St Bride's Mystery

In 'The Wonderful History of the Sword in the Stone' (see previous blogs for details) I float the theory that in the Roman and post-Roman periods a temple complex ran along the north bank of the Thames in London from the Tower in the East to Westminster Abbey in the West.  We know there was a temple or shrine to Balan aka Bran, the Raven, at the Tower of London.  Archaeological remains have been found under the White Tower. 

Next came the shrine of his brother Balin, no remains alas but the name is preserved in Billingsgate (Balin's Gate).  The principal shrine on the highest point in the City of London was the site of the temple to Lud, the Sun God and Don, the mother goddess which gives the city its name (Lu'n Don in both Celtic and Cockney).  This site is now occupied by St Paul's Cathedral.  To the west the shrine of Merlin was on the Isle of Thorns or Thorney Island, then completely surrounded by water, which is where Westminster Abbey stands now.  However this configuration left me with a big gap even allowing for the river channel where one would expect one. 

I had nothing to fill in the space between Ludgate Circus at the bottom of Ludgate Hill which leads up to St Paul's and Covent Garden (Tyburn which in Celtic means house on the edge of a stream so this is probably where the river channel started) although we know that throughout the Middle Ages this area was filled with religious houses but recently I was doing some research for quite other reasons into the history of St Bride's Church in Fleet Street which revealed an intriguing mystery.

St Bride's church in flames in 1941 with only the steeple left standing

St Bride's was heavily bombed during the Blitz in 1941 and the church destroyed except for its distinctive tiered 'wedding-cake' spire.  The church was subsequently rebuilt but I was interested to learn that prior to its rebuilding archaeologists excavated the site and discovered beneath the foundations a 'mysterious building' dating to the second century AD. The archaeological team could not decide what this mysterious building was but I think it may have been the next temple in line dedicated to Brigid/Aranrhod, the daughter of Don and sister of Lud and be a missing link in this long run of Romano-Celtic temples. 

The church website currently concludes that the dedication to St Bride's (or St Brigid) refers to St Brigid of Kildare.  She was a real person, an Irish princess who became an influential leader in the Celtic Church, but she did not live until the 5th century so the second century building cannot have been dedicated to her.  In many stories about her she is confused with the earlier Celtic goddess Brigid and it seems likely that - given the traditional association of the site with a Brigid - that the second century shrine was dedicated to her predecessor. 

I don't know what became of the archaeological information collected by the dig but I would love to hear from anyone who knows where it is and whether there is any more evidence to back up my theory.