The musings of a singer and architectural boffin!
London at Christmas time can be very magical and Christmas itself, to me, has always been an enchanted time of year. I have never actually spent Christmas Eve or Day in London, apart from a very very late televised Midnight Mass once at St George's Cathedral Southwark which I'd got my Mother and Brother along to. They were happy that the service was nice and short with very little talking...that turned out to be just the congregational practice...oh dear! Anyhow, it is a wonderful time of year, and I am very lucky to spend most of it in such wonderful buildings.
The great early Nineteenth Century 'Commissioner's' Church St Luke's Chelsea
Since leaving school, now over a decade ago, I have sung in most of the great London churches. Those that are particularly special at Christmas to me are The Oratory Church, which is really London's answer to the great Baroque churches of Rome, though it is in itself a wonderful Victorian fake. I sang there every Christmas and throughout the year for six years until July this year, when the lay clerks were sadly dismissed. It really was like a home from home to me and the long corridors leading from the song school in to the cavern-like interior of the church are positively Vaticanal...if that is a word! It truly is a very wonderful place.
St James's Spanish Place is like a French cathedral plonked in the middle of Marylebone. The choir sings perched high above the arcades in a dark Victor Hugo-esque gallery and the organ is one of the best in London. I love the climb from the song school, deep in the crypt of the church, up to the triforium. The different vantage points to view the interior are endless. At night time the interior of St James's sparkles in gold, blue and red and the little Lady Chapel to the south of the apse is, in my humble opinion, one of the most perfect Victorian gothic spaces in London.
Marylebone's French Gothic Cathedral-like church of St James's Spanish Place
The great Baroque West Front of St Paul's
Self in the Martial Arts style robes of the Choir
The Nave full to the brim for Handel's Messiah
The Great East Window of Holy Trinity Sloane Square - one of the biggest windows in London
St Etheldreda's Ely Place is still officially part of Cambridgeshire, despite being slap bang in the middle of Holborn. The reason was that this was the chapel for the Bishop's of Ely's London palace. The chapel remains the chief example of a Mediaeval private chapel in London. The sombre glass, pious statues and the approach via a narrow corridor and stair make this a very secret and mysterious and beautiful place to sing in or visit.
The famous tower of Marylebone Parish Church with its gilded angels
The opera house-like interior
The church looking positively Venetian above the Christmas Market
The Vicar awaits the Bride...over half an hour late!
The Choir doing the same...
Westminster Abbey - I spend most of the time between singing in the services staring around me at the 104 foot high vaulting, the amazing stars carved in to the walls around the arcades, the mysterious spaces of the ambulatory and the gold and blue of the choir stalls. I never cease to be enthralled by the Abbey. The cloisters and the warren of buildings beyond them are a whole little World to themselves. It is ran like a wonderful ocean liner and it is always a privilege for me to 'Dep' there.
Hampstead's village-like Parish Church
London is famous for its contrasts. As we lost so much architecture during the Great Fire and the Wars, the Georgians, Victorians and later architects created for us an extremely varied Cityscape. One can walk along one road in the City and see from Norman right up to the present day. St Bartholomew-the -Great is an extraordinary, if not somewhat reconstructed, survival of the major portion of a great Monastery a stones throw from the financial centre of our great city. It has survived the Dissolution, bombings, bad City planners and even a factory being erected in the lady Chapel and remains a sacred, quiet spot amidst the the non-stop buzz of the City.
St Stephen Walbrook is a church of World importance for its architecture as it was the forerunner for Wren's great dome nearby at St Paul's. St Stephen's is one of the most perfect expressions of English Baroque architecture and can holds its own against any piece of church architecture on the Continent. The acoustic is divine to sing in and the light and plain way the interior has been restored lets the sublime architecture speak clearly for itself.
The Dome
Some early Nineteenth Century gothic wallpaper in the Vestry at St Luke's Chelsea
I am constantly deeply humbled and honoured to be able to sing in these beautiful buildings at Christmas time, when the City comes to life in laughter and light. Christmas will always be magical for me!
A bit about some British architecture:-
All images in this blog are under the copyright ownership of Oliver Gerrish
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