The annual music festival at St Stephen’s Gloucester Road ends this Sunday 12 June with the Festival Service at 11am.
The setting is Langlais’ Messe Solonnelle and included is Durufle’s Tantum ergo.
The festival leaflet has a bright painting of the church interior by Neil Pittaway.
Thursday 2 June is Ascension Day in the Anglican calendar.
There will be tower top singing at Southwark Cathedral at 7.30am and at St Michael’s Cornhill in the City after the 1.10pm Choral Eucharist.
All Hallows-by-the-Tower has traditional beating the bounds of the parish at 3pm. The boundary includes the River Thames so some people will have to take to a boat.
This is one of the years when the Tower of London beats its Liberty so there will be the triennial ‘confrontation’ of the All Hallows congregation and the Beefeaters at 7pm.
The Roman Catholic Church in England is keeping the Ascension next Sunday but the traditional day is being marked at the reopened St Patrick’s in Soho Square at 6pm on Thursday.
Fifty years after Peter Berenson conceived the idea of Amnesty International whilst sitting in St Martin-in-the-Fields there has been a celebration there.
The Observer, which played a part, has a report.
See page 123.
I am sorry to learn that the Temple Church has introduced an admission charge.
The fee is £3.
The only good news is that the admission remains free to those under 22 years of age and senior citizens.
The Temple now joins St Bartholomew the Great which was the first London church to introduce a charge.
I advise visitors to try going to a service where you can choose how much to put in the collection. This summer the Temple has a series of interesting choral evensongs. The music will be wonderful.
One evensong is on the eve of the anniversary of Magna Carta which was witnessed by the Master of the Temple.
See pages 32 and 194.
Lawyer Peter Dodge has discovered that Queen Anne gave Royal Assent to the famous Act for Building Fifty New Churches on 12 June 1711.
This year is the tercentenary of the Act which maybe did not provide fifty churches but we do have twelve gems including St George’s Bloomsbury and St Paul’s Deptford.
The actual anniversary is Pentecost, Whit Sunday 12 June, and Peter Dodge has organised what he calls “London’s first Pop-Up Baroque Church Crawl”.
There is no organisation and, he stresses, no “Hi Vis vests” but he has produced a book suggesting how one can walk between the twelve churches on the day using only roads which existed in the 18th century.
The 1711 Walk website has on its front page at present some lovely photographs of the magnolias outside St Mary-le-Strand and its interior.
Those who like the idea of the walk will also enjoy a new book called The Eighteenth-century Church in Britain by Terry Friedman (Yale £60). It’s far too heavy to carry around but has many little seen drawings of existing and proposed churches. The text is fascinating and there is a vital index.
1711walk.wordpress.com
The funeral of Canon Reginald Fuller, a former rector of The Assumption Warwick Street who has died aged 102, takes place this morning at Westminster Cathedral.
Fr Fuller was responsible for the Revised Standard Version of the Bible. He was not only co-editor but was the person who persuaded the Roman Catholic bishops of England and Wales to sanction the idea of a new translation in modern English for Roman Catholics.
This was shortly after the publication of the New English Bible in 1961 which was eagerly taken up by many Anglican parishes.
See page 26.
The lovely church of St Patrick’s, Soho Square reopens on the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Tuesday 31 May.
The church has been redecorated with a “new basement complex”.
The Archbishop of Westminster is the Principal Celebrant at the 6pm Mass. A reception follows in the new community centre.
The next day Wednesday 1 June at 6pm James Conley, Auxiliary Bishop of Denver, presides over a First Vespers of the Ascension.
Ascension Day Mass on Thursday 2 June at 6pm is being celebrated by Cardinal George Pell of Sydney.
For the reopening, James MacMillan has written St Patrick’s Magnificat which will be heard on Wednesday and Thursday.
See page 166.
Last night Christopher Smith became the tenth vicar of St Alban’s Holborn.
The Induction and Institution ended almost a year long wait for a successor to Howard Levett who is now chaplain to St George’s in Venice.
Fr Smith arrives from St Michael’s Beckenham to begin his time at Hoborn as St Alban’s celebrates the 50th anniversary of its rebuilding after bomb damage.
There will be a thanksgving day on Sunday 26 June. The preacher at a parish Mass at 10.30am is to be Fr Raymond Avent who was assistant priest at the time of reconstruction. Solemn Evensong and Benediction is at 3.30pm following buffet lunch in the St Albans Centre.
See page 2.
This Sunday 8 May is the annual Punch & Judy Sunday at St Paul’s Covent Garden.
The first recorded Punch & Judy show was outside the church on 9 May 1662. So next year is the 350th anniversary.
There is a procession about 10.30am before the 11am Parish Mass. Mr Punch usually appears in the pulpit.
The all day festival of Punch & Judy shows from around the country ends at
4pm with Choral Evensong.
See page 168.
A weekly Family Eucharist begins this Sunday morning 8 May at St Bartholomew the Less in Smithfield.
The 10am service, which will be every Sunday until the end of July, is being started with children in mind so it will be less than an hour. The plan is for families to go afterwards to the Cloister Cafe at nearby St Bartholomew the Great for refreshments.
St Bartholomew the Less is just inside the gate of St Bartholomew’s Hospital. This entrance featured in the last Bridget Jones film. St Bartholomew the Great is of course well known for appearing in films.
See pages 32 to 35.
