All my life I’ve lived within a train-journey of London, and all my adult life I’ve visited the capital several times a year. On those journeys I invariably find myself looking out of the train window and wondering what it would be like to stop and explore the places going by outside – especially the churches. My father was an extremely religious man and my grandfather was a bellringer, and perhaps because of these factors, although not religious myself, I do find that churches tend to catch my attention, in any fleeting glimpse of a village, a town, a suburb or a city.

Out of these feelings, in the course of the last few years, the plan for the London Churches project has emerged. The idea is to visit every church in the City of London – and probably a few outside – and use the visits as the basis of an online work. This isn’t a blog, and it certainly isn’t a historical or architectural guide. It’s a work of hyperfiction, but derived from real places, real experiences, real observations and real conversations. In many ways it isn’t about the churches themselves, but the experience of visiting them.

Part 1 is based on a visit made on Monday 6th April 2009, which took in the following:

St Martin-in-the-Fields
St Paul’s, Covent Garden
St Clement Danes
Temple Church
St Dunstan-in-the-West
St Bride’s, Fleet Street
St Martin, Ludgate

To view the London Churches project, go to http://edwardpicot.com/londonchurches/