I wonder how much that: “very small” minority of immigrants: “of course” (like the two words famously spoken by our Prince Royal before his first marriage):  “from Eastern European countries” are costing the government in Benefits, National Health and “Entitlement” fraud?   I am thinking of integrated Albanian gangsters “from Kosovo” and “Bosnia”,  of the integrated beggar mothers and curb car sales men husbands from “Romania”, of the integrated Brazilians who say are from “Portugal”, of the integrated yet humble clad ethnic families in their Japanese or German people-carriers, the unfailing “asylum seekers” who know how to get round the immigration system and never suffer the human indignities of “forced incarceration“ then “forced deportation” such as befall the failed “asylum seekers” – of the local family run high-street racketeers, the scammers, the fraudsters of: weddings, bank accounts, mortgage applications, bankruptcies, multiple benefits applications, … things that the local police, financial institutions, councillors and doctors here in Brent have turned a blind eye to most of the time, for many years.

How much money do each of the ethnic restaurants, cafes and bars (the ones that are not makeshift prayer spaces behind old shop shutters) along Harlesden Jubilee Clock actually contribute to the Chancellor’s coffers?    How much is paid in taxes from the money lost to local charities that no longer can raise an income because its charitable second hand clothes donations get carted away in cover of darkness, because of the political correctness of the migrant second-hand clothes collection scammers stocking up their secondary businesses abroad?  How much is paid in taxes from the money lost to local councils who have to replace all the iron, lead, copper, brass, bronze… which gets stolen and smelted due to the political correctness of the metal thieves?  (Metal thieves have existed for years, would they honestly desecrate war memorial bronzes, from their own country’s fallen?)   How many fake pound coins and five pound notes are given back in change by local businesses?   Nobody is blind here in Harlesden… but only the island that the Jubilee Clock and the shop front that is Peacock’s department store is what makes it on the ten o’clock news periodically and frequently.   The BBC in White City, which is twenty minutes walking just around the corner from us, they know our neighbourhood well.   It is only the camera close up and not the camera long shot which applies to the Harlesden documentary.   No, points of reference aren’t necessary when documenting a day in the Borough of Brent.   The panoramic spectre isn’t quite BBC enough to merit long camera angles. 

Brent neighbourhood policing turns a blind eye to illegal immigration and racketeering and concentrates its resources on safer neighbourhoods (dealing incorrectly with the disgruntled west-Indian youth mostly, out walking the streets of Harlesden, mostly showing off, and to street cleansing - whereas the expensive crimes of fake ‘European’ migrant fraudsters are being ignored: racketeering of every sort … the type of crime that cannot be seen from inside a moving panda car or an overhead police helicopter (another noticeable urban feature when living in Brent – all sorts of money crimes going on in all sorts of ways.) 

My purpose-built artisan’s flat, it is one of four, inside a Victorian terraced artisans’ house originally built on lands belonging to the Church of England, diocese of St Paul’s and Westminster Abbeys, to replace the slums of local workers who were building the railway and the canal, yet flat 3 in my building, has cost the taxpayer in excess of £200,000 through financial frauds.  I know this from letters left to pile up uncollected. 

One greedy example:  A Brazilian mother claiming she was Spanish, (she ignores the summons to vote in Spanish elections, because she isn’t Spanish, and she isn’t a resident in Spain, her mother and boyfriend are from Brazil,  she lives with them in Brazil for nine months a year, when spoken to in Spanish, they can only reply in their Brazilian Portuguese accented tongue – only she has a European identification, she has a European fake identity, the mother and the boyfriend arrive and depart on tourist visas, and stay in London for short spells of time, usually to help her to pack and unpack before or after her trips to their homeland in Brazil, benefits and rents being paid straight into their bank accounts, she doesn’t even bother to redirect or collect her statements, her credit card is paid by direct debit from the ignored  bank account), she is sub-letting her housing association accommodation, provided to her to help her cope with her single-parent housing priority needs, by contracting flat 3 on her behalf from an absent landlord who was a  Nigerian woman from Lagos … both the landlord and her tenant, a housing association tenant, fraudulently earning an income from the same flat, an absent tenant and an absent landlord, both in receipt of lone single mother benefits, who only lived in the flat during at the most, for three months in the year, all the time collecting two sets of rents from flat 3, while simultaneously subletting to other Brazilians while the absent landlord from Nigeria manages to get her cut on the flat, also from benefits (through the landlor's contract with her tenant's housing association) on a flat which on paper has been valued as much as a property in Hampstead worth, a super-inflated amount of money… repayable from a life insurance taken out, and both defaulted on… the absent tenant’s subletting tenants eventually were evicted by bailiffs because neither tenant or the housing association contracting tenant's, being the six fourth-party-sub-tenants moved into flat 3, during each long visit by the tenant to her homeland in Brazil, could be bothered to collect or open their post, left piled up in the hallway …  For each of three years running, the pile of uncollected post reached to about 6” to 7” high each year.   The web was probably more intricate than even I have managed to fathom out about this scam from abandoned letters.

Every March, I opened all the letters, sorted them by company, totalled up the amount of money owing to each company, tried to go to the police, who didn’t want to know… returned-to-sender at my own expense to: banks, insurance companies, building societies, mobile phone companies, debt collection companies chasing up utilities bills, … to the tune of over £285,000+ in fraud that fake immigrant tenants had gotten away with.  The banks obviously didn’t care either, they thought they were making money … and they did … off the taxpayer… once the house got repossessed and sold on auction as a repossessed flat.   Who suffered the losses on a fraudulently inflated mortgage and an insurance policy defaulted on?   The taxpayers bailing out the banks by effectively giving them taxpayer's money to write off their toxic mortgage policies.

Why is housing so expensive in London?   Because there are a lot of scammers who are making a living out of speculating in fake hyper inflated house priced mortgage-making – the hyperinflation being a deliberate strategy boosting the profit of banking products and services.  That was all Margaret Thatcher’s doing – Maggie the grocer’s daughter.  She was the liberator of the financial and of council housing systems we had before.   That was also Tony Blair’s doing – with his eyes looking toward the opposite direction knowing perfectly well that he was intentionally leaving all the land, sea and air borders to Britain unchecked, underfunded, and under-secured with negligible manpower – not knowing who was coming in or who was going out of the country over two decades. 

The Liberal middle-classes living in the suburbs just haven’t got a clue of the amount of fraud that government officials simply turn a blind eye to!   This is blatant fraud and it is committed blatantly.   People in Brent are laughing in the face of our political correctness, such as is the vociferous and loud minority who is stealing as much money as they can get away with.  Whilst the BBC makes television programmes about Harlesden, on the media backing of yet another middle-class man commuting in from suburbia who is in Harlesden for half a day's filming, both simply to make some money from making the documentary about Harlesden!   The same style of documentary that makes money for so many other middle-class people from suburbia who get invited to attend the News Corp family parties – yet every documentary is only about presentation, gossip, scandal, statistics, with other middle-class suburbia pseudo experts interpreting stuff, voicing their pseudo expert opinions, and yet not expressing anything of any new currency… the corruption begins from the uncollected letters piling in our hallway and are regurgitated in the television documentary being transmitted to my living room TV… and … and…. and… at £3.68 per hour …. I’m the one labelled ‘a scrounger’! 

What a lopsided bunch of politicians we are governed by!   This is why I dislike middle-class hypocrites, the bunch of cowardly idiots who are the English men in their suburban English man’s castles, and their wives… and because they are idiots, they put idiot politicians into power and vote them into government yet again.   They are the kinds of people who commute for one-and-a-half hours into work to the City of London and who resent everybody else who doesn’t … and who think very highly of their hardworking Eastern European cheap home, childcare and eldercare subsidised home-help (a cop out argument in my personal opinion.  If putting aside the immigrants in that equation for a moment, if those jobs were advertised, do they really and honestly believe that not one British person would be ringing their doorbells in a quest to fill those jobs?  I honestly think that British people do come forward and fill those jobs if they are made available to them, but the reason this is a cop out argument, is that this very argument has been allowed to exist because the immigrants can do the job cheaper, at a subsidised rate of pay that does not affect the pockets of the middle-class… subsidised at the expense of the insecure and precarious of the under-employed and under-paid British working class worker – who cannot afford to hire an Eastern European child-minder, granny-minder, or cleaner).   This is why the label ‘scrounger’ is so unfair, so unhelpful, and so hurtful – just as hurtful to me as the contempt which I use when referring to you as the ‘hypocrite and liberal suburban middle-classes’ – and yet, the labels in this discussion are the smoke screen in which we live under, the lack of truth and transparency that conveniently has been allowed to be created by the politicians and their financial backers, who have been spinning us all yards for years.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2056967/Polish-gang-trafficked-200-people-Britain-illegally-claim-2m-benefits.html - (I will express some personal opinions about this article in a different blog, however, it is representative of the scamming I'm talking about in this blog, for which our governing politicians first and foremost play a significant semi-direct role in its cause and effect)

In twenty years, they have taken away the future prosperity of their own middle-class children!   The security of a home, an education, a job and even the library!   Little did I guess when I was young, that the mass wholesale of the old swimming baths, churches, church halls, corner shops and pubs and entire local high streets would eventually lead to this kind of an oppressive and oppressing way of life?.  So that at  “The Remains of the Day” that are here today, we would have the same corruption of company and political leaders, the same elitist and blinkered economic systems designed by them that do well deserve and merit the label of ‘scroungers’ more than my husband and I.    The Greek people are good an example to us all, just as much as the people who represent #OccupyLSX and #OWS.   Life on The Work Programme would be hell if it wasn’t for them – I do so strongly mean and I hope that the Church of England keeps to supporting them too.

This blog page about Harlesden really portrays beautifully a contrasting point of view from mine, it is about the ambience of Harlesden in the middle of a sunny day, with everyone busy getting somewhere or getting their shopping.  Pity I wasn't around Jubilee Clock on that particular day, I would have stopped to talk, she would have been an unusual experience, and I love her descriptions of that day:

http://roserouse.wordpress.com/2011/07/15/what-happened-when-i-sat-underneath-a-sign-saying-talk-to-me/
What happened when I sat underneath a sign saying 'Talk to Me' by Rose Rouse

This blog page obviously is correct also... and I do believe that it is the innocent that fall foul of the procedures and policies who are unfairly having to bear the brunt on behalf of the guilty.  It is these kinds of situations that the 'common denominator' creates - my finger is pointed yet again to the politicians representatives of our government and their spin on things, hence deflecting from themselves the responsibility of unchecked open border policies.   It is they who end up getting away with their power games if we start to deny that scammer and fraudsters exist.

http://dawnwillis.wordpress.com/2011/11/04/be-still-my-beating-heart-by-dawni-panorama-mhuk-anxiety-hardesthit/
‘Be Still My Beating Heart’! by Dawni

 This is the only reference that I can find to an Alice Vasey in London, Vasey being that of my maternal ancestry.  Temple Church is a church from the middle ages within the Inner and Middle Temple, it is it’s parish church, the Lawyers’ parish church … now this is a bit of a surprising mystery, accessed for the first time today 31 October 2011, in my research quest into my Vasey ancestry which I started by checking what I could find in around the Parish Churches of the city of London, and any connection to the name Vasey to be found, and the earliest dates which mentioned the name Vasey.   Alice Vasey I can find as born in Wiltshire, Yorkshire…. Is she this Alice?  It would make her around 32 yrs old at the time of the wedding, quite old for embarking on the 'rearing' of new baby lawyers … so why would she end up off the Strand?  This is all a bit of a mystery now.

 Another mysterious wedding… what a strange find it is too:

 27 Mar 1687 Benjamin Whitfeild marries (2^nd time in 10 years?) according to the Parish Register of St Mary Magdalen, Fish Street, a parishioner of the Parish of St Margaret, Westminster from the record.  His new wife too, is a parish outsider; she’s from St Giles in the fields.   Alice Vasey, could very well have been a parishioner of Charing Cross, Clarkenwell, or Castle Banyard since I have found 17^th Century Vaseys receiving their services at each of these parishes, obviously from what exists of their parish registers today.

 St Mary Magdalene Old Fish Street is no more, but if it were, this is a bit of it today:

The era of heresy required its storage facilities: 

Centralised record-keeping only became formalised in London much later, around 1838 – when the first archives were placed in the care of a building which once was opposite St Martin in the fields’ church, on the site of the present day Portrait Gallery… that old archive, eventually got transferred to Richmond but for many years, it sat neglected at St Martins, so documents were lost from history as a consequence of once being stored there.  Apparently a lot of the WWI conscription records were burned during a wartime fire which occurred there, that’s when it was decided to take the National Archives to a place outside the centre of London, for safety of all sorts, including rats. 

I’ve read that the old archives had in their turn a historic past, had been a part of the catacombs where they housed the dead from St Martins in the Fields in earlier times, cleared out, and restored to make way for a charitable school and a proper National Portrait collection [it was Lord Montefiore’s own collection of portraits which started off the National Portrait collection, he bequeathed it to the Nation in his will] … quite a gory place to have housed the national archives in the first place, the idea of a National Portrait collection, for the sake of competition with the French, was a progressive idea of the then nouveau-riche (who perhaps became the nouveau-riche from the middle class having also exploited the free labour of slavery (The Work Programme didn’t exist then, as it does now, but old bad habits die hard among the nouveau-riche I guess – we are now helped into a soft kind of slavery via government contract at a cost per head of up to £1,900 a head – bad behaviour is punishable not with corporal punishment, but with punitive withdrawal of JSA.  History compared): “What goes round, comes round”. 

As an observer, I noticed that at the time the latest digging was happening, what a major project it was, digging up the site around St Martin in the fields, if still full of the remnants of old forgotten cemeteries, catacombs, warehouses for the dead…. It must have been a really unpleasant job to clear all that up during the last restoration to St Martins.  Up until now, I didn’t think anything of it, but now that I have learned that St Martin’s is the old Vasey family parish church, I feel more uncomfortable about the thought that many family members were buried there once, and now that it is personal, I think that it is gory and disrespecting of the dead to have dug them all up with cranes … that’s capitalism and empire I suppose, real-estate is more valuable than people’s graves [remember the Porter scandals about selling two Westminster cemeteries for 1p each?  Perhaps as a site for developers?  Well, part of that cemetery today has luxury services flats on it!]. 

London Churches are not exactly hallowed ground nowadays (probably not so for 400 or 500 years, I can easily get the feeling that London churches seem to be the places where society houses its collective civic pride and puts it in display, as an alternative to religious iconographic gold-plated pride so evident in the Catholic churches – I can now understand why the more puritan Christians wanted to get rid of everything inside their churches related to pride … the great purge of fire clearing out the popery, witchcraft, radicalism and general old rubble in the land to be replaced by buildings that commercially were more favourable to the bourgeois society of a global empire.   [London churches today are stale again; perhaps we are historically due for another great purge of fire, this time to clear out the general old rubble of 200 year old bourgeois society and empire, including the new-build penthouse conversions which equally desecrate them – I know – I hate to see churches converted into trendy domestic or commercial living spaces, but that’s me.] 

Back to the mysterious two weddings: 

What I don’t understand is this Temple Church connection – the Whitfeild or the Vasey people weren’t in that social class as far as I can see, they were independent artisans, self-employed inside family workshops or shop premises, that is when London first became the Europe’s first ‘shopping experience’.  Perhaps Whitfeild was a lawyer’s apprentice?  My Vasey ancestors were literate, perhaps even educated.  Whitfeild of St Margaret, Westminster and his bride of St Giles in the fields… is a bit of a curious couple to end up getting married - St Margaret Westminster is a posh church, St Giles being the equivalent of a Salvation Army soup distribution centre for the destitute and, St Mary Magdalen was Christopher Wren’s reconstructed version of its namesake church destroyed in the Great Fire of London 1666, (two centuries later, broken again in an 1886 fire which spread from an adjacent warehouse, and left for gutted until it was finally put out of its misery seven years after the fire damage, in 1893.  St Martin Ludgate taking over its parish responsibilities. 

Saffron Hill: 

John and Jane Vasey in May 1750 are to be found living in Saffron Hill… which runs along from Hatton Garden down to almost Old Fish Street… further back, John and Mary Vasey were parishioners of St Gregory by St Paul in Aug 1686, so there is a family connection to that part of the City of London and the parish churches there.   Perhaps it was something to do with The Reformation (1599 to 1658) which caused the Vasey family to split between Southwark and Clerkenwell, or perhaps it was the Fire of London (1666) – Saffron Hill and Old Fish Street are both within the neighbourhood of my ancestors, because Saffron Hill into Shoe Lane goes from Clerkenwell down to the City, in parallel to the old path of the River Fleet which had at one side Saffron Hill, and at the other side Turnmill Street into Farringdon, both ending up in Temple-Ludgate Hill, north of the River Thames embankments at Blackfriars, east of St Paul’s… I know that Hannah Vasey, daughter of John and Mary was baptised in Aug 1686 at St Gregory by St Paul, and this church was in the parish of Castle Banyard, the same parish that Old Fish Street was also a part of.  

From Blackfriars to Castle Banyard, which is along the banks of the river Thames, is a relatively short walk in the direction of St Paul’s starting out from Blackfriars.  In that stretch towards the City of London between the Strand and the Victoria Embankment, at either end you can walk past the Temple, Shoe Lane, Farringdon, Ludgate Hill, past the Old Bailey, then turn right before reaching St Pauls to walk down to Blackfriars and Banyard Castle along the line of the River Thames… all this is the area of the City which was burned down in 1666 and which now has the Wren Churches dotted around all over… all a short walking distance from each other.   It is not surprising therefore that my Vasey ancestors ended up living in Charing Cross, because it still forms part of the same route, it being at the beginning of the Strand, and Blackfriars being at the other end or what I would say the other end of the Strand, at Farringdon-Ludgate, and the approach to St Paul’s Cathedral from Westminster, the non-embankment route (of antiquity). 

This is what Wikipedia writes about St Mary Magdalen, Old Fish Street (long segments of): 

St. Mary Magdalen Old Fish Street was the only one of the 8 churches in the post-Fire City of London, called “St. Mary” dedicated to the penitent Mary Magdalene, rather than the Virgin Mary. Old Fish Street formerly ran from the Thames towards St. Paul’s Cathedral and was the location of a fish market since medieval times. The street was incorporated into Knightrider Street in 1872. 

The earliest surviving reference to the church is in a document of 1181, as “St Mary Magdalen”. Other medieval records refer to the church as “St. Marie Magdal in Piscaria apud sanctum Paulum”, "St. Marie Magdal parish at the Fishmarket”, "St. Marie Magdalen Eldefisshestrete" and “St. Mary Magdalen at Lamberdyshel”. 

Among the memorials in the pre-Fire church was a brass plaque of 1586, commemorating the merchant and benefactor, Thomas Berrie. The plaque survived the Great Fire and may now be seen in St Martin, Ludgate. In part it reads: 

How smale soever the gift shall be/

Thanke God for him who gave it thee/

xii penie loves to xii poore foulkes/ 

Geve everie saboth day for aye 

St Martin, Ludgate also has the bread shelves from St. Mary Magdalen Old Fish Street. 

On Easter Day, 1653, John Evelyn recorded in his Diary that he and his family received Holy Communion at St. Mary Magdalen’s. This was during the Protectorate when Anglican services were banned. 

The church was destroyed in the Great Fire in 1666 and the parish combined with that of St. Gregory-by-St. Paul’s, which was not rebuilt. Building of the new church began in 1683, with new foundations for the north wall and tower, but incorporating some of the old walls elsewhere. The work was completed in 1687 at a total cost of £4315. 

Between 1824 and 1842, the rector of St. Mary Magdalen’s was the Reverend Richard Harris Barham, author of The Ingoldsby Legends. He was buried in the church in 1845. 

On the morning of Thursday, 2 December 1886, a fire broke out in a warehouse in what by this time was called Knightrider Street and spread to the church’s roof, causing substantial damage. Although the church was insured and repairable, the event took place during a period in which several undamaged churches in the City of London were being demolished under the Union of Benefices Act 1860. The opportunity was taken to pull down St. Mary Magdalen’s and combine the parish with that of St Martin, Ludgate, which received some of the furnishings from the demolished church. 

The site previously occupied by St. Mary Magdalen’s was built over after the Second World War, and is now covered by Old Change Square. 

The parish still retains a clerkship which is now in the gift of St. Andrew-by-the-Wardrobe and is currently held by Oliver Hylton, a past chairman of the Castle Baynard Ward Club. 

Architecture: 

The plan for St. Mary Magdalen’s was roughly rectangular, with the north wall tapering slightly towards the east. The two street frontages – to the east on Old Fish Street and to the south on Old Change – were faced with Portland stone. Underneath, the material was stone rubble. There were four large roundheaded windows on the south, and three similar windows on the east, each window flanked by pilasters capped by volutes. Entry to the church was through a door under the western window on the south front. The roof was balustraded. 

The tower was erected next to the north western wall of the church and stood 86 ft. high. This had a stone spire, consisting of an octagonal pyramid of five steps on which sat an open octagonal lantern from which emerged a concave steeple. The finial was in the form an urn, in allusion to St. Mary Magdalen’s pot of balm. The inspiration for the spire’s design was the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus. 

Organ: 

Organ by Samuel Green was installed in 1786. It was rebuilt in 1857 by Gray and Davison. 

By accident or by fortune: 

I first of all confused St Mary Magdalen, Old Fish Street with St Mary Magdalen, Southwark… but it was a fantastic error, when I read the historical information which the website of Bermondsey’s St Magdalen’s there contained, again, which I’m quoting long segments of below… it is a fascinating insight into community politics of its time … of how church and state and politics are intermingled together, in reading the extracts I could visualise our political lives today, and in this respect, I found the history to be a humorous distraction to today’s news stories. 

St Mary Magdalen Church, Southwark, Bermondsey: 

Bermondsey has had a place of worship for over 1000 years.  A monastery was in existence in the 8th C and in 1082 Alwyn Child funded the construction of a new building which appears to have been completed by 1089 when there is a first mention of a Prior, Petreius.  This Priory was attached to the French Abbey of Cluny.  A church is mentioned in the Domesday Book as "a new and handsome church"; this "Conventual Church" was dedicated to St Saviour and was situated to the south of the present church on the edge of the present churchyard. 

 In 1399 the Priory became an Abbey, at the request of King Richard II to the Pope.  In 1399 at the request of Richard II, Pope Boniface IX elevated the Prior to status of Abbot, and thus the Priory became an Abbey.  The King also granted the Abbot his own seal of a lion with a crozier and mitre - the "Bermondsey Lion".  This symbol can still be seen in several places in the church today, as seen here on the side of a desk (although the crozier has unfortunately lost its top with the mitre!).  This is one of a pair of desks which date from the early 20th C.   This lion is on the back of the seat in the churchwarden's pew - with complete crozier and mitre.  There is another larger one set in mosaic on the chancel floor, but this is covered by carpet (which at least protects it, although it also means that it has not been seen for several years). 

The Abbey was dissolved in 1537 by Henry VIII, and the estate was acquired by Sir Thomas Pope (who founded Trinity College Oxford) who built a mansion for himself, Bermondsey House.  The Abbey is still commemorated by many local street names. 

The first known record of the church of St Mary Magdalen is in about 1290, when the church appears to have been serving the workers in the Priory.  Little more is known of the following 400 years, although the engravings on the church silver of the late 16th/early 17th C indicate a wealthy congregation.  In 1680 the old church was pulled down (before it fell down?) - the only surviving remnant of the previous building is the late mediæval tower with a gothic window and four arches.  The new building was completed by 1690.  The North gallery was subsequently erected (in about 1705), and in 1794 the South gallery was added.  The last major work was the extension of the chancel in 1882/3.  

 The Churchwardens' Pew is of uncertain date.  It was probably formerly used to conduct parish business in the times when the churchwarden was a person of some importance in the community, in settling minor disputes.   It is thought that the pew was originally in a corner as the carving on the third side is of a distinctly inferior quality.  We would love to have more information on this, if there are any experts out there! 

Could there be a connection between Temple Church and St Magdalen Church?  Was Benjamin Whitfeild a Churchwarden ever?   Did he settle minor disputes within the community as part of an apprentices’ duties who may have been aspiring to be a kind of lawyer?  The new buildings at St Magdalen were completed in 1690, yet his own marriage record is 1687 – when the scaffoldings were still up?  Obviously they didn’t stop services from still taking place. 

[Note:  It is amazing that now that everybody is putting their own local knowledge & histories online, in micro detail, such as here, that one can get a kind of gist of the society’s customs of the past… the importance of the churchwarden’s role in some churches at that time, I could have never guessed such a fact, yet in the context of something else, it may even reveal a pertinent clue… fascinating really.] 

 Here is the Plaque of previous Rectors of the church of St Magdalen, Southwark, Bermondsey… on their website they have typed all the names out – so the contemporary rectors during the time of Benjamin Whitfeild’s wedding in 1687, and the construction works that were completed in 1690, the names were – together with some interesting historical facts about the family names of these rectors.

1654 Richard Parr 
1682 Alexander Forbes
1696 Stephen Heath

 And the historical information supplied: 

 http://www.archive.org/stream/cu31924028066847/cu31924028066847_djvu.txt, - "William Browning, a fellmonger, purchases a limited advowson of the Rectory, and presents William Taswell, D.D., who occupies, perhaps as (what is vulgarly called) a warming-pan, from 1723 to 1726-7, and then resigns. The son of the patron-purchaser, the Reverend W. Browning, M.A., is now presented, and continues to be the minister until his death, 1740. Mr. Browning appears to think that he has not as yet had money's worth, and so he presents John Paget, M.A.; a lawsuit ensues, and as Mr. Browning has exceeded his time, his nominee, or clerk, as he is called, is in due course ejected.” 

http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Whitaker,_Jeremiah_(DNB00) – says that Jeremiah Whitaker succeeded Thomas Paske in 1644; he served until his death on  1 June 1654, and was buried in the chancel. 

 http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Whitaker,_William_(1629-1672)_(DNB00) - says that William Whitaker (son of Jeremiah Whitaker) succeeded his father as rector in 1654, which is at odds with Richard Parr (above).  Possibly this confusion came about because 1654 was the year that Richard Parr became vicar of nearby Camberwell. 

http://www.archive.org/stream/cu31924028066847/cu31924028066847_djvu.txt - "The circumstances of the succeeding incumbency are not clear. We are told, on the one hand, that William Whitaker, the son of Jeremiah, was appointed to succeed his father in 1654 ; on the other, that the Rev. Dr. Parr, chaplain to Archbishop Usher, received the vacant benefice.  Mr. Phillips, in his list of the Rectors of Bermondsey, does not include William Whitaker, but represents Dr. Parr as filling the office from 1654 till his resignation in 1682. He does, however, say elsewhere that William Whitaker was ejected at the Restoration. 

Dr. Rendle's account of this divine is as follows: " William, called in 1654 to succeed his father as Rector of Bermondsey, was a minister indeed ; skilled in languages - Greek, Latin, and Oriental; fit to be a tutor at his college, i.e., Emmanuel, at Cambridge; a peacemaker, whose pride it was to settle disputes, and leave no rancour behind; just the man, making a conscience of his work, to be ejected. So in 1662 he was no longer Rector of Bermondsey." 

http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=43026 - gives some interesting and conflicting details of Thomas Paske and his successors: "In 1624 the patronage was exercised by Samuel Paske, citizen and merchant tailor of London, probably for one turn. He appointed Thomas Paske, D.D., master of Clare College, Cambridge.  In 1642 the churchwardens and parishioners petitioned the House of Lords because this Thomas, their rector, had not preached even once a year and had otherwise done nothing to provide preaching or reading in the church or to supply a dwelling for a curate. The expense of such arrangements had fallen on the petitioners. They had lately bought the next presentation to the living and they prayed for a confirmation of their elect.  In the following year a draft order of the House directed the sequestration of Dr. Paske, a non-resident minister and a teacher of heretical doctrines, in order that the parishioners might maintain their own minister. Paske, whose Arminian opinions [Christian Orthodox I imagine] were as obnoxious as his negligence, was ejected accordingly in this year, and the parishioners appointed in his stead Jeremiah Whitaker, an eminent Orientalist, member of the Westminster Assembly, who held the benefice until his death in 1654 and was buried in the chancel of the church. He was succeeded by another distinguished theologian, Dr. Richard Parr, who resigned the living in 1682."  

"The history and antiquities of the parish of Bermondsey" - By G. W. Phillips, 1841, It would seem that William Whitaker succeeded his father as rector in 1654 and remained in post until 1662, being then succeeded by Richard Parr. 

My goodness, what a trip! 

Perhaps I will never solve the mystery of the two Benjamin Whitfeilds and the two Benjamin Whitfeild brides… but that is the fun that is contained in such mysteries.

My 5000^th Tweet!  Still keeping my Following and my Followers to lower numbers so I can actually get to know people and develop two-way conversations on the topics that are of mutual interest… it’s funny how a year ago I could just about cope with 25 or so followers, and these days, I’m getting accustomed to more than double that figure!  Am I becoming a digital native by adoption?

I’ve now started a creative writing course at my local library, run by the local adult education council community service – the aim is to improve on my long ramblings… editing my blogs better, ideas about improving my inner vs public voice style… I’ll see where it this leads me…

What will I do to identify and apply for jobs? Step One: "Ask family, friends and people I have worked with before"

Family:

A retired mother-in-law, an unemployed husband, and a sister-in-law who is a next generation photographer, a semi-estranged single parent step sister, living miles away, and my step-sister's five year old daughter, our niece. These are my 'dragons', my private investors. Before I lost my absent ones, for longer than I care to remember, we were already a broken unit, but even then, we invested our kindness and did the rest on the cheap. If I'd had a television 'dragon' in the family, I wouldn't have had to bore my loved ones with my bad luck stories.

Friends:

I'm down to my last one, Cordelia: We helped each other through our colleges' restructures, together we followed cut-backs in government funding, 2004, 2006, 2008, together we embraced our redundancies from our full-time jobs, (college after college), we consoled ourselves with red wine when 'further cut-backs' were unstoppable: goodbye to our courses, goodbye to our contact hours, goodbye to our term-time teaching hours, goodbye to our working weeks, then goodbye to lost large chunks of our daily earnings, hampering our ability to survive economically.

All my former work acquaintances were, and are, in the same boat as me, we've all been made 'redundant' because we are middle-aged and higher up on the spinal point of our pay ladder - our jobs shredded into fractional hours or casual hours. Entire teaching teams cleared out by management efficiency cutbacks. Friends and colleagues drinking our last coffees together, reflecting upon the post-it notes we imagined were stuck to our foreheads, in our minds they read: 'efficiency cutback', 'made redundant' and 'aged 50+'.

How demoralising is that? From my experience, I can say that the loss of my teaching career probably equates to experiencing the trauma of a divorce. It has been a complete emotional and financial disaster for me and my loved ones. Whatever optimism and hope was left in me, has melted away from my immediate horizon. I've practically forgotten the real and ecstatic joy of doing my lovely everyday job, the contentment of helping to shape the confidence and the smiles back into people's faces.

Today, nobody cares whether I care or not, I'm just a burden now, to those whose 'team' I used to be a part of. No amount of domestic thrift can take that tag out of my curriculum vitae this time and now!

I wouldn't be on JSA if I had busy social networks and influential family connections that were happy to open up locked doors for me, and pull out an interview chair for me, or to extend a personal favour or two on my behalf. One day from now, 'luck will be a lady', and she will sweep aside the long odds keeping my parallel universe in check. In their place, I have to make do with human recruitment processing systems. What an ingenious way to generate a money-making enterprise.

People I have worked with before:

Sorry, after the pain of numerous risk of redundancy letters, compulsory job re-applications and environments of broken trust… no I don't feel any warmth or trust for the people I used to work with during the past eighteen years. I was too busy inside my classrooms or absorbed in preparation, I didn't do much networking. All the nice people have now gone, all the new faces in my old room are now those of strangers. These are a sad but honest facts about management restructuring exercises at those places I used to go in to work. I now resent middle-class bureaucratic managerialism with all my soul. I just want all visions of them out of my mind for ever. They were, (and undoubtedly still are) out to feather their own nests, the lot of them! It takes a lot of redundancies to maintain an education executive's salary at the level that they are accustomed to since the 90s.

I am truly now one dot of wallpaper pattern on your dance hall wall. I am truly now one of tens of thousands of molded and weathered pieces composing the permanent "scrap heap" structure, decorating the pavement outside your workplace. I am powerless to either shield or influence your economic climate (or mine). I am a shadow in the economy, a burden to strangers. I regretfully and apologetically impinge on the time of your day.

What will I do to identify and apply for jobs? Step Two: "Look in these newspapers, trade papers and websites daily"

I get discounted bus fares, (I avoid trips by bus, since money would have to be deducted from something else, even on a discounted fare, I have to budget to pay for my bus journey in advance). I get council tax allowance, if I didn't get this allowance, I would no longer be able to afford to pay the electricity and gas bills. For two years, got £18 per week towards mortgage interest, this has now expired. We pay our own monthly mortgage, so to achieve that, we ration our shopping down to wartime rations. I further ration myself to nil by mouth every other day … why? So we don't get into any debt, so that the bank can always pay our domestic direct debits… our direct debit commitments to the bank account take priority first. We have two luxuries, broadband and telephone, and our television licence.

This year, as a result of our personal austerity within our national austerity, I sometimes fall into waves of depression and panic. The news is me, and I am the news, perhaps with less of the bombs, bullets, tears, and blood… but the insecurity is equal. What will happen if ….? What will happen if…? Day and night… sleep or awake… What will happen if…?

Basically, I can't afford newspapers or trade papers, for me, it has to be websites or recycled free newspapers. I could be sanctioned for an unspecified number of weeks for not looking in newspapers or trade papers daily. What if we get sanctioned? What will we do then?

What will I do to identify and apply for jobs? Step Three: "Write to at least three employers a week"

It isn't hard to write to three employers a week. The money that we spend on stamps, envelopes, paper, and ink for the printer is affordable when it is three employers a week. The last time I competed for a job was twenty years ago. My imagination has now gone blank. My magical powers of persuasion have no effect now. It was never in my nature to brag and blag, this definitely shows in my letters.

I am overwhelmed by the embarrassment and sometimes I feel ashamed, of having to repeat myself over, and over again. I wish it were thirty years ago, when every job that I applied for got me a quick and positive answer. I've now lost the words for not starting to sound desperate. I feel like an old pair of darned socks, trying to keep the darned bits hidden, so that people don't start to feel contempt or pity. The terms 'the ragged cinderella' come to mind.

What will I do to identify and apply for jobs? Step Four: "Phone at least two employers a week"

I'd be happy to just get through and talk about the weather if it would help. I am an interesting human being, somewhere, inside me, but of no interest to job agencies and human resources departments. Voicemail and automated telephone exchanges are a killer! I just wish I had the power of telepathy, so that I could project my questions directly inside the craniums of the right bosses each time. What part of, "sorry but no", do I not understand? I understand every part of it.

What will I do to identify and apply for jobs? Step Five: "Visit at least two employers a week"

"Have you seen the old girl who walks the streets of London, carrying all her CVs in two carrier bags…", " … so how can you tell me… you're looonely… and saay for you that the sun don't shiiine… let me take youuu by the hand… and lead you throuuugh the streets of Londonnnn… I'll show you something, to make you change your mind…"

Happy people, with happy jobs, with happy salaries, looking gorgeous, in gorgeous offices, bouncing and gliding on corporate pavements like those from the photographs inside business conference brochures …. Success on a page …. I am not. "is this the blues I'm feeling? Is this the blu…."

Stop it. Stop that right now. Nooo! Stop it. That is even worse than the last time you tried to sing to yourself.

What will I do to identify and apply for jobs? Step Six: "Search jobseekers.direct.gov.uk two times a week at least"

Out of sight is out of mind. An inbox full of electronic job agency messages sent by automated electronic messengers. I collect electronic mail by the megabyte. One can never have too many email messages in ones outbox, in ones inbox, in ones folders. Emails are my national lottery, my bingo, my poker, my casino, my job seeking soul … My liberty from under house arrest is right here, right now, by the grace of the god of inbox. The god of inbox can evaporate my cobwebs. It will narrow down the noise, it will guide me to… to paradise!

What will I do to identify and apply for jobs? Step Seven: "Record job search activities in sheet and produce at every signing. Take a minimum of three steps per week"

This is the sanction buster! Do it well, do it neat, just do it … "It is nice to see such lovely neat writing" I am often told… I could go on having lovely neat writing until the cows come home… any day now I shall experience my first sanction… in the meantime, I worry sick about getting a sanction…. When all I really, really want is my old life back! 6.15 am alarm, 8.17 am journey, a morning's work, my lunch hour accompanied by my home-made packed lunch, my afternoon's work, my journey home via the supermarket, dinner, preparation, bed… Friday, Saturday, Sunday with family and friends and with earned money in my purse… hitting my bank account… regular as clockwork. Why on earth would I want to deny myself from my own life!

I resent not having my PAYE deductions any more, I really resent it! Why are fat cats complaining at 50% tax? From where I'm standing, I'd love be able to hold and look at my payslip once again, and smile at my gross pay, skip through my deductions, give a sigh of relief at my pension contributions gaining another tenner and notice that my heart skipped a beat at the pleasing vision of my net pay, greeting me once again… I miss my PAYE. Please, come back to me. All is forgiven my PAYE.

What will I do to identify and apply for jobs? Step Eight: "Check jobpoints for vacancies 10 minutes before each appointment to JobcentrePlus"

They dispense jobs like they dispense bus tickets at these jobpoints… "I've got a ticket to ride… I've got a ticket to ride… I've got a ticket to ride and I just don't care…" the hourly pay printed on slips which come out of a jobpoint job-dispensing machine is the same as those of a bus fare - I kid you not! It is baffling to me the thinking behind the design of a jobs dispensing vending machine. Much more user friendly to me would be a dedicated job search room at my local library, with free access to books and a photocopier to get me out of the house. I hate every second I have to be inside a JobcentrePlus office. Those minutes spent in the company of the job-dispensers are not the end of the world… but they do remind me what the end of my world feels like!

What will I do to identify and apply for jobs? Step Nine: "Check www.directgov.uk or call jobseekers direct on 0845 6060234"

I swear that the database of jobs at www.directgov.uk has been breached by hackers! Some jobs are really weird…. "college principal with a PhD and at the minimum wage" pops up a lot…. "database administrator must have recursive qualification in everything that is ever networked, programmed, graduated from, scientifically analysed, combined with … £18,000 or £170,000, or £13,000 a year…" Whenever I telephone the number, the conversation with the call centre operator is a repetition of exactly the same information that I have just finished reading from directgov webside. Many a job are not hyperlinked to an employer, they are adverts for a third, or fourth party, job agency…. all piggy-backing from the same job advert Jobcentre… CWJobs… CVLibrary … like onion layers to a job that isn't real, but there to bring in more punters, like with the yellow pages. Where are all these employers who find it hard to match candidates to their job vacancies? That I keep reading about in the papers? Why don't they materialise in the results shown after applying my search filters to my account on directgov.uk. Where do our paths cross when we're both on the cloud?