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Description
St Bride’s Church on Fleet Street goes all the way back to a design of Christopher Wren in 1672, with churches on the site even dating many centuries previous. The history of the Church is intertwined with the USA: Virginia Dare, the first English child born in North America, was the daughter of a couple (Eleanor and John White) married in the 1580s incarnation of the church; and Edward Winslow, a leading Pilgrim Father, was at one time a parishioner before leaving on the Mayflower.
In 1940, the church was almost entirely destroyed in a Luftwaffe bombing raid. In the years following it was extensively rebuilt by Godfrey Allen using Wren’s original design (helped by lots of donations from the USA), and designated a Grade I listed building in 1950. In 1955, the 300th anniversary of Winslow’s death, his descendant Hugh Winslow was invested as a liveryman of the Guild of St Bride.
In, 1957 the young Queen Elizabeth II and Duke of Edinburgh re-dedicated the Church (she also sent a telegram to the opening of another Pilgrim church). ‘Wearing a cinnamon-coloured coat with ermine collar’, she unveiled the impressive Corinthian-style oak reredos, which the Rev. Cyril Armitage dedicated ‘To the Glory of God and the memory of Edward Winslow and all who sailed across the sea in the Mayflower’. The Queen also spoke to 56-year old Terence Winslow – another descendant of Edward - who was visiting from Ontario, Canada. Given the churches historic links with the USA, the contemporary discovery that the parents of Winslow had also married in the Church, and the groundswell of interest coming from the Mayflower II voyage in 1957, the Pilgrim Fathers had seemed like an obvious emblematic choice for St Bride’s.
Source
‘Honouring a Mayflower descendant’, Illustrated London News (21 May 1955), 33.
‘During the rededication service’, Illustrated London News (28 December 1957), 9.
‘Containing a memorial to the Pilgrim Fathers’, Illustrated London News (23 February 1957), 18.
‘The Queen in Fleet-Street’s Church’, Daily Herald (20th December 1957), 5.