So many happy memories. At the age of 17, from a farm in rural Wiltshire, I came to live at the top of the vicarage overlooking the Square, while I worked in the Undercroft reaching out to those who came – a part of the work of the Social Service Unit. During the time Austen Williams was Vicar, I have many fond memories of all sorts of people: Sir Trenchard Cox, churchwarden, Carolyn Scott, author of From Heaven to Charing Cross, Miss A and Ethel in the kitchen in the old Underground. David Partridge, Roy Hazell and then Hugh Maddox as curates. Norman Ingram-Smith, Roger Shaljean, Heather Flowerdew and many others. Thursday Night at 8, the Choir and services. Going to 144 Piccadilly one night while it had been taken over by hippy squatters, climbing up a ladder in through a first floor window. It was my joy and privilege to be a very small part of the ongoing story of that wonderful place, the spirit of which was captured by Bishop Joost de Blank who said of St. Martin’s, “They just go on their own way, doing what they think God wants them to do”. The whole experience was a foundational part of my own vocation 58 years ago.
St Martin-in-the-Fields