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We offer daily services and a creative programme of talks, events and concerts. We seek to be a welcoming space for people to reflect, create and debate.
Come and celebrate the hope and light that Christmas brings each winter
St James’s hosts inclusive services and a cultural programme. We seek to be a welcoming space for people to reflect, create and debate.
St James’s is a place to explore, reflect, pray, and support all who are in need. We are a Church of England parish in the Anglican Communion. This is a place for everyone who’s wondering about life’s big questions and striving for a better world.
We host a year-round creative programme encompassing music, visual art and spoken word, drawing on St James’s rich cultural history including artists, writers and musicians Mary Beale, Mary Delany, William Blake, Ottobah Cugoano and Leopold Stokowski.
We try to put our faith into action by educating ourselves and speaking out on issues of injustice, especially concerning refugees, asylum, earth and racial justice, and LGBTQ+ issues.
We aspire to be a home where everyone can belong. We’re known locally and globally for our unique history and beauty, as well as faith in action, creativity and the arts, and a commitment to social and environmental justice.
We strive to be a Eucharist-centred, diverse and inclusive Christian community promoting life in abundance, wellbeing and dignity for all.
St James’s Piccadilly has been at the heart of its community since 1684. We invite you to play your part in securing this historic place for generations to come.
It costs us £3,500 per day to enable us to keep our doors open to all who need us
Your donation will help us restore our garden in Piccadilly as part of The Wren Project, making it possible for us to welcome over 300,000 people from all faiths and walks of life seeking tranquillity and inspiration each year.
St James's Church 197 Piccadilly London W1J 9LL
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Julia Chalkley reports on a wet and wonderful weekend in Suffolk.
A group of us connected to St James’s spent a wonderfully wet and muddy December weekend planting the beginnings of a new hedgerow at Slough Hall Farm, Suffolk as part of the Lifelines project begun this time last year in Dorset. Our fellow planters and companions were friends of the Camden Baha’i Community and two staff members from St Ethelburga’s Centre for Reconciliation and Peace. We stayed in The Old Brooder, a warm and comfortable bunkhouse at nearby Milden Hall so called because it had recently been (beautifully) converted from a building used for breeding chickens! Its owner, Juliet, also explained to us that hedgerows in Suffolk are a tradition of the ‘ancient country’ which defines the areas of Britain that did not become shires including Essex, Norfolk and Suffolk but that many have been lost to allow for large scale, intensive farming, more information here. These days many landowners take a wider perspective, and planting of new hedges, or rewilding of old ones, is underway again and it felt creative to be participating in this.
There is nothing like a night-walk for bonding with your fellow planters and on our first evening we set out with no torches and moonlight so scarce that the faint outline of the person ahead was our only guide. Plunging into deep ruts full of water was testing, a stream gurgling alongside intermittently and occasional rustles in the undergrowth unnerving, but emerging onto a hillside beneath shining, silent stars was ultimately uplifting.
During the following two days many more joyful moments were shared beginning with a morning of solid rain in which many holes were dug and the first of 360 slender saplings planted. Tarot, one of our project leaders from St Ethelburga’s had driven them a long way to be with us and handed them over tenderly, remarking on their almost human-like vulnerability, their fine roots dangling in her hands: rowan, dog-rose, spindle, field-maple, hazel, elder, and hawthorn.
Our team could not have been more diverse: we hailed from many countries, all calling Britain our home yet no one complained about the weather. The youngest member was eight and worked as hard as any of us; his thirteen-year-old brother commented on his evaluation form ‘I met lovely new people, really connected with people of different backgrounds and ethnicities and loved working my butt off for nature.’
Once in the earth (clay!) the saplings were gently heeled in, each then surrounded by a protective sleeve which will remain in place for five years. Finally, they were mulched with a great quantity of woodchips produced on the farm from its own woodland. This involved the use of an electric mini-truck for many journeys back and forth, much to the joy of the children bouncing on the back.
Shelter from the rain was offered at lunch times by Zain, our generous host farmer, who invited us muddy boots and all into his house for much needed warmth and nourishment. In the evenings in our bunk house, we shared not just food (and wine from the farm’s own grapes) but stories, prayers and song forming that unique bond that comes from a shared love of the creation.
On our last morning a glorious pink and gold sunrise drew us outside to bend and stretch any stiffness from our limbs and in Hildegard of Bingen’s inimitable words to ‘breathe together the one breath of the universe.’
The weekend in numbers:
Age range of participants: 8 to 70s
Continents of origin: 5
Faith traditions represented: 5
‘Whips’ planted: 360
Hours of rain while planting: 6
Metres of hedgerow established: 150