The new Springsteen "Devils and Dust" the background soundtrack to another rambling preparation for another day of tourism. First stop today was a return to St Martin In The Fields in Trafalgar Square for the free guided tour, my last chance while in London this time. There were supposed to be eight of us based on bookings, but in the end it was the guide and I, and I got a one-to-one tour of the place, for an hour, for free. Can't do better than that! The Site began its religious life as a daytime place of prayer for working monks in the fields thereabouts to save them having to trek back down to Westminster several times a day. Now it's a significant city mission for London, but as usual for Grade 1 listed buildings, receives no public money for maintenance and upkeep. A sign over the donations box at the rear of the church states that the place costs £2 per minute to run. To remain extant as a working mission church, then, they have in recent years had to be increasingly inventive in their use of the space to raise funds, opening up the old crypt area beneath the church a few decades back for use as a shop for books and gifts, and these days also as the London Brass Rubbing Centre and Cafe In The Crypt. When it was a working crypt, the lead-lined coffins (the only waterproofing available at the time) were stacked, "like library books" according to my guide, over the whole surface of the floor, with medicos dropping in from time to time to ensure the caskets were not, ahem, unduly leaking. When yet another cholera outbreak in the mid-nineteenth century led to the shutdown of all London cemeteries, ten large tunnels leading off the crypt were used to store the mounting bodies until the emergency was declared over. The last of the bodies was only cleared from the crypt in 1937, and the rooms lay empty for quite some time afterwards. At the moment, deep and noisy excavations are underway in several of the old crypt tunnels to "knock down, knock through" and expand the crypt space for further fundraising activities and services. It means several of these tunnels will be forever lost to posterity, but it was a tradeoff between that and either ceasing the work of the church because of no money, or demolishing the entire structure and rebuilding the site from scratch. Neither was an option. The existing crypt space will be revamped and restored, removing obstructing shop bookcases from the 1980s amongst other things. The whole project is expected to take about two years, at a cost of £34 million.
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