A series of ten programmes with Donald Sinden
8: The Light of Reason
The Reformation had shattered the religious monopoly of Rome, and in the century of turmoil and persecution that followed, the path of conscience for many ordinary folk led away from both the Church of England and of Rome. This week DONALD SINDEN visits Walpole Chapel in Suffolk, one of our earliest non-conformist churches, whose rugged simplicity reflects the need that was felt for a simple religion unhampered by ritual and superstition. The change in religious life was paralleled in architecture.
In a search for a new order, scholars turned their eyes back to ancient Greece and Rome, which seemed a Golden Age of stability. In the first years of the Restoration, the Great Fire of London destroyed 84 of the city's churches and SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN was afforded the opportunity to rebuild many of them in the then fashionable classical style, well illustrated by St Margaret, Loth-bury and St Stephen , Walbrook.
Film cameraman DAVID FEIG Film editor PETER ORTON Producer DICK FOSTER