Southwark

​

Dorothy and I decided that an overnight trip to London to do three cathedrals was feasible

so late November we took the East Coast Line and London Underground to London Bridge.

Fortunately, Southwark Cathedral is signposted from the station as arriving in the dark with

very little sky that could be seen above, let alone a Cathedral Tower could have been challenging.

We walked through Borough Market, stalls with huge cheese rounds amongst others, noisy and

busy, passing a stall selling almond croissants @ £4.25 each, (essential research for Back Up Team)

rounded a corner and saw the Shard, with Zoom Lolly colours shining from its top and

Southwark Cathedral in front.

 

It seemed to be in the middle of a building site. The Cathedral Tower (163.5 feet) was once the tallest building in London until

The Great Fire of London Monument was built in 1677. The Shard is 1,016 feet tall.

                                                                                             

                                                                                           As we were early, we assessed the cafe’s tea and toilets and then looked

                                                                                           around the Cathedral taking in a live cat as well as a splendid memorial to

                                                                                           William Shakespeare who was a parishioner at Southwark, writing most

                                                                                           of his 39 plays whilst connected with the Globe Theatre.

                                                                                           Next to this is a memorial tablet to Sam Wanamaker who was a driving

                                                                                           force behind the present-day Globe Theatre.

                                                                                           We then met Dean Mark who showed us the memorial stones for Edmund                                                                                                                       Shakespeare, and Fletcher, brother and actor of the Bard respectively, in

                                                                                           the choir area.

​We had a great chat with Dean Mark, and we had our photograph taken in

front of the Bard which he later put in the Cathedral Newsletter.

 

​​​​​​​​He told us about a Palestinian Music Group www.palmusic.org.uk which

pays for  music education for Palestinians and encouraged us to visit

Salisbury to meet the Dean there who earlier this year spent four months

living in East Jerusalem.

On hearing that we usually have the dogs with us he did say that as all

the Chapter seemed to have a dog, they were going to discuss allowing

them in the Cathedral.

There is an official Cathedral Cat however.......

We attended Evening Prayer and chatted to a member of the congregation assuring him that we knew how to get to our

accommodation.

Dorothy should know by now that Google Maps and I do not work,  and I should know that too!

We eventually arrived at a wonderfully comfortable flat lent to us by some generous friends of Dorothy’s.

We were too late to sample the shop at Southwark that evening and more importantly failed to get a stamp for our passports,

so we returned the next day to rectify this.

We learnt that the Dean Mark Oakley is a very modest man as he has authored several books including “Believing in Poetry”

which I bought to give to someone for Christmas but as I have now read a few chapters better get another!

Thank you to Southwark for an enjoyable and inspiring visit.