Ship of Fools: St Bride's, Fleet Street, London


imageShip of Fools: St Bride's, Fleet Street, London

Brown robes and nibbly bits – and great music

Read the full Mystery Worshipper report here


Comments

  • Thanks for the report, Cool Dude! Very interesting to read.
    Given the description of the choir’s robes, I had to go looking. Were they the robes depicted in this picture? They are indeed . . . different.
  • Box PewBox Pew Shipmate
    I think that's the choir. The Guild members have even more elaborate outfits, but in the same fetching colour. http://www.stbrides.com/worship/guild-of-st-bride.html
    Still, I suppose the Guild keeps the church open and flourishing........
  • Bit of a mediaeval throw-back, maybe, but none the worse for that!
  • PDRPDR Shipmate
    edited August 2019
    Box Pew wrote: »
    I think that's the choir. The Guild members have even more elaborate outfits, but in the same fetching colour.

    I need to get my monitor checked, then, it looks the colour of regurgitated dog food on here. I love the idea of having a Guild though - it brings out all the latent Percy Dearmer, GKC, Thaxted Movement sympathies left over from my younger days. Absolutely full marks for not dumping everyone into cassock and surplice, or worse still cassock-albs.

  • I need to visit St Bride's, especially after that report. My mother worked nearby when it was bombed during the blitz. She always kept her fondness for it and was so happy when it was restored.
  • Box PewBox Pew Shipmate
    PDR - my comment about the fetching colour clearly needed an **irony alert**
  • PDRPDR Shipmate
    Irony has a persistent habit of not working on the internet, and to compound the problem I tend to miss even the more valiant attempts. I find folks have the same problem with sarcasm which is something to which I am prone.
  • Box PewBox Pew Shipmate
    edited January 2020
    St Bride's dims the lights at 5pm every weekday and offers a quiet candlelit space for contemplation, prayer and meditation until 6pm. Space for Silence, their website calls it. This is a fabulous facility amidst the noise and activity of the central London rush hour and, having recently discovered it, have adopted it as a places I sit every so often for meditation. When so many London churches are locked this is welcome indeed.
  • What an excellent idea!
    :grin:
  • Net SpinsterNet Spinster Shipmate
    edited February 2020
    The color according to the guild page is russet. http://www.stbrides.com/worship/guild-of-st-bride.html The guild chose the color when they reorganized in the 1950s because an early member of the guild, Wynkyn de Worde (d. around 1534), requested that guild members attend his funeral in their russet gowns (according to The Times 16 February 1955 as reported in 1955 in Folklore 66(3): 367-8). Wynkyn de Worde was Caxton's successor and the first printer on Fleet Street.
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