Business at the Rolls Building on Fetter Lane originally triggered an obligation for us to be in London in mid-November.
However, while our primary reason for being there was dealing with the activities of the defendant in court, the timing overlapped with Inter Faith Week and leads up to St Erkenwald’s Day on 14 November.
Rather than spending all our time focused on litigation, we used the breaks between hearings to walk the corridor between the City and Westminster, taking the opportunity to look at the practical legacy of St Erkenwald as it carried through into the civic work of Soulton’s ‘Old’ Sir Rowland Hill—the sixteenth-century Lord Mayor of London whose charitable endowments, educational projects, and public service echoed Erkenwald’s focus on civic stability and community care.
Because the Rolls Building sits right off Fleet Street, several stimportant places were within easy walking distance, and the week provided a good opportunity to talk to ecclesiastical stakeholders along the way.
We started at St Paul’s Cathedral, where Old St Paul’s once housed Erkenwald’s tomb behind the high altar and where Sir Rowland Hill himself was buried in 1561. From there, we walked back toward Fleet Street to visit St Dunstan-in-the-West, where a service was attened. St Dunstan’s in the West an Anglican parish church that also accommodates London’s Romanian Orthodox community—a straightforward, working example of ecumenical cooperation in practice.
Just across the street through the Temple archways, we stopped into Temple Church, taking in the twelfth-century Round Nave and the adjoining legal precincts that tie the area’s medieval history directly to the modern courts we were working in.
Moving further west toward the Strand, we visited the King’s Chapel of the Savoy, a small Royal Peculiar tied to the Duchy of Lancaster that sits quietly below street level off Savoy Hill. From there, we continued on to Westminster Abbey.
What started as routine legal work dealing with a defendant in the Rolls Building turned into a useful chance to speak with ecclesiastical stakeholders, see how London’s older civic and religious institutions connect, and trace how figures like Erkenwald and Sir Rowland Hill left a practical mark on the city.
