St Dunstan’s
St Dunstan’s has been the parish church of Stepney for over a thousand years. It is one of the oldest churches in east London, and one of the few remaining medieval buildings east of the City. But who was this curiously named saint - who gave his name to a brace of other churches within a few miles of Stepney High Street.
We know Dunstan was born in the Mendips in Someset, probably in the hamlet of Baltonsborough, though estimates of his birthdate vary wildly, from 909AD to 924AD. He was of a noble, and pious family, with two uncles the Bishops of Wells and Winchester respectively, and his mother Cynethryth a pious woman given to miraculous visions. Praying in church on ‘Candleday’, Cynethryth received a visitation that foresaw her son (as yet unborn) would be ‘the minister of eternal light to the Church of England’.
And the young noble would go on to surpass his uncles in religious fame, being chiefly responsible for restoring monasticism to England after the ravages wrought by centuries of Viking invasion. He would be based at Stepney as the Bishop of London, before going on to become Archbishop of Canterbury and effectively an early ‘prime minister’ of England. He would also become a saint - recognition that Dunstan had taken the lead in ushering England out of the Dark Ages.
The venue for Dunstans’s schooling appears symbolic now - he was taught amid the ruins of Glastonbury Abbey by the Irish monks there. This most holy of places had been raised by the English in 712 and destroyed by the Danes in the ninth century. A studious child, he was devoted to music and the arts too - and this precociously rounded boy was summoned to the service of his uncle Athelm, now the Archbishop of Canterbury and then to the court of King Athelstan. Such preferment roused jealousy, and a group of courtiers accused Dunstan of witchcraft.
He may have viewed his subsequent treatment - beaten, bound and thrown into the castle cesspit - as a test. He had already survived a childhood illness that should have killed him. But more was to come. Uncle Aelfheah, Bishop of Winchester, tried to persuade the battered Dunstan to become a monk, perhaps reasoning it would be a quieter and safer life. Dunstan argued that he didn’t fancy celibacy much. Within days, Dunstan was laid low by a plague of boils and tumours, probably blood poisoning as a result of his swim in the cesspool, and the event seems to have changed his mind. He took Holy Orders in 943 and returned to Glastonbury as a hermit. Living in a tiny cave, playing his harp and meditating, it was here that legend has it the Devil did come to visit, as Dunstan played. The plucky cleric supposedly tweaked Satan’s nose with red-hot tongs, and hammered metal shoes onto the devil’s cloven hooves.
Dunstan may have lived a simple and pious life, working in the sciptorium at Glastonbury and showing skill as a silversmith, but he was also amassing a fortune, which he would put to good use. He became a confidant and advisor to Lady Æthelflaed, King Æthelstan’s niece, and she would leave him a fortune in her will. His father Heorstan died and left Dunstan a large sum. The monk was now powerful enough to attract the attention of the new king, Edmund, who called him to his court in Cheddar, in 940. Again plotting nearly undid Dunstan, but the king, his life spared after a riding accident, immediately suffered a rush of piety and pledged to help Dunstan in his plan to re-establish monastic life in England.
And for the next few years, Dunstan showed himself an able politican as well as churchman, skilfully maintaining his mission as a succession of warring kings and nobles plotted, assassinated and changed policy with bewildering frequency. There were enemies, but Dunstan’s days swimming in the cesspit were over. The new king, Edgar, seized control of most of England in 957 and made Dunstan Bishop of London. From his Stepney base, the bishop was effectively ‘prime minister’ of England, wielding a power the likes of Gordon Brown could only dream of. The Pope called him to Rome in 960 and Dunstan was made Archbishop of Canterbury. He would serve as Primate until 978. On retiring, he led a cloistered life at Canterbury, with long hours of private prayer, and work on his much loved crafts - fashioning bells and correcting books in the scriptorium.
His fame may have faded a little now, but so popular was Dunstan in the years after his death that he became a ‘popular saint’ in England long before the Church officially canonised him in 1029. In recognition of his work in Stepney, the parish church of All Saints (which Dunstan himself had rebuilt in 952) was renamed St Dunstan and All Saints. The present stone building is on the site of a much older one - there was possibly an All Saints here from the seventh century. St Dunstan is remembered too in two City of London churches and other places of worship around the globe.
More reading: www.stdunstanstepney.org and www.mernick.co.uk/thhol/stdunstan01.html#stdunstan