Is this St. Monica's?

It is well-known that there is no "church of St Monica in the Edgware Road," and one was inclined to accept the designation as simply a made-up name, the actual church at which Irene Adler was married to Godfrey Norton being concealed to spare the vicar grief over performing what may have been a somewhat irregular ceremony. But a very serendipidous discovery (from a post on London churches on The Hounds of the Internet) of the existence of the church shown above has led to hypothesizing that this is the actual church.
    Why? And what church is this, anyway?

The church in question was a small one whose tower (pictured above) is all that is left today. It is very close to St. Paul's Cathedral (not visible in this view, but see below). This tower is all that remains of St. Augustine's in Watling Street, our candidate for St. Monica's.
    The original church, mentioned in records as early as 1148, was destroyed in the London Fire of 1666. It was one of the many churches rebuilt by Sir Christopher Wren (in 1680-83), but it was partially destroyed in the Blitz in 1941, so that only the tower now remains.
    Why do we think it likely that this is the church? There are two considerations. The first are the highly suspicious links between the names: St. Monica was the mother of St. Augustine,* and the Roman road that became the Edgware Road became known as Watling Steet in Saxon times (so that Watling Street might be regarded as the progenator of the Edgware Road).
    The City of London street that St. Augustine's was on (see the view of it to the right -- it is only one block long, and so this view likely shows the whole of it) came by its name through a strange combination of Roman and Saxon history. The original Roman road ran to the south of London (through what is now Southwark, all the way from Dover), and forded the Thames at Westminster, where it turned north to become the future Edgware Road. Once a bridge had been built futher downstream, the road crossed over (about where the famous "London Bridge" was), and ran first north, then west, passing by the site now occupied by St Paul's, and continuing along the line of the present Holborn Viaduct, Holborn, and Oxford Street, where it rejoined the present Edgware Road. (At the Speaker's Corner of Hyde Park.) All of which is very intersting, but it is just the parental relation of the names which is of concern to us. The names of church and street relate in an inverted order, as shown in this "chiasma":

    St Monica       Edgware Road
v         X        ^
    St Augustine       Watling Street
    There are two other things that makes this identification especially attractive: Godfrey goes first to Gross and Hankey's in Regent Street, and in the race to the church, Holmes comes in last. If the church were in the Edgware Road, Godfrey's side trip is strangely out of the way, and would involve doubling back. Thus, he would have by far the longest trip to make (the Edgware Road actually runs through St John's Wood, so Holmes' and Irene's trips would have been much shorter). But with the church in the City, next to St Paul's, Godfrey's route will naturally cross Regent Street, and all three will travel essentially the same distance, so Holmes' late arrival becomes quite understandable.
    As to why this somewhat distant church should have been chosen for these hasty nuptuals, I can only offer the dual speculation that this was a close as Godfrey could come to giving Irene a wedding in St Paul's, and that he may have known the Rector, and knew that he would wink at some of the rules -- like posting the bans -- but did not know he would insist on others -- having at least one witness!

* [Added 1/24/04] The St. Augustine to which the church was dedicated was, as one might suspect, the Apostile to England, St. Augustine of Canterbury. This is confirmed by the fact that he is occasionally called St. Austin, and we find that the church is also sometimes called St. Austin's. Watson will have made the association purely from the names, however, and simply have allowed it to stand as a play on words.

** [Added 10/10/04] The feasibility of reaching the church in the twenty minutes demanded by Godfrey has been examined in some detail in this short discussion.


The whole church!

The views above show only the tower of -- as we shall call it -- St Monica's, and I was unable to find a view or plan of the Wren church until a fuller exploration of the site from which the view of Watling Street above was taken. This site, London Ancestors, contains many views and maps from the late 1800's or earlier, and a map of Breadwinner Ward -- which lies to the east of Farringdon Ward in which St Monica's is located -- proved to have a tiny drawing of the church itself at the west end of Watling Street. I have extracted the church from the map and present it below. (The view is from the south, so that the church would appear to have had its long axis parallel to Watling Street -- but, it seems likely that it has been reversed, as Wren almost always put the altar wall on the east end of the church. Kindly note that there is one parking 'bay' for each vehicle.)

(Before someone comments on 'the leaning tower of Monica,' allow me to say that the lean was forced on the cartographer by the angles of the surrounding buildings (which are shown in plan view). The question of whether or not the actual St Augustine's really looked like this is considered here.)

An irrelevancy for those who like cats.

A Holmesian Bonus
An unexpected side benifit of researching "St Monica's" on the internet was the discovery of the view of London in the eightteenth century shown below.

Although Holmes lived over a hundred years after the Italian painter Canaletto created this view, the skyline cannot have drastically changed, as the skyscrapers which dominate our own impressions of city skylines were just beginning to be built at the end of the nineteenth century, and London probably had much the same appearance in Holmes' time as this view suggests. Is there anything in the Canon which lends itself to this opinion? I believe there is. Consider what Holmes says in The Naval Treaty when he and Watson are returning to London from Woking.

    'It's a very cheering thing to come into London by any of these lines which run high and allow you to look down upon the houses like this. ...
    'Look at those big, isolated clumps of buildings rising up above the slates, like brick islands in a lead-coloured sea.'
    [Watson replies] 'The board-schools.'
(my italics)

Copyright ©2002-2004 David Richardson