St Bride’s, Fleet Street

Rupert Murdoch might have frogmarched the newspaper industry out to Wapping in the 1980s, but this small church off Fleet St remains ‘the journalists’ church’. Candles were kept burning here for reporters John McCarthy and Terry Anderson during their years as hostages in Lebanon during the 1990s, and a memorial plaque keeps tab of the growing number of journalists killed in Iraq. There’s a brief, well-presented history of the printing industry in the crypt, dating from 1500 when William Caxton’s first printing press was relocated next to the church after Caxton’s death, though the crypt was closed indefinitely at the time of writing. St Bride’s is also of architectural interest. Designed by Sir Christopher Wren in 1671, its add-on spire (1703) reputedly inspired the first tiered wedding cake.