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The Rector's July 2010 Newsletter
28-Jun-10
On a Sunday in July 1795, a curate of St Giles noted that he had ‘performed the following duties – In the morning married six couples, then read the whole prayers [which meant Morning Prayer, the Litany, and the Holy Communion Service as far as the end of the Prayer for the Whole State of Christ’s Church] and preached, and after that churched six women. In the afternoon read prayers [Evening Prayer] and preached; christened thirty-two children – six at home and the rest at the font. Buried thirteen corpses, and read the service over each one separately, and this done by 9 o’clock at night’. It is difficult to imagine the teaming world of St Giles two hundred and fifteen years ago, with densely packed houses and courts, populated by some of the poorest people in London, and no doubt with many people eking out a living on the streets. People must have queued up to get married, to have their children baptised, and to be buried in the Churchyard. The entries in our baptism, marriage and burial registers support this information. There were multiple entries for almost every day of the week. There was no need for the clergy to wonder how to occupy their time.
Until the 1860s or so St Giles continued to be an area crowded by the very poor, and the clergy of the parish church struggled to meet the very basic human and spiritual needs of the inhabitants, but even with nine curates, and four new daughter churches acquired or built in the parish their resources were very stretched. From the 1860s or so, like the City and most of Central London, the population began to decline, as the area began to be cleared by building wide new streets, like New Oxford Street, Charing Cross Road, Shaftesbury Avenue and Kingsway, which were intended to let light and air into the fetid alleys and courts of St Giles, with no provision for where the very poor went. Central government only began to be concerned for housing for the very poor in the 1880s, often at the instigation of clergy and some church people, like Octavia Hill, who was not merely one of the founders of the National Trust, but was also a driving force for providing housing for the poor, and parks for their children to have somewhere to benefit from fresh air and to play She persuaded the Ecclesiastical Commissioners (now Church Commissioners) to provide flats for the poor, and lobbied and persuaded governments to enable local authorities to build housing for poor people. By the end of the nineteenth century most of the very poor had been dispersed from St Giles.
By the time of the arrival of a new Rector in 1949 the population had dropped to about a twentieth of what it had been a hundred years before. The new Rector’s wife recalled there were only twelve people in church on their first Sunday. The Rector himself, now, having dismissed the curate, alone in the parish wondered whether there were any St Giles people and whether there was going to be anyone around to receive his ministry. The area had changed dramatically. Warehouses, factories and offices had replaced the teeming slums, and relatively few people lived in St Giles.
But the parish church had endured, although daughter churches to serve the growing population had come, and gone with the declining population. The context had changed but a mission base from which to bear witness to God’s abiding love, and a focus of prayer for the teeming poor, as well as the rich in Bedford Square, survived radical change to the urban wasteland of St Giles in the 1950s and ‘60s. It still survives in the continuing changes of the 2010s, with far more people frequenting the area again, and people moving into the new flats in Central St Giles. The urgency of pastoral care and spiritual support that was required in 1795 was much less obvious in 1949, and is perhaps even less so now, but we, as the Church of God survive at St Giles, as stewards of the mysteries of God, to make known the reality of God’s love, in ways appropriate to the changing context, and to continue to praise God, and bring before God the needs of his creation here in St Giles.
Bill Jacob
SPECIAL COLLECTIONS
On Sunday, 6th June 2010 £689.44 was raised to support Isaac in school in Uganda. On Sunday 4th July, the collections will be donated to The Passage, a charity working with homeless people nr Victoria station, and the special charity which we are supporting for six of our monthly collections this year. www.passage.org.uk
LICENSING OF ALAN CARR AS ASSOCIATE RECTOR
On Sunday, 5th September 2010 at 6.00 pm there will be a special service of Choral Evensong during which the Revd Alan Carr will be licensed as Associate Rector by the Bishop of London. There will be a reception following the service to which all are invited. To assist catering if you are attending please let Mark the verger know on 020 7240 2532.
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