While I was pootling around Bishopsgate the other day (in fact I was attending a breakfast seminar about online fundraising, but that’s another fascinating story…) I stepped inside the very lovely and highly incongruous St Botolph-without-Bishopsgate church.
The thing that drew me in there most of all was the windows, made of that beautiful old swishy glass, which looks a bit like the surface of a puddle. It was such a bright day you could see the window-ripples really clearly.
Although there’s been a church here since before the battle of Hastings, it has been here in its current form since 1729. It even has a little gleam of literary celebrity as Keats was baptised here in 1795.
Another famous figure associated with the church, along with Mr Botolph himself (patron saint of travellers, farming and Boston, since you ask) is kickass clergyman and educational reformer William Rogers (1819 - 1898). He became known as ‘Hang theology!’ Rogers after a spirited outburst in defence of secular education. That’s the kind of nickname I aspire to!
The Bishopsgate Institute website has more information, and a picture. We may revisit him at some point because he was one of the Victorian East End Social Change All-Stars, along with George Peabody, Annie Besant and Charles Booth, among plenty of others. In idle moments I like to imagine them all in special costumes, like the Justice League.
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