Susan Buckland: Spiritual home of the press

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London may seem an expensive city, especially by New Zealand standards. And its weather may seem dominated by grey, although blue has made precious few appearances in Auckland lately. But, as a centre of the world, London has delightful distractions around so many corners.

Walking from Blackfriars underground station towards Fleet St to meet friends for lunch, I came upon St Bride's Lane. It curved away into the shadows and I found myself irresistibly drawn towards them.

Compared with the busy main thoroughfare, it was a haven given over to pedestrians instead of cars. In one of the stone buildings was a small cafe where patrons huddled over their food in intimate conversation. I felt I had walked on to a stage set for another age.

Then rounding the corner, the inviting name of the lane suddenly made sense. St Bride's Church rose from the Fleet St end of the lane to a marvellous spire and I was able to read in church literature that the spire was the inspiration for the tiered wedding cake. The church was designed by Sir Christopher Wren, the 17th-century architect famous for London's St Paul's Cathedral and its mighty dome. Wren may well have been pleased that St Bride's gave birth to those nuptial cakes.

The encounter with St Bride's was pleasing for more personal reasons. The church became known as the Printers' and Journalists' Church because it was near the famous newspaper offices of Fleet St and close to St Paul's Cathedral where printers first set up shops. For 500 years St Bride's, named for the 5th-century St Bridget of Kildare, ministered to the media world and then to the lawyers, accountants and investment bankers in the area.

These days most newspapers have left for other locations.

The church courtyard is obviously a favourite retreat for Fleet St office workers, the same courtyard where the poet Milton used to spend much of his time. The 17th-century writer and diarist Samuel Pepys was christened in St Bride's and Samuel Richardson - father of the English novel - was buried in its crypt.

Across the road, the house of another great Englishman of letters, Dr Johnson, is still standing. And further along lived yet another famous literary figure, Charles Dickens.

William Caxton set up a press in London 1476 but had not needed to make his press commercially viable. However, his apprentice Wynkyn de Worde made his living from printing and took his commercial press to the St Bride's churchyard in 1500 where the literate men of the church spurred the revolution of the printed word. (De Worde was buried in St Bride's in 1535.)

I had literally stumbled upon this rich pocket of history. As you do often enough in London. But St Bride's was a particularly interesting find. "Little of importance that has happened in England's story has not been echoed in St Bride's," says the church literature. "Here grew up England's theatre, here congregated the English men of letters, here was fought the battle for freedom of speech, here nothing human has been alien and all that is divine has been cherished."

The St Bride's of today is the eighth church on the site and still visible are traces of earlier buildings, which reach back 2000 years. Celts, Romans, Angles, Saxons, and Normans have all left their mark, as the excavators found when restoration began on the church. Rebuilt by Wren after the Great Fire of London in 1666, and destroyed by Nazi bombers during the Blitz campaign in 1940 (in a raid that flattened much of the old City of London including 11 other Wren churches), the spiritual home of British journalists and printers is beautifully restored.

Today St Bride's has grasped the internet as an additional and modern means of communicating to the masses. It is possible with one click to bring St Bride's Fleet St to your screen. But far better to be there yourself.