Barely a mile from where London’s largest ecclesiastical building will host a certain funeral later this month, one of its smallest will be marking a difficult anniversary in Anglo-Irish relations.
St Ethelburga's Church shares with St Paul's Cathedral a city-centre location and not much else. It's tiny, less than 17 metres long and only half as wide. But it's also very old. A church has existed on the site since at least 1250, and the modern version dates from the early 15th century.
Small as it is, St Ethelburga’s survived the Great Fire of London, when most medieval churches perished. With some minor damage, it made it through the Blitz too. What it almost didn’t survive was that other conflict occasionally visited on the British capital: the IRA campaign.
The 1994 ceasefire came a year too late for the diminutive church, which suffered for its location. By the early 1990s, even as overtures towards a Northern peace settlement continued, the IRA was trying to exert pressure on Downing Street by targeting London’s financial district: the city within the city.
In April 1992, a massive explosion had rocked the Baltic Exchange. Twelve months later, the target was St Ethelburga’s immediate neighbourhood, Bishopsgate. Organised in South Armagh (the coded warning was traced to a pay-phone in Forkhill), the 1993 bomb caused at least £500 million worth of destruction in an area filled with banks.
The church was mere collateral damage. But being only a few metres from where the truck bomb exploded, it collapsed like a straw house. About 60 per cent of the medieval structure was obliterated.
The scale of destruction aside, a problem for any would-be restorers was its location. The City of London had an embarrassment of old churches, as full of history as they were devoid of congregations.
By one count, there were 36 in an area with a resident population of only 5,000. And St Ethelburga’s occupied a niche within a niche. Its bijou size was in keeping with its parish, which covered an area not much bigger than the floor space of the nearby Bank of England.
A year after the bomb, it was hit by another blow: the Templeman Report . The result of a commission on the future of the City's churches, this recommended that two-thirds of the total be closed. As the author, Lord Templeman said, the time was gone when their clergy could justify holding daily services for a congregation of "four-and-a-half people".
His report urged that the buildings be preserved where possible, for cultural and business use. But it advised against the construction of a replica St Ethelburga’s, or – one of the other ideas mooted – its transformation into a public garden, which Templeman said would be the most expensive such project since “the hanging gardens of Babylon”.
Complete demolition seemed the likely outcome for a period. Then London acquired a new bishop, Dr Richard Chartres, who happened to be a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries. Thanks in part to him, the restorers eventually triumphed.
He suggested that, in its next phase of existence, the bomb-wrecked church might house a Centre for Reconciliation and Peace. The idea won support from the City, the Church of England, and the Catholic Cardinal Hume, who in time became joint patron. So it was that in 2002, nine years after the explosion, St Ethelburga’s reopened its doors.
The centre has reportedly thrived ever since and now hosts a busy weekly schedule of musical and cultural events, tied together by the general themes of religion and conflict. Among the developments least imaginable in April 1993 has been the recent establishment of something called the Gullion Link project.
Named after the mountain in South Armagh, it brings teenagers from Newry and from Muslim East London together in St Ethelburga’s. Where, according to the website, they “cook and share food from their diversity of cultures”, while discussing problems ranging from “sectarian violence to the postcode wars”.
It’s tempting to wonder what the late Mrs Thatcher would have made of such discussions. They might have tested her famous commitment to the prayer of St Francis (“Where there is discord, may we bring harmony”), which is being much replayed this week, perhaps maliciously.
In any case, the Society of Antiquaries of London is urging people to mark the 20th anniversary of the bomb by visiting the restored St Ethelburga’s over the coming month. And no doubt some of those attending the funeral next week will do just that.
fmcnally@irishtimes.com