Get Me to the Church
St Brides, on Fleet Street, is one of London's most fascinating and ancient churches. John Milton, Samuel Pepys and John Dryden were parishioners, so too were Eleanor White and Ananias Dare, who married there in the late 1580s. Their daughter, Virginia, was the first English child born in North America (hence her forename). In 1640, a leather-seller set up his Baptist congregation in Fleet Street, just outside the church. His name was Praisegod Barebones, which, if you’re going to be a bible-thumping preacher, is a swell name to have. After the Great Fire of London in 1666, the church was rebuilt by the master Sir Christopher Wren. But Wren was no mere architect.