Nativity & carols

St James's Church has been thronged with school childeren this week.

Four classes of year one children from Phoenix School (right) and their sister school, Ilderton, have been on a church visits spread over two days.

They were full of lively curiosity and it was good to welcome them to the church.

Meanwhile St James's infants have been rehearsing in the church for their Nativity Play.

The theme this year was 'Children of the World.'

Then the children flooded into the church this afternoon in their colourful costumes to perform their play to an appreciative audience of parents and friends (seated in the gallery). Excellent.

Meanwhile this evening I attended the service of Carols by Candlelight at Bacon's College, the 11-18 Church of England Academy in Rotherhithe.

Some very good readers and a school choir, prayers led by the head boy and girl, and a teachers' choir singing Bach, made up for an excellent evening.

Bacon's, of course, started off in Bermondsey before its relocation to the Rotherhithe peninsula in the 1990s, but its link with Bermondsey is recalled by the school emblem, the Bermondsey Lion (originally from Bermondsey Abbey and later incorporated in the arms of the old borough of Bermondsey, still to be seen on a number of public buildings, and most recently commemorated by the large lion sculpture at the Blue).