#st giles

[portraitsofsaints]

Saint Giles 

14 Holy Helpers

650-710

Feast day: September 1

Patronage: people with disabilities, the poor, cancer patients, difficulty breastfeeding, mental illness, sterility, depression, childhood fears, convulsions, Edinburgh, Scotland

Originally from Greece, St. Giles lived as a hermit in the forest of France for many years and his sole companion was a deer who is said to have sustained him with her milk. When King Wamba's hunters pursued and shot at the deer, the arrow wounded St. Giles instead, making him the patron of cripples. As compensation, the King gave Giles a piece of land in the Provence, on which Giles founded a monastery. He died with the highest repute for sanctity and miracles.

Prints, plaques & holy cards available for purchase here: (website)

[scotianostra]

Springtime in Edinburgh

[home-phoenix]

St Giles cathedral. Edinburgh. Scotland.

[angeltreasure]

[londiniumlundene]

Lost London: Walking the Covent Garden Drainage Ditches

Part 2: The Cock and Pye Ditch

Up until the 17th Century, St Giles-in-the-Fields was just a small group of houses in the grounds of a leprosy hospital; between these dwellings were marshy fields known, perhaps unimaginatively, as Marshland, surrounded by a rectangular drainage ditch. These fields were covered by the development known as Seven Dials in the 1690s, and the fields and ditch would in time take on the name of Cock and Pye – the origin of which will become clearer as the walk along this lost watercourse continues.

The route from Drury Lane to Seven Dials requires a walk through an unnamed and (at time of walking) well-enclosed alleyway, leading onto Shelton Street. My guidebook says a small gradient can be found on this road where the subterranean waters of the Cock and Pye flow towards the Bloomsbury Ditch, but this is somewhat difficult to detect.

At the junction of Shelton Street and Neal Street, my walk turned right, in order to follow the eastern edge of the Cock and Pye’s rectangular outline (the ditch also continues straight ahead, so the circuit could in theory be completed in either clockwise or anticlockwise fashion). Neal Street takes it name from Thomas Neale (forgetting the last “e”), the Stuart courtier who was responsible for the development of Seven Dials.

As Neal Street is fairly typical of the area – expensive shops and pricey bars, cafés, and restaurants – a diversion to the centre of Seven Dials is recommended. Here, the seven roads radiate out from a central column, which surprisingly only has six sundials; the central column and surrounding roundabout functions as the seventh. The original column was erected as part of the initial development, though was taken down in 1773; the story that it was pulled down by a mob looking for gold rumoured to be buried beneath it are just an urban legend. The current column is a replica installed in the 1980s.

Turning back to Neal Street, the route then turns left at Shaftesbury Avenue. It is hard to imagine that the surrounding streets here were once the infamous Rookery of St Giles, some of the worst slums in the country. During the 18th Century, at the height of the gin craze, the squalid conditions of the streets of St Giles inspired Hogarth’s etching Gin Lane. Nowadays the most prominent artwork on Shaftesbury Avenue is Drama Through the Ages, a frieze on the Odeon cinema, originally the Saville Theatre. Very few traces of the Cock and Pye Ditch are left, though a small grate at the junction of Shaftesbury Avenue and Mercer Street reveals trickling water below.

The third side of the rectangle is completed by walking along West Street, apparently so named because it was the western boundary of the Cock and Pye fields (a convention not applied to the other three sides though). At the time of walking, the Ambassadors Theatre was also running a rather appropriately named play; its more famous neighbour, St Martins Theatre, has meanwhile been showing the same play, Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap, for 70 years.

We shall end this section of the walk where West Street meets Upper St Martin’s Lane. It was in this vicinity that the Cock and Pye Inn once stood, and gave its name to the surrounding fields and ditch. Some say that the inn gained its name from serving elaborate peacock pies, though more likely it was simply named after a cock and a magpie – at the time, spelt magpye.

[fitzrovianews]

Church Lane in the St Giles Rookery - a talk by Jane Palm-Gold at Holborn Library

Church Lane in St Giles in 1871. Photo: Camden Local Studies and Archive Centre. Artist and historian Jane Palm-Gold will give a talk on The History of Church Lane — from grease and grime to soap and sanitation, at Holborn Library this month.  She will explore the history of Church Lane in the St Giles Rookery and its transition into New Oxford Street and will feature Mudie’s Library, the Pears…

[maypoleman1]

1st September

St Giles’ Day

John Barleycorn (1934). Source: V&A website

Today is St Giles’ Day. Giles’ biggest claim to fame is being catastrophically wounded in his testicles by the Frankish king, Wamba, when Wamba sent an arrow speeding towards a female red deer owned by Giles while on a hunt. Giles flung himself in front of the beast, thus saving its life but suffering irreparable damage to his private parts as a result. The grateful hind sustained the saint with its milk thereafter. St Giles’ Day was also a day for dancing at the numerous fairs held in his honour during the Middle Ages. Today also marked the beginning of the gorse and bracken cutting season in certain parts of the country.

Another Harvest legend concerns that of John Barleycorn, who was hated by three men for some unspecified reason, and who declared he “must die”. John was kidnapped and buried alive, but his head resurfaced and he grew rapidly again to full height; he was then cut down, tied to a cart, skinned alive and his flayed body crushed between two stones. John however rose again, this time as a wonderful ale, whose fame and popularity long outlived his murderers. John’s travails, which are immortalised in the English and Scottish folk song, John Barleycorn Must Die is, of course, a personification of barley and what the crop goes through in its journey to make beer, although a nod to ancient pagan harvest sacrifices can’t be ruled out either.

[tinyshe]

st giles-moraga.org

[samtaylorillustrator]

🏹 Saint Giles 🦌 The Hermit Saint 🐚 namesake of The Hermits Cave pub in Camberwell 🍺 Patron of poor people, lepers, horses, rams, fear of the dark and blacksmiths 🔨 (plus much more)

[clancarruthers]

THE ST GILES CATHEDRAL RIOT - CLAN CARRUTHERS CCIS

THE ST GILES CATHEDRAL RIOT – CLAN CARRUTHERS CCIS

  The St Giles Cathedral Riot     Jenny Geddes lived from about 1600 to about 1660. She was an Edinburgh street-seller who famously, or infamously, threw her stool at the head of the Dean in St Giles’ Cathedral in Edinburgh on Sunday 23 July 1637, and sparked a riot that led directly to the Wars of the Covenant; the Wars of the Three Kingdoms; the English Civil War; the execution of Charles I;…

[portraitsofsaints]

Happy Feast Day Saint Giles  14 Holy Helpers 650-710 Feast day: September 1 Patronage: people with disabilities, the poor, cancer patients, difficulty breastfeeding, mental illness, sterility, depression, childhood fears, convulsions, Edinburgh, Scotland

Originally from Greece, St. Giles lived as a hermit in the forest of France for many years and his sole companion was a deer who is said to have sustained him with her milk. When King Wamba's hunters pursued and shot at the deer, the arrow wounded St. Giles instead, making him the patron of cripples. As compensation, the King gave Giles a piece of land in the Provence, on which Giles founded a monastery. He died with the highest repute for sanctity and miracles. {website}

[scotianostra]

[vox-anglosphere]

The mediaeval heart of Old Edinburgh still inspires the Scottish soul

[mikey-ways-dogshit-bread]

If I had a nickel for every time one of my favorite sci-fi fantasy series had a musical episode where bunnies were a genuine concern, albeit a slightly improbable one, I would have two nickels. Which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it's happened twice.

[celticculture]

📷 stuart mckay photography

[tinyshe]

St Giles - Aidan Hart Sacred Icons