Day 30: London Day 2 - edited

Day 30:    London Day 2      Sunday  January 9^th

Our Sunday started with morning service at St Paul’s cathedral, the church in which Charles and Diana were married.  They have a strictly no sightseeing policy on Sundays (so no photography either) but they welcome people to worship there.  The congregation was large – five or six hundred.  Wardens in red vests and tailed coats wandered around the edge of the congregation during the whole service  -probably checking that noone was elicitly photographing or videoing.   Thanks to the swivel screen on my camera, I was able to take a few elicit shots before the service but I didn’t dare to do so during it. 

It was a sung Eucharist with an all male choir, complete with a couple of counter tenors,  doing most of the singing. There were two organs used for various parts of the service – one with five keyboards and lots of pipes and the other a smaller pipe with only one or two keyboards.  (Roger thinks it may have been electronic but it sounded very much like a pipe organ.)   The acoustics are not fabulous – with so much marble in a largely empty cathedral, there was lots of echo.  Also, the organ had a very long delay on it – the organist told Roger that it has a ten second delay!  (All of these are details mainly for Warrick.)  All in all, it was a great experience to be at St Paul’s for a service.

Yesterday on the bus tour we had passed The Monument, a huge tower which Charles 11 had erected to commemorate  the Great Fire of London in 1666.   Like St Paul’s cathedral and many many other buildings in London, the architect was Sir Christopher Wren.  The top of the tower  is a copper vase with ‘flames’ coming from it, but otherwise the tower is unadorned apart from fluting.  If laid on its side, the tower would reach the exact spot where stood the bakery which was the origin of the fire.  The fire, which burned for three days,  destroyed more than 13,000 houses and destroyed vast areas of the city of London including 89 churches (the original St Paul’s cathedral being one of them), hospitals,schools and other public buildings .   Incidentally, it also killed millions of rats, so ending the Great Plague.  By some miracle, according to the engraved information on the side of the tower, no lives were lost. 

King Charles 11, who, if I remember my history correctly, was a very extravagant and self- gratifying king, had this magnificent memorial erected and at the time it was the tallest structure in England.  He also seized the opportunity to have the city rebuilt along more structured lines with wider streets, more substantial houses etc.  So all in all, the Great Fire had a huge effect on London of the day as well as on London as it currently stands.

The Monument has an internal spiral staircase of 311 steps.  We saw that as a challenge and up we went, having great views over the city.

Then it was back onto our bus, which has a live guide on it rather than just an audio as many of the buses do, to Trafalgar Square.   From there we walked down to the Houses of Parliament, past Downing St.  When Roger ventured to ask one of the policemen on duty at the gates across the end of street, which one was No 10, he kindly saw a need to open the gates, just long enough for me to get a quick photo.  From the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben, we made the short walk across the road and around to the front of Westminster Cathedral, where William and Kate will be married.  Unfortunately we were not able to see inside the cathedral but in fast fading light, I was able to get some rather nice shots of the outside. 

We had hoped to see ‘The King’s Speech’ but once we got to the the cinema at Picadilly, we found it was not screening again until 8.15.  It was only 6pm, very cold and dark and we have a very eary start tomorrow, so we will have to see the movie another time.