St Brides of Fleet Street is an Anglican church in London. It is just the latest of a line of at least seven churches to stand on this site.

The first church was dedicated to St Bridget or St Bride of Kildare in the 6th century.

The Norman church, built in the 11th century, was quite famous. The King’s Court convened here in 1205 and King John held a parliament at the location in 1210.

St Brides connection to the print community goes back to the 1500s when Wynkyn de Worde brought the first movable-type press to Britain and set it up in a shop located on the churchyard. Soon everyone from clergy to playwrights flocked to his shop, and the press soon established their traditional home at Fleet Street. By this time, the church had been replaced by an even larger one, but it all burned to the ground in the Great Fire of 1666.

The current church was designed by Sir Christopher Wren in 1672 and built over 7 years out of Portland stone. The eye-catching spire was added in 1701-1703 and was originally 234 feet; it lost 8 feet during a lightning strike. The spire is a series of tiers and according to legend it was the inspiration for a Fleet Street baker to make the tiered cake which has now become the traditional style for wedding cakes.

The London Blitz in 1940 was devastating to St Brides; the church was gutted by a fire bomb, leaving only the shell and the steeple intact.

Rebuilding efforts had to wait until after the war and the archaeological excavation of the foundations in 1953 led to the discovery of the crypt areas and the foundations of the previous churches. It also led to the curious discovery of mass graves within the crypts, believed to be from the London Plague of 1665 and the Cholera Epidemic of 1854.

The church was rebuilt following Wren’s original plan faithfully with none of the extra which had been put on over the years, so that the church standing today is actually more in keeping with his vision than the one that was bombed in 1940.

St Brides is a true landmark piece of London history.

Visiting St Brides Fleet Street

Fleet Street, City, EC4Y 8AU

Telephone: 020 7427 0133

Email info@stbrides.com

Photo courtesy: stevecadman

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