Chrisp Street, Limehouse Cut, Bow Locks, River Lea, Stratford
Last summer I recorded a podcast with sound recordist Joel Carr with the intent of capturing the environmental sounds experienced on a walk along with my usual natter. This recording was broadcast on Resonance Fm as ‘Sonic Perambulation: Chrisp Street Market to Stratford’. I also shot around 15 minutes of video of the walk which I finally got around to editing to Joel’s soundscape.
This walk starts at Chrisp Street Market in Poplar as the market traders pack up for the day. It’s one of London’s older street markets and is currently caught up in a regeneration project. We then walk through the streets to the Limehouse Cut and follow this to Stratford via the River Lea.
I was walking through Smithfield the other day and took shelter from the sun in the churchyard of St Bartholomew the Great. I noticed that the church was open so decided to pop inside for a look around this majestic historic building.
St Bartholomew the Great was founded in 1123 by a courtier of Henry I called Rahere. Depending on how you judge such things it’s the oldest church in London that has held continuous services. All Hallows by the Tower is built on the site of a 7th Century Saxon church and there was a church of similar age where St Paul’s Cathedral stands today.
Rahere was an intriguing character being listed as variously a jester, minstrel, and a cleric. He was listed as a canon of St Paul’s cathedral in 1115. He embarked on a pilgrimage to Rome following the White Ship disaster in 1120 when the heir to the throne of England sank on a ship along with 300 nobles, barons, and sailors. The only survivor was said to be a butcher from Rouen. There’s a great novel about this incident called, The White Ship.
Rahere developed a fever during his pilgrimage and in the grip of his illness vowed to build a church for a poor in London if he recovered. On his journey back to London he had a vision of the Apostle Bartholomew who commanded him to build a church upon the ’Smooth field’, Smithfield.
You can see a gold statue of St Bartholomew called Exquisite Pain, created by the artist Damien Hirst, that is currently on loan to the church.
King Henry I supported the building of the St Bartholomew the Great church, priory and hospital (which includes the chapel, St Bartholomew-the-Less) which started in 1123. The church was only partially complete at the time of Rahere’s death in 1145. He still resides in the church in a tomb that was rebuilt in 1405.
The Priory was dissolved in 1539, and the nave of the church was demolished. The rest of the church and priory were mostly preserved. The Elizabethan style timbered porch was the main entrance to the priory. The 17th century tower contains 5 medieval bells.
St Bartholomew the Great is famous for its appearances in a number of films – most notably Four Weddings and a Funeral and Shakespeare in Love.
That excitement in the airport that comes with the realisation that we were embarking on a much bigger adventure than our recent European jaunts. I was using a Lonely Planet for the first time in over 20 years. Arriving at night in Marrakech and that first experience of the maze of the Medina trying to find the central square, Djemaa El Fna, following a lad through the dark alleyways, then lost again but finally plunging straight into that immersive carnival of light and sound, monkeys and snakes and incredible smells of food.
Our Riad was a sanctuary – its own inner world based around two open balconies with a roof terrace and beautiful pool below. Tiny songbirds flitted around the the interior spaces. In the narrow passages of the medina mopeds weaved through the crowds, you felt the heat of their exhausts as they skimmed past your ankles. We walked everywhere, through the midday heat, to the gems of Marrakech: Koutoubia Mosque & Gardens, the Saadian Tombs, the other world of the Kasbah, through the Souqs, and out through Ville Nouvelle to Jardin Majorelle. We had cocktails and beer at the French colonial era Grand Café de la Poste. And on the last day visited the beguiling Maison de la Photographie.
