Here, the faith given to the Apostles is quietly passed on, and souls are fed.  Here, as the years unfold, a parish history is written - the ordinary achievements and adventures of Catholics who happen to live in a particular place at a particular time.  St Bede, in hid vanished Saxon world, and Francis Ellis, in her vanished late-Victorian one, are a mysterious sense not far from us when we gather at St Bede's and a priest raises his hand to make the sign of the cross as Mass begins.  In a Catholic Church, as nowhere else on earth, all history becomes one: here the author time Himself comes down to be among us.

Joanna Bogle, One Corner of London: A history of St Bede's church, Clapham Park, 2003