The church of St Giles in the Fields lies in the heart of the original parish of St Giles.
With its welcoming food stalls in the courtyard, it looks to all intents and purposes, like a friendly and peaceful place to have built a place of worship.
But if I could take you back in time to the St Giles of yesteryear, I think you’d soon change your mind.
St Giles was one most notorious rookeries or slums in London. People were crammed into unsanitary living conditions, and poverty, prostitution and violence were an everyday feature of life.
It was here in St Giles that the black death plague started in 1665; where a murderous plot by disaffected Catholics to assassinate Queen Elizabeth 1st was hatched, and where the English civil war simmered to the surface after two sermons given at the church were considered to be inflammatory.
But the story I like the best about St Giles is that due to its position between the City of London and Westminster, it was on the route for condemned prisoners taken from Newgate prison to be hung at Tyburn (current day Marble Arch)
Men were transported in horse drawn wagons and the people of St Giles would line the route near the church and and holding jugs of ale, would cheerily offer the drivers a beer by calling out ‘one for the road?’ Drivers would apparently call back ‘I’m on the wagon’ to signify they didn’t have time to stop for a drink.
Both of course are now familiar expressions to us and though you may read different origins of these slogans, as far as we are concerned, it started here in St Giles.