London's 100 Best Churches

Pope Joan by Louise Brealey to receive its world premiere at St James’s Church, Piccadilly.

It will be part of the National Youth Theatre’s 2013 London Season.

The play tells the story of the legend of the first and only female to be elected Pope and is said to have modern parallels.

This is actress Louise’s first play. The show will be directed by former NYT member and former Donmar Warehouse resident assistant director Abbey Wright.

“When the NYT asked me to write a play about Pope Joan, my first instinct was to run like the clappers,” says Louise Brealey. “But the moment I began to read about the Joan legend, I fell in love with the idea of such a woman existing in a world where a woman of any learning was considered a dangerous freak.

“I wanted to have a stab at telling her story and find out what she might have to say to a 21st century audience. For me it doesn’t matter whether Joan really existed. It matters that so many people wanted her to exist.

“Having read everything there is to read about her, I want her to have existed too. She sounds amazing. My Pope Joan is the story of a lonely, clever, ambitious woman who has more enemies than friends and who risks her life daily for the cause she believes in.

“She wants to change medieval Christianity, and if she had succeeded, she would have changed the world.”

Pope Joan is at St James’s Piccadilly from 31 August to 15 September. Tickets are £17.50 from the National Theatre box office.

St Mary-le-Bow was founded in 1080 by Blessed Lanfranc and his feast day on Tuesday 28 May will be marked by sung evensong at 5.45pm.

A parish supper (£25) follows in the Café Below.

St Augustine’s Kilburn has got the go-ahead from a consistory court to have mobile phone masts installed.

The Chancellor of the Diocese of London Michael Seed QC described opposition towards the plans as “ludicrous and ill-informed”.

He noted that the church had very limited income with which to maintain a Grade I listed building.

“There was nothing to distinguish this application from 11 others I have granted over the last two years, two of them in the City of Westminster, where the City Council had raised no objections or queries,” he concluded.

This Rogation period sees Beating the Bounds of the St Bride’s Fleet Street parish on Tuesday 7 May starting at 6pm. This year the route will follow the inland boundary up to Holborn rather than the river.

Thursday 9 May is Ascension Day which starts with 7.30am tower top singing at Southwark Cathedral.

There will be more tower top singing at St Michael Cornhill after the lunchtime Sung Eucharist.

In the afternoon at 3.15pm there is the annual Beating the Bounds at All Hallow-by-the-Tower which does include for some a trip to the middle of the Thames. The walk around the parish boundary ends by 5.30pm in time for Festal Evensong in the presence of the Lord Mayor and Sheriffs.

The Lutheran congregation which has been at St Anne & St Agnes Church in the City for 47 years is moving to nearby St Mary-at-Hill.

The advantage of St Mary-at-Hill is that there are no Sunday services as present. An Anglican Eucharist is celebrated on 1pm on Wednesday.

In the 1980s Peter Lea-Cox and the Lecosaldi Ensemble based at St Anne & St Agnes staged the Bach Cantata Series at the two churches.

The last Lutheran Sunday services at St Anne & St Agnes will be on 26 May and the first at St Mary-at-Hill on 2 June.

The only Sunday when special arrangements will be needed is Sunday 13 October when there is the annual Fish Harvest Festival  at 11am.

This Harvest of the Sea service began when the fish market was down the hill at Billingsgate and currently there is a History of Billingsgate display compiled from the London Metropolitan archives at the church.

The Ascension Day preacher at St Mary-le-Bow will be Deborah Frazer who is Rector of St Mary Bow, or Bow Church, just above the Bow flyover spanning the River Lea.

Both churches have been cited as part of the Bow Bells tradition. One suggestion is that anyone born between the two churches can claim to be a Cockney.

St Mary-le-Bow in the City dates from 1087 and Bow Church from 1311.

This year Ascension Day is on Thursday 9 May and the St Mary-le-Bow lunchtime service begins at 1.05pm. The music is Mozart’s Coronation Mass.

The magnolia trees at Lambeth Palace are in blossom.

So are those at St Mary-le-Strand which were seen during the television coverage for Baroness Thatcher’s funeral.

The Financial Times claims that in The City there has been a 25 per cent rise in the number of people in its churches.

This is a good Easter weekend story but the latest figures will be available shortly. Will the new parish electoral rolls indicate another rise when so many have been laid off by banks?

There is seven day plenty of life in the City churches. For example St Magnus and St Vedast were not alone in keeping a full Holy Week.

The Lutheran congregation is to leave St Anne and St Agnes Church in May.

A formal decision was made at a congregational meeting this week. Another meeting will be held shortly to consider a new home.

It is understood that an amicable agreement with the Diocese of London to remain has not proved possible. The congregation has discussed approaching the Finnish Church in Rotherhithe.

The Lutherans have been there for 27 years and attract around thirty nationalities. In the Thirties the charming little Wren church had a Europe focus with its rector Bishop Basil Batty who had responsibility for Anglicans abroad.

The last minister was Jeruma Grinberga who as Bishop of the Lutheran Church of Great Britain read the Old Testament lesson at the Archbishop of Canterbury’s enthronement.

She is also Co-President of Churches Together in England.

St Anne & St Agnes is the only church in Britain to offer Bach Vespers.

St Bartholomew the Great was the surprise setting for the funeral of Great Train Robber Bruce Reynolds on Wednesday. Sky News and the Daily Mail have the story.