The Barn

St. Paul’s was the first Protestant church in London. No, I don’t mean Christopher Wren’s cathedral which was built only after the great fire of 1666. No, this is the St. Paul’s Church on the west side of Covent Garden, a modest church designed by Indigo Jones.

That modesty was deliberate. The Duke of Bedford, who owned Covent Garden at the time, commissioned Jones to build a church, but one that was ‘simple and cheap’, to distinguish it from Catholic decadence. “Something like a barn,” the Duke ordered. Jones obeyed. He gave his client, in his own words, ‘the most graceful barn’ in the country.

He may have called it a barn, but the entrance to the church is marked by four prominent columns. Or rather: the intended entrance. At that time, the houses on Covent Garden belonged to the most notable families in the country. Indigo Jones provided them with an entrance on the east side of his church.

However, the Anglican Bishop of London wanted nothing to do with this kind of innovation. Traditionally, churches had their entrance on the west side of the church, and the altar on the east side. Indigo Jones had turned this around. A few weeks before the official consecration of the church in 1638, the bishop ensured that the Covent Garden entrance was bricked up and the altar was moved to the other side.

Now, the original entrance is a somewhat strange covered shelter for people. However, it does appeal to the imagination. It is the place where Eliza Doolittle sold flowers to Professor Higgins at the beginning of the play Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw. This play was the basis for the musical My Fair Lady, in which Julie Andrews starred and premiered in 1956 and then Barbra Streisand starred in the film ten years later.

That is fitting because St. Paul’s is now popularly known as the ‘Actors’ Church. Fashionable England was once housed around Covent Garden but later moved to Pall Mall and even later on to Holland Park. Covent Garden is now mainly known for its nightlife. The arrival of the Theatre Royal and then the Royal Opera ensured that.

The church is full of memorial stones for deceased actors and related artists. After a quick look, I found stones for Charley Chaplin, Diana Rigg, Peter O’Toole and Boris Karloff. Then I merrily sang (under my breath of course) the opening bars of Rule Brittannia, composed by Thomas Arne and now beautifully carved on his memorial stone.

I had only a quick look because I was admonished by a sexton as I shuffled past the memorial plaques. “This church is a place to pray, Sir,” he said sternly. I should have replied that this was not a church, but a barn - but I only thought of that later.