Another Story of St Martin's 

Compiled by David Wilson the story was read by Alison Du Cane and her husband Leslie at The Gateway Centre opening October 2010.

In the beginning, the City of London was founded on two hills, Corn Hill in the East and Ludgate Hill in the West.

So this was once London's outer limit.

Our church's west wall was part of the city wall of Roman and medieval London.

And beside the wall stood a great gateway, the Lud Gate, supposedly named after King Lud of the ancient Britons. This was the entrance to the City for rich and poor, commoners and kings.

When William Shakespeare had his winter theatre around the corner in Blackfriars, he wrote a play about King Lud's grandson making peace with Roman invaders. From Shakespeare's Cymbeline.

"I'll follow those that even now fled hence,
And on the gates of Lud's town set your heads......
Publish we this peace
to all our subjects. Set we forward, Let
A roman and a British ensign wave
friendly together: so through Lud's town march,
our peace we'll ratify, seal it with feasts."

Legend says there has been a church here since the 7th century, not long after the first St Paul's was built. According to a medieval chronicler, this church was founded to mark the death of the British king Cadwallo.

The chronicle said:

"His image was set upon a brazen horse above the west gate of London as a terror unto the Saxons. They did likewise build beneath it a church in honour of St Martin, wherein are divine services celebrated for him and the faithful departed."

The legend of a more famous king, Arthur, was reborn here. Above the Lud Gate was a debtors prison and in 1456 one of the inmates was an impoverished knight, Sir Thomas Malory, starting a long stretch in London's jails. It was here that he began the translations that became Le Mort d'Arthur, a bestseller published by William Caxton.

From the Winchester Manuscript of the Tale of King Arthur,

"For this was written by a knight prisoner Thomas Malleorre, that God send him good recovery I praye you all jentylmen and jentylwymen that redeth this book of Arthur and his knyghtes from the begynnyng to the endynge, praye for me that God send me good delyveraunce."

By now Ludgate was a centre of publishing, though not always successfully. In 1631, the entire print run of a new Bible had to be destroyed, and the publisher fined £300, simply because of a one word mistake.

They missed out the word NOT, from Thou shalt NOT commit adultery.

A vicar of St Martin's, Samuel Purchas, was one of England's first travel writers, whose works later inspired Coleridge's poem Kubla Khan. (Purchas was less poetic He wrote: "Here the Khan Kubla commanded a palace to be built, and a stately garden thereunto. And thus ten miles of fertile ground were inclosed within a wall).

The vicar became a friend of the Indian princess Pocahontas in the months when she was staying at an inn on Ludgate Hill. She had converted to Christianity and this was her nearest church.

Worshippers at the church also included Admiral William Penn, whose son founded Pennsylvania, and Samuel Pepys.

From Samuel Pepys diary, Easter Sunday 1661

In the morning towards my fathers, and by the way heard Mr Jacomb at Ludgate upon these words "Christ loved you and therefore let us love one another". and made a lazy sermon, like a Presbyterian. Then to my father's and dined there"

And then, disaster, the Great Fire of London, which destroyed St Paul's, St Martins and much of the old city.

From the diary of John Evelyn

September 4, 1666

"The burning still rages. I went now on horseback. All Fleet Street, old bailey, Ludgate Hill, Wattling streete now flaming and most of it reduced to ashes. The stones of St Paul's flew like grenades, the lead melting down the streetes in a stream, and the very pavements glowing with fiery redness."

September 7

I went this morning on foot as far as London bridge, thro the late Fleet Street, Ludgate Hill by St Pauls....with extraordinary difficulty, clambering over mountains of yet smoking rubbish and frequently mistaking where I was, the ground under my feet so hott as made me not only sweat but even burnt the soles of my shoes. I was infinitely concerned to find that godly church St Paul's now a sad ruin.

St Paul's rose again, and so did St Martin's at a cost of £5,378, designed by Sir Christopher Wren. One of Wren's favourite places to admire the building of St Paul's was from the balcony on the roof of this church, which was completed first.

From the diary of John Evelyn

December 5 1697

"Was the first day St Paul's had any service in it since it was consumed at the conflagration of the City. In the afternoon the presse of people was so great that I durst not venture and so heard a sermon at St Martin Ludgate. He was of the opinion that the day of judgement was so far from being a natural day but more likely to last 1,000 yeare. It was now exceeding cold and frosty"

In its time, Ludgate Hill has been a centre of publishing, medicine, shopping, the law, travel, entertainment and refreshment

Next door to this church in 1731 was opened the famous London coffee house, a centre for dissent and rumour. Among the customers were Ben Franklin and the bawdy young man about town James Boswell, who also had a serious side.

From Boswell's London journal, 15 may 1763

"I was in an excellent calm and serious mood. I attended divine service in Ludgate church with patience and satisfaction, and was much edified. I then dined."

It was the very next day that he had his first meeting with the great Dr Samuel Johnson and thus began one of the great literary partnerships.

All churches have their critics.

Sir Christopher Wren designed the narrow spire of our church as a contrast to emphasise the great dome of the cathedral But the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge said that it reminded him of an acquaintance who kept trying to interpret other people's views

"It's always getting in the way when you want to see St Paul's."

And Charles Dickens seems to have disliked our old church bells.

From Little Dorrit, 1857, chapter 3.

"It was a Sunday evening in London. Maddening church bells of all degrees of dissonance, sharp and flat, cracked and clear, fast and slow, made the brick and mortar echo. Mr Arthur Clenham sat in the window of the coffee house on Ludgate Hill, counting one of the neighbouring bells, making sentences and burdens of songs out of it in spite of himself, and wondering how many sick people it might be the death of in the course of a year. As the hour approached, its changes of measure made it more and more exasperating. At the quarter it went off into a condition of deadly lively importunity, urging the populace in a voluble manner to Come to church, Come to Church, Come to church! At the ten minutes, it slowly hammered They won't come, They won't come, They won't come. At the five minutes it shook every house in the neighbourhood for three hundred seconds, with one dismal swing per second.

"Thank Heaven!' said Clenham, when the hour struck and the bell stopped."

But often the bells rang for joy or honour.

Ludgate Hill has seen many of the great processions and royal pageants of British history. The procession to celebrate the defeat of the Spanish Armada, the celebration of the union of England and Scotland, the victories at Blenheim and the defeat of Napoleon.

And on this, the 70th anniversary year of the Blitz, we also remember that only a favourable wind gave this church a narrow escape from fires in the air raids of December 1940, when a great fire destroyed Paternoster Row and areas north and east of St Paul's.

This was the least damaged of all the City churches during the war, and it is still one of the best preserved of all Sir Christopher Wren's creations.

That's the history.

The future is up to us all.