….one in a taxi, one in a car

Funny how things come back to you years and years after the event. The title comes from something we used to sing at school when it came to carol concerts at Christmas to the tune of “We three Kings“. Rather unseasonal I know given the abundance of Easter bunnies, but I thought it a better title than, “Things I’ve failed to notice while slepping round London No.156“.

The reason for this nostalgia comes from a visit I undertook last week. I’m currently working on a self guided audio tour of City of London churches. This can be filed in the “bitten off more than you can chew” draw, how many churches does one city need? Anyway, I was making an exploratory visit to see which was the best route to take and due to travel arrangements I alighted at Southwark station.

You may possibly think Southwark located on the south bank of the Thames is not in the City of London, well that’s not strictly true, a very small part of it is. The limits of the City are designated in places by Dragon statues and the one on Blackfriars is actually on the Southwark side, giving the little demarcated enclave to the control of the City authorities. I knew this fact, but as I travelled up by train a little voice in my head started whispering about Liberties and areas of ecclesiastical control. Were any of the churches close to the boundary under the auspices of the City in the past? I decided not to waste time trying to find the answer while on the hoof and as I was walking past Christ Church to get to the bridge thought it a better idea to drop in and have a look around just on the off chance that I’d have to include it.

I must have passed the outside the church about half a dozen times over the years. The most recent was last year while doing the leg work for a tour of Southwark that I was starting to write. It was a brief visit, I hadn’t planned it into the route and it was more of a passing impulse. I hadn’t read up on it and as I approached it’s austere 1950s Anglican facade I wasn’t filled with curiosity.

Finding that it was closed, I did a quick about turn and never bothered to look up it’s history, assuming, wrongly that it was just another modern church that had been erected to serve the parishioners of the nearby Nelson Square housing estate that was built around the same time. Do you know that saying, “To assume is to make an ass out of you and me“

Now, entering through the open door confirmed my suspicions and prejudice, the interior was a bland homage to Festival of Britain modernity with echos of medieval design including an arched side isle in the nave that made me think of Toy Town. Also, why was there a black and white photo of Wall Street behind the Alter?

Having uttered a very quiet and respectful, “Muh” I was about to turn round and leave when a shaft of sunlight streaming through one of the side windows stopped me in it’s tracks. The one thing about stained glass windows is that they don’t work well the other way around, that is standing outside on a sunny day looking inwards to the dark recesses of a church. What I hadn’t seen on my previous short visit was the stained glass that adorned the windows.

Obviously they’re not as old as say the windows of Westminster Abbey, but I have to say they are amongst the most beautiful I’ve seen in the capital. They depict Southwark life around the late 1950s. In the era when we still made things in this country, Southwark was filled with small manufacturing concerns and this is recorded in one of the windows. A supervisor holding a plan and callipers oversees a worker at a milling machine, representing engineering. Underneath two men manufacturing a crankshaft on a lathe.

The modern office gets a nod with a rather dictatorial fellow towering over a hard working secretary. “I’m just orf for a two hour lunch, make sure it’s finished by my return Miss Jones”. I did wonder if the hand in the pocket was inappropriate behavior in the workplace, luckily no bolt of lightening struck me down. The bottom panel made me smile as I had passed several open plan offices on the way there all crammed with regimented “Workstations”, not desks, each with three or four computer screens and a legion of drones sitting vacantly in front of each one. Some of the workers on the panel look like they’re in need of Mrs Scroggins with her tea trolley.

Southwark’s links with power generation are commemorated with a boiler suited chap steadfastly regarding a bunch of dials and below the iconic Bankside Power Station, now the Tate Modern. At the time of the window’s commission the Bankside B as it was officially termed was belting out 657 GWh. A Gigawatt hour (GWh) is enough power to serve anywhere between 750 thousand to a million homes.

There are many other windows depicting Southwark industry and also it’s links with business in the form of what you might term stained glass adverts.

However, it was the final window that gave me the idea for this piece. It depicts everyday life in Southwark.

For some reason it reminded me of the three wise men following the star to the manger in Bethlehem. For the wise men substitute three (wise I’m sure) Ladies out shopping, the scrollwork for the star and the bus for the manger. It was then that the remembered change of lyrics from schooldays came flooding back, and unfortunately stayed with me for some time. Sometimes I do worry about how my brain works!

• I later found out that the image of Wall Street behind the altar was the backdrop to a play. It was originally made for a National Theatre production; ‘New Regime’ in 1989.