Book Description

This is the story of Saint James Clerkenwell from its beginning in the twelfth century as the church of the nunnery of St Mary. It tells how it survived the dissolution of the monasteries as the church of the parish of Clerkenwell, and was rebuilt at the end of the eighteenth century in its present Georgian form. It is also the history of the parish and how Clerkenwell changed from a country parish into a fashionable suburb and then into an industrialized, densely populated inner-city area.You will be introduced to some of its more celebrated parishioners, from Mad Madge the Duchess of Newcastle to Thomas Britton the musical coal man. In the nineteenth century Clerkenwell Green was the epicentre of radical protest in London and the church was itself the focus of controversy and excitement with its notorious clerical elections and the public pillorying of its vicar and vestry for the appalling condition of slum properties in the parish.Above all this is an account of how St James's, with its steadfast Low Church and Evangelical tradition, has sought to bring Christ into the lives of its increasingly pagan parishioners. The twenty-first century has seen the rebirth of Clerkenwell as a thriving centre of enterprise and creativity. Moreover it has seen the revival of the church of St James's under the leadership of its present minister as a thriving centre of Christianity.