Bow Church

Bow Church, in London’s East End, I arranged to visit this month. Online sources said it opened at 10.30, so I arrived at 10 and waited, but at 10.45 I gave up on a bad job. I caught the bus to Poplar, the church of which was fully open, and kindly serving Earl Grey teas to any caring to enter.

Bow Church sits between the carriageways of a busy London road, the A11. Yet from my photographs, above and below, one might think it was situated in some rural idyll, the trees and shrubbery hiding either road from view, with only the noise and wailing sirens betraying its true location. Despite my unsuccessful wait, I meditated that there were worse locations in London from which to be locked out.

I have since discovered that, in 1556, dozens of Protestants were taken by cart from Newgate Gaol to be burned to death outside Bow Church. I might not have got in, but I likely sat on a bench close to the place where the Lord called home to glory His faithful people all those centuries back. Now a place of beautiful gardens and noisy highways, it was once a portal from which redeemed saints were translated to a rich inheritance they did not deserve but which their Saviour freely shared. Burning flesh and painful screams were replaced by warm embraces and beautiful receptions:

"Well done, good and faithful servants. Come, enter into the rest of your Lord". 

Sacred ground, truly.