood on the site where the chapel, a grade II listed building now is the only remaining part, having survived the demolition of the hospital and the redevelopment of the site. The chapel is built in1891-92 in a Gothic Revival style architecture. It originally stood in a courtyard of the hospital complex and still does stand in the courtyard of the new development. As you will see from the pictures, I hope, the interior is quite ornate and beautiful. The onsite literature notes that the chapel was never formally consecrated, yet it has a stunning baptismal font, made of a single piece of marble. And its altar area includes two items associated strongly with Roman Catholic liturgies, a tabernacle for reserving consecrated hosts and a sink (presumably going directly into the ground) for rinsing any vessel that contained the remains of the consecrated bread or wine. I hope to dig further into this anomaly. The chapel’s current charitable foundation owners call it a secular chapel for non-religious ceremonies.

After the chapel visit, I had a very short walk to find the next church on my list to All Saints Church on Margaret Street, but, unfortunately, both church and chapel were locked up tight!

I took the hint and headed back up to Bloomsbury for some tea and sympathy from my friends at Caffe Tropea.

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