Amen Corner is located off Ave Maria Lane, just to the west of St. Paul's Cathedral and between the Old Bailey and Paternoster Square, in the City of London.
On the feastday of Corpus Christi, monks would say prayers in a procession to St. Paul's Cathedral. They set off from Paternoster Row chanting the Lord's Prayer (Pater noster... being the opening line in Latin). They would reach the final 'amen' as they turned the corner in Ave Maria Lane, after which they would chant Hail Mary (Ave Maria in Latin).
The area was notable as the site of the Royal College of Physicians until it was destroyed by the Great Fire of London in 1666.
The modern Amen Corner is a stub of road that leads to Amen Court, home to a short terrace of 17th-century houses where the canons of the cathedral once lived and where the first meeting of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament was held in 1958 at the home of founder John Collins. Present at the occasion also were the politicians Michael Foot and Denis Healey.
There is another Amen Corner, in Tooting, south London, where the A217 road (Mitcham Road) meets Rectory Lane and Southcroft Road.
Famous quotes containing the words amen and/or corner:
“Put an amen to it. There’s no more time for praying. Amen.”
—Frank S. Nugent (1908–1965)
“Knighterrantry is a most chuckleheaded trade, and it is tedious hard work, too, but I begin to see that there is money in it, after all, if you have luck. Not that I would ever engage in it, as a business, for I wouldn’t. No sound and legitimate business can be established on a basis of speculation. A successful whirl in the knighterrantry line—now what is it when you blow away the nonsense and come down to the cold facts? It’s just a corner in pork, that’s all.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)