Category Archives: London Churches

The King’s Chapel of the Savoy

From the Strand, head down Savoy Street, then into Savoy Hill and you will find a remarkable little chapel, which today looks out on much taller buildings, but once was surrounded by a very different estate. This is the King’s Chapel of the Savoy. The chapel tells a story of the complexity of medieval land ownership, and the challenges of being sure of facts when using historical records, maps, books etc.

This is the view from Savoy Hill. The main entrance is through the modern brick building to the right:

If you approach the chapel from the Strand, along Savoy Street, you will find the entrance to the small churchyard located to the east of the building:

And in the churchyard, we can see the eastern side of the chapel:

There are many remarkable things about this chapel, one is how much larger the interior is when compared to the view from outside, along with the colour and decoration to be found within:

There is a cleaner working on the pews in the above photo, with their bucket in the aisle. In a bit of historical symmetry, the following print from 1808 shows a much plainer interior, but with two cleaners working on the flag stones which then paved the floor:

The King’s Chapel of the Savoy is today the only survivor of a much larger institution, and includes the name of a medieval owner of the land. The chapel has also long held a unique position with respect to the Church and Crown.

The easily traceable history of the estate, a small part of which is occupied by the chapel, goes back to the 13th century, when the land was owned by Simon de Montfort, the 6th Earl of Leicester, who formed an estate to the west of Somerset House, and built a palace on the land.

de Montfort has a fascinating history and both supported, and fought against the king, and for a time he ran an early form of Parliament. de Montfort died during the Battle of Evesham on the 4th of August, 1265, when he led a small army of rebellious barons against Edward, the son of King Henry III.

de Montfort’s land then went through many different owners, eventually becoming part of the Duchy of Lancaster, which is still in existence today, and continues to be a landowner, with assets held in trust for the King or Queen of the day, in their role as the Duke of Lancaster.

One of the owners of the land was Peter of Savoy hence the use of the name Savoy in the full title of the chapel. Some accounts state that Peter of Savoy built a large house on the land in 1245, later known as Savoy Palace, however Simon de Montford did not die until 1265, so the house was either built later during Peter of Savoy’s ownership, or it was built in 1245 by Simon de Montford.

The Duchy of Lancaster continues to own the land occupied by the chapel, along with a number of surrounding parcels of land and buildings. I wrote a post about the Duchy of Lancaster here, and included the following diagram as an attempt to trace the ownership of the estate through to the Duchy taking full control:

The above was an attempt to explain how this area of land between the Strand and the Embankment was formed, came into Royal ownership, and how the name of Savoy became part of the chapel’s name.

Interesting that although Peter of Savoy owned the estate for a relatively short period of time in the 13th century, the use of Savoy continued for many centuries, and today can be found not just in the name of the chapel, but in many of the surrounding streets, the hotel and theatre.

But in all the above changes in ownership, and by 1399 when Henry IV combined the Savoy estate with the Duchy of Lancaster, the chapel had not yet been built. That would have to wait until the early 16th century when Henry VII founded the “Hospital of Henry late King of England of the Savoy”.

The Savoy Palace had been attacked during the Peasants Revolt in 1381, when the rebellion, angered by the actions of then owner, John of Gaunt, destroyed all the contents of the palace, and set fire to the building.

It remained semi-derelict until the founding of the hospital by Henry VII, although he died in 1509, six years before the completion of the hospital in 1515, when Henry VIII was on the throne, hence the use of “Henry late King of England” in the original name of the hospital.

According to Henry Chamberlain in “A New and Complete History and Survey of London and Westminster” (1770), the hospital was “controlled by a Master amd four brethren, who were to be in priests orders, and officiate in their turns, and they were to stand alternatively at the gate of the Savoy, and if they saw any person who was an object of charity, they were obliged to take him in and feed him. If he proved to be a traveller he was entertained for one night, and a letter of recommendation, with so much money given to him as would defray his expenses to the next hospital”.

Henry Chamberlain goes on to state that the hospital was supressed in the 7th year of the reign of Edward VI (who reigned from 1547 to 1553, so presumably the final year of his reign), with the furniture being given to the Hospitals of Bridewell and St. Thomas.

Once Mary I came to he throne (1553 to 1558), she refounded the hospital, there was also recorded a porter, who was responsible for locking the gates of the hospital every night, and for receiving rents, so presumably some of the land had been rented out or leased to other occupiers, and a considerable sum was received, amounting to around £20,000 per annum.

The chapel was one of a number of chapels built as part of the hospital complex, which appears to have been of some size, with the main dormitory being described as larger than Westminster Hall.

The following map, part of an 1660s “bird’s-eye plan of London” by Wenceslaus Hollar shows the area from the Thames in the south, up to High Holborn (© The Trustees of the British Museum. Shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence.):

The following is an extract from the map showing the Savoy estate. Just to the lower left of centre, there is a tower which may be the tower of the chapel:

The above extract shows a substantial complex. Presumably much of the estate had been leased or rented out, hence the high level of income, and the main dormitory could have been the long building just to the south of the tower, running east – west, with a couple of transverse wings running north – south.

The following print from 1736 shows a view of the Savoy from the river, and the building in the print can be aligned with the above map from about 75 years earlier (© The Trustees of the British Museum. Shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence.):

By the time of the above print, the hospital had been dissolved, and act carried out in 1702.

The print also creates a bit of a mystery regarding the King’s Chapel of the Savoy.

Nearly all sources state that the chapel has always been dedicated to St John the Baptist, however in the above print, the tower, seen in the print and earlier map is part of a church that is dedicated to “St. Mary-le-Savoy”. Henry Chamberlain states the following “The chapel of the Savoy (which is called St. Mary le Savoy) is probably the chapel of St. John the Baptist”, the St. Mary may have been a later dedication which came into more common use in the 18th century, before the later restoration of St. John the Baptist, which is the current dedication.

In my ongoing interest in Thames Stairs, it is good to see that Savoy Stairs are also shown in the print, towards the left, with some waterman’s boats at the base of the stairs, along with two larger boats, which presumably were used for carrying goods to and from the Savoy.

These stairs can also be seen in the following extract from another 18th century map, where the church tower can again be seen, although a tower that looks more like a traditional church tower than the tower we see today:

Confirmation of the dedication of the chapel, and identification of a number of other chapels on the site of the Savoy and hospital can be seen in Rocque’s map of 1746, where the chapel has a St. John dedication – circled in red in the following extract:

In the mid-18th century, as well as the chapel of St. John, there were three other chapels marked on Rocque’s map – a German (green circle), Dutch (yellow) and French (blue):

To add confusion to the chapels, Henry Chamberlain states that there were two German churches, one a Calvinist and the other Lutheran, a French church and a Quaker meeting house.

Henry Chamberlain also records that after the hospital had been dissolved, the site was occupied by “barracks for 500 soldiers, the Savoy prison for deserters and other delinquents of the army, and for securing the recruits. There is also a handsome infirmary for such of the guards as fall sick, and for three or four officers”.

Soldiers seem to have been sent to the prison for relatively trivial offences, for example in January 1729: “On Sunday 62 Soldiers of the second Regiment of Foot Guards were sent to the Savoy, for having spots on their Cloths”.

The prison and barracks for 500 are confirmed in the earlier print of the complex, with the large central building running east – west being the barracks. The print does not mention a Quaker meeting house, however there is a mention in a March 1776 article about a fire at the Savoy estate, when:

“The flames then communicated to the Soldiers Barracks, which are totally destroyed down to some stone work, Several men escaped from the Savoy Prison; but the building itself is not burnt. The Lutheran Chapel is not damaged, and the Quaker’s Meeting House nearly destroyed. Happily through the vigilance of Captains Greenfield and Stephens, and the activity of the Savoy Guard, the Gunpowder was moved in time, to prevent the consequences of the fire catching it.”

Many of the buildings survived until to the early 19th century, but by this time there was pressure to redevelop the area, and major construction projects such as Waterloo Bridge required land as the approach road to the bridge was built over the eastern edge of the Savoy estate.

The chapel was repaired in 1721 at the expense of George I, who was also responsible for enclosing the churchyard, as well as adding a side door between the chapel and churchyard.

Throughout all this time, the King’s Chapel of the Savoy survived. Firstly a part of Henry VII’s hospital, then after the hospital was dissolved, part of the different uses of the buildings on the Savoy estate, including military barracks and prison, then seeing all these buildings demolished as the area became occupied by more commercially focused buildings.

The Savoy Stairs were lost when the Embankment was built, distancing the chapel from the Thames, and further reconstruction in the later part of the 19th century and the 20th century resulted in the area as we see it today, where the 16th century chapel still survives.

Inside the chapel. the core of the walls are Tudor, from the time of the chapel’s original construction. The ceiling is part of a later restoration:

The organ, which was built by J W Walker & Sons Ltd, and dedicated by Queen Elizabeth II during a service on the 27th of October 1965:

The magnificent ceiling, recently restored and decorated to mirror what is believed to be the original appearance of the ceiling:

The font:

The font was a gift to the chapel in 1864 to replace an earlier font which had been “destroyed with the chapel by fire”.

The fire was significant, and helps explain why only the core of the walls are original, and the roof, decorated ceiling and much of the rest of the chapel is later. The following is typical of newspaper reports from the 15th of July 1864, describing the fire:

“On Thursday afternoon, one of the most ancient structures in London, the Savoy Chapel, was destroyed by fire. When first it was seen it would appear that only the organ was burning; but in a few minutes the whole interior woodwork, open seats, pulpit, &c were in flames. The fire presently burst out of the stained glass window at the northern end, and caught the veranda of the house in front of it, 109 Strand, a tailor’s shop. The upper part of the house, occupied by the Press newspaper, was also on fire for a short time, but the flames were got under control by the timely arrival of the steam engine.

The fire in the church however was not subdued till the roof had fallen in. The cause of the unfortunate occurrence is in this instance more easy to trace than usual.

It appears that there was an escape of gas near the organ, and the gasmen were engaged at one o’clock to find the precise spot. They left for their dinner without turning off the gas at the meter, and it is supposed that they either left a light behind them, of that they had unwittingly lighted an escape and left it burning. The keys of the church were not forthcoming for some time after the engines had arrived.”

The report states that the ceiling was entirely destroyed, and that it was the most striking feature of the interior of the chapel (as it is today). It was wholly of oak and pear tree, divided into 138 quatrefoil panels, and enriched with a carved ornament either of sacred or historical significance. The report also covers some of the many monuments in the chapel, only a few of which survived the fire.

The 1864 fire appears to have been the last of three fires that overall caused severe damage to the chapel. A report in 1911 states that “Owing to three fires between 1842 and 1864, very little of the old interior is left”.

At the rear of the chapel, underneath the organ, are two separate seats:

The name King’s Chapel of the Savoy explains why these seats are here, and the unique status of the chapel.

The King’s Chapel of the Savoy is a private royal chapel for the monarch, and is not subject to the jurisdiction of the established church. It is also therefore not a parish church.

Until recently it was the Queen’s Chapel of the Savoy, but with the death of Elizabeth II and the coronation of Charles III, the chapel changed to the King’s Chapel.

The addition of “King’s” to the name Chapel of the Savoy is relatively recent, as in April 1939 “The Duchy of Lancaster Office last night issued the following announcement – His Majesty, in right of his Duchy of Lancaster, has been pleased to command that his Chapel of the Savoy shall be styled henceforth ‘the King’s Chapel of the Savoy'”.

Two years earlier, in 1937, George VI has also commanded that the Savoy Chapel should be the chapel of the Royal Victorian Order, an order that was founded by Queen Victoria in 1896 for services to the King or Queen, and other members of the Royal Family.

The special seats at the rear of the church, which face straight down the walkway between the pews are for the monarch, and on the wooden panels behind the seats are copper panels which display the Coat of Arms of previous monarchs and other members of the royal family who have or had a role in the life of the chapel, for example Princess Ann who as Princess Royal is the Grand Master of the Royal Victorian Order, part of the honours system that is closely associated with the chapel:

There are similar copper plates on the wooden panels that line the rear and side of the chapel. These are for members of the Royal Victorian Order, and include John Mansel Miller who as Lieutenant Colonel Sir John Miller was made a GCVO (Knight or Dame Grand Cross) in 1987 having been a Crown Equerry between 1961 and 1987:

Colonel Sir Henry MacGeagh who was the Deputy Treasurer of the Middle Temple and also became a GCVO, in 1950:

As well as the devastating fire in the chapel in 1864, much of the stained glass at the northern end of the church was destroyed by a bomb which hit a neighbouring building during the last war. Stained glass to the southern end survived, but is later than the chapel fire of 1864.

Stained glass window dedicated to the memory of Richard D’Oyly Carte and his son Rupert:

Richard D’Oyly Carte was behind the construction of the Savoy Theatre which he built using the profits from Gilbert & Sullivan productions and he also built and owned the Savoy hotel, this time using profits from the Mikado:

He married his second wife, Helen Lenoir, in the Savoy Chapel.

The latest stained glass window in the chapel is a window dedicated to Elizabeth II and installed in 2012 for the Queen’s diamond jubilee:

The King’s Chapel of the Savoy has been the location for many baptisms, marriages and funerals over the years, normally for someone who has some association with the chapel, or with the Royal Victorian Order.

An interesting court case in July 1756 shows that unofficial marriages were also celebrated, but these would lead to a substantial sentence.

“Yesterday, the Rev. Mr Wilkinson was tried at the Old Bailey, for celebrating clandestine Marriages at the Savoy Chapel. He was found guilty after a trial of upwards seven hours, and ordered for transportation for fourteen years.”

I very much doubt that a clandestine marriage could take place in the chapel today.

The King’s Chapel of the Savoy is a fascinating place to visit, just a short detour from the Strand. As well as the original church, there is a side room which contains some historical maps, prints and photos which help to tell the history of the chapel, and the staff at the chapel are very happy to tell visitors the story of the place, and point out key features of the building.

On the chapel’s website, the opening times for visitors is stated as from 9am to 4pm, Monday to Thursday, however I have found that it can also be closed during these times, but a bit of perseverance is worthwhile to see a unique chapel that retains the name of the owner of a long lost estate back in the 13th century, and was part of an early 16th century hospital founded by Henry VII.

Union Chapel, Islington – Live Music and a Nonconformist History

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Live music venues have long been central to London’s creativity and the city’s entertainment industries. The number of smaller pub with live music venues have declined significantly over the last few decades, but there are still many places where live music is performed in a unique venue, and not part of an international corporate empire.

My first large concert in London was at QPR’s ground, Loftus Road in 1975, when with a schoolfriend, we went to see the band Yes. Before that it was smaller groups and venues. Since then, London has continued to be the place where we have seen so very many live performances across the musical spectrum. Dr Feelgood, Blockheads, Stranglers, Human League, Gary Numan, Public Service Broadcasting, Muse and so very many more.

A couple of week’s ago we went to see Toyah, in what must be one of London’s most unique venues – Union Chapel in Islington.

It is a place we have been to a number of times since the Union Chapel started hosting concerts, the last was to see a band called Caravan, who performed there in 2022. They were the first live band I ever saw, I think in 1973 or 1974.

Union Chapel is a really fascinating building, both from an architectural and historical aspect, and the purpose of today’s post is to explore the history of the building – not my musical taste you will be pleased to know.

Looking down to the stage from the rear of the balcony:

The current Union Chapel was built between 1876 and 1877, replacing an earlier and smaller chapel on the same site.

Union Chapel is a Nonconformist, Congregational Church.

The name Union comes from the original founding of the congregation in 1799, when a group of Nonconformists joined with a group of Anglicans who had grown apart from the established church of St. Mary’s, Islington.

Over time, the Anglican element of the union gradually declined and the group became fully nonconformist, which basically means an approach to church hierarchy, worship and prayer that is different to the established church.

The first meeting place of the “Union” was in a large house in Highbury Grove, then in 1806 they moved into a chapel built on the site of the existing Union Chapel.

As the 19th century progressed, the Congregational approach grew in popularity, as did the size of the local population as the area around Islington and Highbury developed quickly.

This resulted in the need for a larger chapel, and the original chapel was demolished in 1875, to make way for the new chapel which opened in 1877.

The new chapel was designed by James Cubitt (no relation to the builders and civil engineers, brothers William, Thomas and Lewis Cubitt who jointly built much of 19th century London, including Cubitt Town on the Isle of Dogs).

James Cubitt specialised in Nonconformist chapels during the 19th century, and the Islington Union Chapel was one of his first, and probably one of his most important works. Many of his other chapels across the country have since been demolished, but Union Chapel remains.

The Congregational approach was that the whole congregation should be involved in the process of worship, and that the Minister, and those leading services should be visible to all, unlike a typical church service where a screen would often hide key parts of a religious ceremony from the majority of the congregation.

This approach can be seen in the interior design of the Union Chapel.

The interior has a cruciform design, although when inside the church this is not really visible, as the octagonal configuration of the walls is the dominant feature.

This allows an unobstructed view of the pulpit from the floor of the chapel, where there are pews on a floor that gradually increases in height towards the rear of the chapel, as well as on the surrounding balcony, where pews are also arranged so they increase in height as they run towards the external walls of the chapel.

This arrangement minimises the number of obstructions, either architectural, or from the people sitting in front, and is a design that makes the Union Chapel ideal not just for religious services, but also for concerts.

View looking across to the stage on the lower right, pews along the ground floor, balcony with pews underneath the gothic arches at the side of the chapel:

To further ensure the visibility of the minister, the large stone pulpit is raised so that the congregation had a good and unobstructed view of the minister, who could also look out across the congregation:

The ornate ceiling of the chapel, with the decorated central panel:

The interior of the chapel is a contrast to the exterior, which is architecturally still an impressive building, but to glance at the building from Upper Street or Compton Terrace, you would not have an idea of the magnificent interior.

The chapel was built half way along a terrace of houses in Compton Terrace, a street deliberately set back from the busy Upper Street, with a length of gardens separating the two.

In the following extract from the 1894 revision of the OS map, Union Chapel can be seen in the middle of the map as the large block in the middle of a long row of terrace houses, with a Lecture Hall and Sunday School towards the rear, which faces on to Compton Avenue (‘Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland“:

In the above map, the row of terrace houses on either side of Union Chapel is of equal length.

The northern length of houses today is much shorter than originally built. A V1 flying bomb hit in 1944, killing 26 people and resulting in the destruction and severe damage of 12 houses, along the northern end of the terrace, these were demolished after the war.

This demolition provided the space for the traffic roundabout and central space of Highbury Corner to be built. We can see this in the following map, where Union Chapel is again in the centre, the original length of terrace remains to the south, but a much shorter terrace is to the north of the chapel, and Highbury Corner and the central Highbury Island now cover where the rest of the northern stretch of terrace once ran (© OpenStreetMap contributors):

The main entrance to Union Chapel, as seen from Upper Street:

The tower was completed in 1889, just over 10 years after the chapel first opened. It is 170 feet in height, and according to the listing at Historic England (Union Chapel is Grade I listed), bells were never installed in the belfry, behind the open windows towards the top of the tower.

A large clock projects out from the tower, and at ground level there are three entrances, a large central Gothic portal at centre, and two smaller, but similar entrances to either side.

To the left of the short stretch of road that connects Upper Street with Compton Terrace, there is a Grade II listed K2 Telephone Kiosk, designed by Giles Gilbert Scott. Behind the kiosk are the gardens that separate the terrace from Upper Street:

This is the view along Compton Terrace from the south, with a small part of the lighter brick of the chapel visible in the distance:

Much of the terrace and railings at the front, are Grade II listed, and were built between 1819 and 1821 by Henry Flower and Samuel Kell.

The name Compton Terrace comes from Lord Compton, Marquess of Northampton, the original owner of the land, and whose permission was needed to build the Union Chapel.

Closer up to the chapel, and we can (just) see the clock on the front of the tower:

Plaque on the front of the chapel recording the founding of the original “Union” of the two congregations, who first met at Highbury Grove, then the 1806 chapel in Compton Terrace, then the 1877 rebuild of the chapel, which is the chapel we see today:

The names of the two pastors shown on the plaque show that for the majority of the 19th century, there were only two lead pastors of the Union Chapel.

It was Henry Allon who was the driving force behind the construction of the new, expanded Union Chapel. He was also a significant figure in the Nonconformist movement across London, the rest of the country as well as the United States..

He was paster at Union Chapel until his death in 1892, and the Nonconformist paper published a lengthy obituary on the 22nd of April; 1892, of which the following two paragraphs are just a small part:

“Dr. Allon was a man of immense industry and of very various activities, but his great work was the building up, maintenance and extension of the congregation of Union Chapel. he was a highly competent, but by no mean showy, preacher. He would have blushed at the thought of using the pulpit as a means of setting off his abilities. Teaching and edifying were the aims he kept constantly in view, and never were the labours of a Nonconformist pastor more handsomely requited by the confidence and affection of his people. It was so from the first, and so to the end.

Dr. Allon’s death will be felt as a loss wherever the English language is spoken. In the United States, which sent him the highest academic distinction it has to bestow, he was greatly honoured for his learning and refined taste. At home, where he never evaded difficulties, he was always a healing and unifying influence. Never eager, he was always ready, to speak, and his utterances were invariably well considered and kindly. We shall all greatly miss his intellectual countenance, with its habitually benevolent expression, but we have the consolidation of thinking that he has well and truly accomplished the great task committed to him, and left an example which it will be an honour to follow.”

Henry Allon had been awarded Honorary doctorates from Yale in the united States and from St. Andrew’s in Scotland.

Henry Allon in 1879:

Attribution: Lock & Whitfield, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The foundation stone of the new chapel was put in place in 1876, and the Islington Gazette on the 16th of May 1876 reported on the ceremony, and confirmed some of the history of the chapel:

“On Saturday afternoon the ceremony of laying the foundation-stone of the new Union Chapel, Compton-terrace, was performed under most cheering auspices. From a sketch of the history of the church, a copy of which was deposited under the stone, we gather that the chapel had its origins in 1802, in the spontaneous association of a few earnest and devout men, in part Episcopalians, and in part Nonconformists – the former a more evangelical ministry than at that time could be found in the parish church, and the latter some provision for evangelical worship in addition to the two Nonconformist chapels then existing in Islington. After worshipping together for about two years they formed themselves into an organised church consisting of twenty-six members, and secured as a chapel, a building in Highbury-grove, now the dwelling house No. 18.

In August 1806, the church and congregation moved to the chapel in Compton-terrace, which they had erected. On the 30th of that month it was opened for Divine worship. It was called Union Chapel to indicate the union of its worshippers of Episcopalians and Nonconformists. The liturgy of the Church of England was used in the morning, and the extempore prayer, after the manner of the Nonconformists, in the evening.

In 1861, in consequence of the growing requirements of the church, additional land was purchased, and the chapel was enlarged; 400 sittings were added, and new vestries, lecture and classrooms were built.

From the beginning the church was gradually increased in numbers and influence. In 1802 it consisted of 26 members; 1843, 319; 1875, 676 including the members of the mission stations, Nichol-street, Spitalfields and Morton-road of 791.”

The foundation stone ceremony was attended by around two thousand people, the majority coming from the congregation of the chapel. There were flags and banners, including those from the Union Chapel Sunday School, the Nichol Street Sunday School and the Morton Road Ragged School.

A platform had been set up next to the foundation stone, and on the platform were many of the representatives of the chapel and the congregation, including Dr. Allon, and from the congregation there was Henry Spicer, a senior deacon of the chapel, who would be recorded as the person who laid the stone.

The foundation stone of the Union Chapel.

The formal opening of the Union Chapel was an equally well attended event, and the opening was also attended by the William Gladstone, who a couple of years earlier had ended his first term as Prime Minister.

Gladstone was given a tour of the chapel, and a service was held to commemorate the event.

It is interesting reading the accounts of the opening service, as Dr. Allon’s sermon included references to the dispute between science and religion regarding the position of “man” and the theory of evolution, which had gained considerable more public awareness after Darwin published “On the Origin of Species” in 1859.

During the service “he then proceeded to oppose the argument that man is the mere creature of natural laws, and therefore morally on a level with all other creatures. Having referred to what had been urged by opponents of Christian revelation about the antiquity of the earth and the successive developments of geological formations and of animal and vegetable life, he maintained that the very grounds on which it was thus sought to degrade man really elevated him, seeing that all these vast changes were effected in order to fit the earth to be man’s habitation.”

So Allon was arguing that the earth had evolved to fit man’s habitation, whilst Darwin was arguing that man had evolved because of the way the earth, and life on the planet had evolved.

A walk to the rear of the chapel in Compton Avenue brings us to the Sunday School and other offices of the Union Chapel. In the following photo, the Sunday School is the brick building facing the street, and we can get a glimpse of the tower of the chapel in the background:

A short distance along Compton Avenue is the Compton Arms, which dates from 1895. As with the terrace, the avenue and pub are both named after Lord Compton, Marquess of Northampton. A perfect place for a drink before heading to an event at the Union Chapel:

View looking north along Compton Avenue:

I am not sure of the history or function of the structures on the left. They are not listed so perhaps not old, and I think that Compton Mews were here (although this may be wrong), but whatever their history, they add some interest to the street.

During the later half of the 20th century, attendance at the Union Chapel dropped considerably, and there were proposals to demolish the church. Such a large and complex building needed a considerable amount of funding to maintain.

In 1992, Union Chapel opened as an events space, with the profits generated from hiring out the venue cycled back into the conservation, maintenance and development of the building.

It is still a place of worship, with services being held every Sunday morning, and whilst it is a really good concert venue, it is the people who have used the Union Chapel over the decades that come to mind as you sit in the wooden pews.

At the rear of the church, to the right of the pulpit area, there is a war memorial, recording the names of the members of the Union Chapel, and associated Mission Church, who lost their lives in the First World War (it is always sad to read the term “Great War” in these memorials, when we now call it the First World War, as unknown to those who put up these memorials, there would be yet another global war in a few short years time).

There is a name on the memorial which may be a distant family member – something I have long been trying to confirm:

And to finish off, Toyah was brilliant as usual, and as well as more recent music, it was also a flashback to the 1980s:

It would though be interesting to know what Dr. Henry Allon would have thought of such events happening just in front of the pulpit at which he preached for many years

There are monthly tours of Union Chapel if you would like to visit this remarkable place. Click here to go to their list of tour dates and times.

St Martin in the Fields and Historical maps of Southwark and City Ward Maps

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In this week’s post, I am exploring the church of St Martin in the Fields, and also at the end of the post I have my first Sunday of the month feature on Resources, where I look at some of the resources available to help explore the history of London. In this months Resources, I am looking at a source of Historical maps of Southwark (and the rest of London) and a series of maps showing the boundaries of Wards of the City of London..

But first, St Martin in the Fields, a very prominent church on Charing Cross Road and at the north eastern edge of Trafalgar Square, with the prominent tower and steeple looking out over the square and the National Gallery:

A similar, but very moody view of the church through a Trafalgar Square fountain in the 1920s:

The St Martin in the Fields that we see today was designed by James Gibbs and completed in 1726:

The current church was built on the site of a much earlier mediaeval church, with the first mention of the church dating back to 1222, when it would have been mainly surrounded by fields, although just to the south was the important road running from the City to Westminster and the small village of Charing.

We can see the original church in Morgan’s 1682 map of London, by which time most of the surrounding area had been transformed from fields to streets:

The Mews Yard and St Martin’s Church Yard are where Trafalgar Square and the National Gallery are today.

A plan of the mediaeval church was produced shortly before it was demolished. The plan shows a relatively small, simple church with a length of 84 feet, width of 62 feet, height of 25 feet and a 90 foot high steeple which contained 6 bells (© The Trustees of the British Museum. Shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence.):

The church had been extended in the 17th century with the Chancel to the left added in 1607, and the steeple and belfry being cased in stone in 1669, so it was a smaller building prior to the 17th century.

At upper right is marked a school room with rooms above.

Old and New London by Edward Walford includes a drawing of the west view of the church, as it appeared before demolition. The view matches the above plan, with the tower on the left corner, and the school room and rooms above on the right, extending from the side and front of the church:

As with so many medieval churches across London, by the early 18th century St Martin in the Fields was in a very poor condition. A survey of the church identified that the decayed walls made mainly of rubble, had been spread out by the weight of the roof, and the fabric of the church was unable to continue providing sufficient support.

A new church was needed, and as the church was now serving a large, built up area, rather than a small village with surrounding fields, an impressive and larger church was required.

A new church was included in the 1715 list of “Fifty New Churches”, however there was very little progress, and the majority of the fifty churches would not be built due to cost.

The Church Vestry petitioned Parliament and in 1717 an Act was passed to rebuild St Martin, with the costs being covered by the inhabitants of the parish.

Designs for a new church were requested from architects of the day, and George Sampson, Sir James Thornhill, John James, Nicholas Dubois and James Gibbs submitted plans in 1720.

James Gibbs design was chosen, the old church was demolished between April 1722 and January 1723, and construction of the new church commenced.

James Gibbs plans went through a number of iterations. His first plan for the new St Martin’s was for a round church with a large dome – almost a mini version of St Paul’s. There were issues with the overall size of the plot, the need to house memorials from the old church, provision of a temporary site of prayer during construction, the encroachment of nearby houses etc.

Gibbs came up with a final design which addressed these issues, as well as the costs of a large, domed church, and produced a more traditional rectangular design in early 1721.

Minor design changes continued during the construction process, although a major change was made in 1722 to “increase the breadth of the portico”, a change that would result in the impressive front and entrance to the church that we see today, and which brough the front and the steps up to the church, up to the edge of St Martin’s Lane.

In the spring of 1724, the core of the church, consisting of brick and Portland stone, had been completed and construction moved on to the fitting out of the new church with carpenters, plasters, plumbers etc. submitting proposals for how this would be completed. This work included cast iron railings to surround the churchyard.

The total cost for the new church was £22,497.

A rather strange event was held to celebrate the completion of the new St Martin in the Fields. Tomas Cadman, who was known as the Italian Flyer, descended head first along a rope stretched from the top of the steeple to the Royal Mews opposite.

The new St Martin in the Fields not long after completion, as shown in a print dating from 1754 (© The Trustees of the British Museum. Shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence.):

The new church when built looked across to the Royal Mews, however after the construction of Trafalgar Square, the church took on a whole new status as a key landmark at the north east corner of Trafalgar Square, as seen in this 1836 print (© The Trustees of the British Museum. Shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence.):

One print of the church shows a large flag being displayed alongside the steeple. Flag flying from churches seems to have been a common event in the 18th and 19th centuries, and a news paper report from the 4th of June 1726 reads that “The Right Hon. The Lords of the Admiralty have made a present to the Parish of St Martin in the Fields of the Royal Standard, who have a right, it being his Majesty’s Parish, to put out the Ensign (upon all days that flags are put out) upon their Church” – although the flag in the print is not the Royal Standard (© The Trustees of the British Museum. Shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence.):

A 1920s view looking across to St Martin in the Fields from the National Gallery:

It is difficult to photograph the interior of the church as there are very many services, musical events and rehearsals, and when these take place there are signs up saying absolutely no photography.

On my fifth recent visit, I did find a time when there were nothing was happening, so managed to get the following photo of the interior of the church:

The large number of side windows on two levels provide a significant amount of natural light into the church, and the white of the roof, walls and pillars contrasts nicely with the dark wood of the pews and the balcony seating along the side walls.

In the above photograph, there are none of the traditional monuments and plaques that we would normally expect to see on the side walls of the church. For these we have to go below ground to visit the magnificent crypt:

Originally the crypt was a place of burials, but was cleared to make a large space, which is now used for a café and event space. I will come onto the burials and crypts later in the post.

A carved sign on one of the pillars reads “The vaults and catacombs formerly containing human remains were reconstructed for temporary use as air raid shelters by the parochial church council of St Martin in the Fields jointly with the City of Westminster. A considerable part of the cost was defrayed by friends of St Martin’s both at home and abroad”:

The crypt was also used to provide refreshments to service personnel during the war. As the following from the 10th of May 1940 highlights “A team of Boys Brigade men are undertaking in turn night duty at the Services Canteen in the crypt of St Martin in the Fields Church in Trafalgar Square. Some of those who have been helping out in this way since the outbreak of war have now joined the forces themselves and there are vacancies for more Boys Brigade officers who could give an occasional night to attend to the needs of the soldiers, sailors and airmen who throng St Martins. The hours of duty are from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. and one’s turn comes about once a month”.

The church did suffer some bomb damage in November 1940.

Towards the front of the church is a small space:

And to the side of this space, there is a corridor which contains many of the memorials and monuments that were once found across the church, many of which must come from the original church as they predate the current St Martin’s:

The memorial to Benjamin Colinge who died on the 2nd of December 1700, and who worked in the Royal Household from the Restoration until 1697:

With his wife Katherine (also spelt Catherine on the same memorial). They had 11 sons and 3 daughters, of which only 5 sons and 3 daughters survived their father. Katherine lived to the age of 77 – quite an achievement in the late 17th / early 18th century after having a total of 14 children.

To the Pious Memory of Edith Bilson who died on the 14th of March 1651, aged 28:

There are also a few Coats of Arms, presumably of those who had been buried in the church and possibly the only parts remaining of their monument / tomb:

At the corner of the corridor of memorials is that of Henry Croft – “The Original Pearly King”:

Henry died on the 1st of January 1930 and there were numerous accounts of his life and funeral in the papers, with the following from the St Pancras Gazette on the 10th of January 1930:

“At the age of 67, the death took place, as the bells were ringing in the New Year, of Mr. Henry Croft, the original ‘Pearly King’. Mr Croft, who was well known in every quarter of London, had been an employee of the St. Pancras Vestry and Borough Council for over 40 years and only recently retired on pension.

Most remarkable scenes were witnessed on Tuesday, when the funeral took place to St. Pancras Cemetery. Hours before it was due to leave great crowds began to assemble round 16 Charles-street, Euston-road, and those crowds grew until all the adjoining neighbourhood was one solid mass of humanity.

There were over one hundred ‘Pearly Kings and Queens’ to say nothing of ‘Pearly Children’ who assembled in their full regalia to pay their respects to their old comrade, a man who had collected many thousands of pounds for the various hospitals of London.

Almost every Saturday and Sunday he devoted to his task, and hospitals have certainly lost a very great friend by his death. It took a number of mounted and foot police to control the crowds and it was a most impressive sight when the procession left Charles-street to wend its way to the cemetery, led by a band of pipers playing a haunting lament, and many banners were displayed by members of the various societies and organisations with which the deceased was connected. The coffin was borne by four comrades – all Pearly Kings – and on it rested the deceased tall hat of pearl buttons, and also all the medals with which he had been presented for his charitable work, displayed on a black velvet cushion.

The coffin was drawn in an open car with four horses, and the three coaches following contained his widow and family – he had two sons and three daughters. Behind the mourning coaches came a stream of vehicles of all kinds carrying other Pearly Kings and Queens and a whole retinue of the deceased friends. The procession was nearly half a mile in length and was one of the largest that London has seen for many years.”

The statue of Henry Croft was originally installed where he was buried in St Pancras Cemetery, however after several instances of vandalism, it was restored and moved to the crypt in 2002. The choice of St Martin in the Fields was because of the long association of Pearly Kings and Queens with the church, and it is where they continue to hold their Annual Harvest Festival.

On display in the crypt is a reminder of the barbaric forms of punishment that offenders could suffer in London – the St Martin in the Fields Whipping Post:

There were a number of whipping posts across London, and these were often associated with a pillory. Whipping was also carried out with the offender tied to a cart, and whipped as they were being moved between two places, often relevant to their crimes.

Whipping was a public punishment, aimed not only at punishing and humiliating the offender, but also visibly showing the public the type of punishment they would suffer if they were to commit similar crimes.

The punishment was also a risky time for the authorities, if the general public was not happy that the offender was being given a fair punishment, or if there were other general issues with authority. For example, the whipping of James Dinord, a journeyman weaver in Bethnal Green in 1829 was attended by the officers of Worship Street, Lambeth Street, the Thames police and all the parochial and special constables of the district, including the parochial officers of the twenty one districts of Tower Hamlets, due to the risk of trouble.

The large crowd was described as being silent whilst the punishment was carried out, with not a single murmur being heard, nor the slightest symptom of riot or insubordination.

The impact of a whipping or being confined in the pillory could also effectively be a death sentence. On the 28th of September 1810, the London Statesman reported that “The sheriffs and Jack Ketch were actively employed yesterday between the pillory and the whipping post in the Old Bailey; their respective functions were not finished till it was nearly dark. Viguers, the miscreant placed in the pillory in Cornhill, is at present blind, in consequence of the pelting he received. He was so much bruised and lacerated, that he is not expected to survive”.

I cannot find where the St Martin in the Fields Whipping Post was originally located. I wonder if it was a short distance further south at Charing Cross which would have been a public place, at the junction of key roads, for such a public punishment to be carried out.

The Whipping Post dates from 1752, as indicated by the year carved at the top of the post, and at this time St Martin was relatively enclosed within streets and buildings, long before Trafalgar Square was built, and whilst St Martins Lane was a busy street, it would not have been such a public location as the main street just to he south:

It is interesting that it was thought necessary that the post used for such a punishment should also be ornately carved, it was probably to give some authority to the whipping post and the punishments carried out.

There was a pillory at Charing Cross, as illustrated in this print from 1809, by Rowlandson and Pugin from Ackermann’s Microcosm of London:

There is a large space space to the left side of the church and to the rear. This space was once part of the burying ground, which originally extended further than the space we see today:

There were up to 70,000 burials in the crypt and across the burying ground and between 1827 and 1830 the burying ground was emptied and the crypt space extended under a programme of work by John Nash to create buildings to the north of the church. This also allowed Duncannon Street which now runs along the southern edge of the church to be built.

Al the crypt space was finally emptied between 1915 and 1937.

The area to the north and south of the church has been significantly renewed, with a couple of floors of space developed below ground, consisting of the church hall, music rehearsal room, a chapel, open space, and a shop.

There is a new entrance to the crypt and below ground space, as shown in the photo above and just behind the entrance there is a light well that lets natural light into the two floors below:

Looking down through the light well:

The church seen from the north east showing space to the side and behind the church which was once part of the burying ground, and then the below ground extension to the crypt:

And from Duncannon Street, the street created when the burying ground to this side of the church was emptied of human remains:

Today, as well as church services, St Martin’s is a centre for music with regular concerts, and the original home of the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, formed in 1958 by Sir Neville Marriner, and who had their first performance in the church in November 1959.

There is an interesting video by Eric Parry Architects on the project to redevelop the below ground space:

St Martin in the Fields is a very impressive church. It is ideally placed at the north east corner of Trafalgar Square, a space that would not be developed for over 100 years after James Gibbs designed the church, and modified the front to enlarge the portico during the construction process, a change which just adds to the view of the church as you look across Trafalgar Square.

I suspect he would be rather pleased with the views now available of his church.

Resources – Historical maps of Southwark and City Ward Maps

In this months section on resources that may be of help with researching the history or London, I am looking at some more maps.

Maps are brilliant resources for understanding the history of an area, and by using maps of different dates, how an area has developed over the years.

Southwark Council have put a range of historical maps online. The title of the respective webpage is Historical maps of Southwark, although the maps available cover much more than just the Borough of Southwark, with many of the maps showing the whole of London.

The Historical maps of Southwark webpage can be found by clicking here, where you will find the following listing:

The list shows the range of maps available, and to give an example, the following is an extract from the 1572 map Londinvm Feracissimi Angliae Regni Metropolis, and in the extract I have put a circle around the main subject of the post – St Martin in the Fields:

The map shows how the church justified the use of “in the Fields” within the name, as at the time, it was on the edge of the built city. An early St Martin’s Lane can be seen running north in front of the church.

To the south is the Strand, which runs to Charing Cross, then continues to the south to Westminster. The importance of the Strand can be seen by the large houses running along the street, with rear gardens leading down to the Thames, where each house would typically have its own Watergate.

To the north of the church there are fields, up to another “in the Fields” church, St Giles in the Fields.

At the major road junction at Charing Cross, we can see the last of the Eleanor Crosses, which marked the route taken by the body of Eleanor of Castile, the wife of Edward I, from the location of her death in Lincolnshire, to her burial at Westminster Abbey.

It was taken down on the orders of Parliament in 1647, and the stones were allegedly used in various building works in Whitehall.

Another London local authority with some interesting maps is the City of London Corporation. If you have ever wondered about the current boundaries of all the City Wards, then the Corporation have a webpage to help.

The Ward Maps webpage can be found by clicking here, where you will find subfolders for each of the City Wards, as shown in the following image:

Clicking on any of the Wards when you are on their webpage, will bring up a PDF map showing the boundaries of the relevant Ward superimposed on a modern day street map.

Each Ward Map also shows the boundaries of the City of London, along with the adjacent Wards.

Both the Southwark and the City of London Corporation webpages provide very different views of London, but both help provide an understanding of the historical development of the city, and how historical boundaries still apply in a very modern City.

In Search of Blackfriars and Resources, Part 2

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At the end of today’s post, there is another of my monthly features on research resources, as well as a London book, but before that, a search for the location of a lost London priory.

If you hear the word Blackfriars, you probably think of either the station, the bridge, or perhaps of the pub at the southern end of Queen Victoria Street:

You may also think of the religious institution after which the station, bridge and pub are named, a house of Dominican Friars, who became known as Black Friars after the black cape they would wrap around their body, an image which the figure on the pub seeks to illustrate.

Within the area known as Blackfriars, and at the end of Carter Lane, where the street meets Ludgate Broadway and Black Friars Lane, there is a plaque on the wall, seen to the right of the red truck in the following photo:

The plaque records that it is the site of the Priory of the Blackfriars, founded 1278:

However, the Priory was a large complex, so how does this plaque relate to the Priory, and what area did it cover in the streets between Carter Lane and Queen Victoria Street? That is the purpose of today’s post, but first a bit of background to the Black Friars.

The Dominican Order was founded by Saint Dominic, who was a Castilian Priest by the name of Dominic de Guzmán, in the early 13th century.

The order was founded to build a community of priests who would go out into the world to preach, and the Dominican’s are also known as the Order of Preachers. The early 13th century was a time when there were challenges to the established church across Europe, with the Albigensian heresy of the Cathars in the Languedoc area of southern France and a growing scepticism of the compatibility of faith and reason.

The Dominican approach to combating these challenges was to go out and preach, and to bring a learned, intellectual and rigorous approach to both theology and preaching.

The new order quickly expanded across Europe, and arrived in London in 1221, with Gilbert de Fresnay being the first friar.

Gilbert de Fresnay was charged with finding a site in London to establish their second English Priory (the first had already be established in Oxford). He had the support of Hubert de Burgh, the Earl of Kent, who purchased a plot of land in Holborn, on the western banks of the River Fleet, and by the Fleet Bridge (today the area of land between the church of St. Andrew and Shoe Lane, down to Farringdon Street).

Hubert de Burgh gave this land to the Dominican’s for their new Priory.

Although it was outside of the City walls, it was an important location as it was adjacent to the street that led from the west, over the Fleet, and into the City of London, and as I mentioned in this post on Churches at City Boundaries, it was a good place to cater to the spiritual needs of those travelling to and from the City, and to seek donations for the Order.

The Holborn Priory would serve the Dominican’s for around 50 years, but by the 1270s, the order wanted to move into the City of London and had been gradually acquiring land in the area we today call Blackfriars.

The area they were targeting for their new Priory was mainly comprised of several large properties, so they did not have the challenge of trying to buy up a dense area of streets and housing. The land to the south west of the City had large buildings such as Baynard’s Castle and Mountfitchet’s Tower.

The main problem was that the old City wall crossed through the area that the Dominican’s were after, and in a remarkable decision which involved the Mayor of London, the King and representatives from the Dominicans, agreement was reached on demolishing 225 yards of the existing City wall, and rebuilding it to the western boundary of the new priory, along the eastern bank of the River Fleet.

Construction of the new priory got underway, the friars moved from Holborn into the City, however it would be some decades into the early 14th century before their Priory was complete (and like all such buildings, it would be under almost continuous modification).

The Dominican priory would continue to be based in this area of the southwestern City until the middle 16th century, when the buildings and lands was surrendered to Henry VIII during the Dissolution, and in 1549 / 50 the priory site was sold to Thomas Cawardine.

The friars in their black capes over their white robes must have been a common sight in the area, and almost 500 years after the friary was closed, the area still goes by the name of Blackfriars.

So where exactly was the Priory, and how much land did it cover?

A Dictionary of London (Harben, 1918), included a map of the Priory, overlaid on the early 20th century street plan. There are some small differences between this plan and some modern interpretations, based on 20th century archaeology, and I will point these out, however the Priory evolved over the almost 300 years that it occupied the site, so the purpose of many of the buildings would have changed, but the layout and key buildings in a Priory would have stayed the same, just improved and repaired over the years that the site was in use:

The blue plaque marking the site of the Priory of the Blackfriars, shown earlier in the post, is at the north western edge of the priory buildings. If you find Carter Lane along the top of the plan, with the Lady Chapel, where Carter Lane meets Water Lane (the street that today is Black Friars Lane), the plaque is on what would have been the northern wall of the Lady Chapel, above the L of Lady.

I am starting a walk around the site of the Priory at the southern end of Black Friars Lane, where it meets Queen Victoria Street. In the above plan, this is the space to lower left which leads up to what was Water Lane.

On the left of the following photo would have been gardens, workshops and a smithy, leading down to the relocated City wall and the River Fleet. On the right would have been the Kitchen Yard and the Parliament Hall or Chamber:

Note that in the early 20th century street plan shown in red in the above plan, Printing House Square is shown to the right, and behind the Parliament Hall.

The buildings around Printing House Square were where the offices and printing machinery of the Times newspaper were based after John Walter brought the King’s Printing House in Blackfriars in 1784.

Further up, we reach the junction with Playhouse Yard. Black Friars Lane continues up to Carter Lane. The buildings on the left appear rather strange as their depth has been reduced to provide space for the railway, which now allows the Thameslink trains to run into Blackfriars Station, the tracks are behind the wall on the left:

In the above photo, the turning on the right is into Play House Yard. The name comes from the Blackfriars Theatre that was on part of the site between 1596 and 1655. The theatre seems to have been mainly used during the winter months. The Globe and Rose theatres on the low lying south bank of the river would often be surrounded by muddy water following heavy rains and when the Thames breached the limited river bank defences then in place, so Blackfriars, on a rising slope above the Thames was a good alternative.

This is the view looking into Play House Yard, and here we are coming from the Kitchen Yard, crossing the Kitchen, and part of the Refectory (or Frater as shown in the above plan), with the southern part of the main cloister in the distance:

Offices are in the building on the left, and just a bit further to the left, behind the offices is Apothecaries’ Hall.

The Apothecaries’ moved into the old Guest House of the Priory, which became their Hall in 1632. The building was lost during the Great Fire of 1666, and the Apothecaries’ rebuilt their hall on the same site in 1670, with some rebuilding in 1786, from when the brick parts of the overall complex, facing the street in the above and below photos date from.

The Hall is Grade I listed, and according to the listing the Hall includes “slight medieval remains of Blackfriars’ Priory”. The Apothecaries’ Hall from Black Friars Lane:

The Porter’s Lodge of the Priory was located where the Apothecaries’ Hall meets Black Friars Lane, and from here a gallery provided a walking route down to the new location of the City Wall alongside the Fleet, where there was a small crossing over the Fleet.

In Play House Yard, looking back towards the entrance from Black Friars Lane, and the buildings around the Apothecaries’ Hall are directly in front. This is where the Guest Hall and Guest House were located. To the right was the southern side of the main Cloister:

To the right of the above photo is an alley by the name of Church Entry and which leads up to Carter Lane. It is here that we find the core of the Priory. In the following photo looking north along Church Entry, the eastern side of the main Cloister would have been on the left. To the right was a School House, then a Chapter House, and further along the alley, just past where the white wall juts in from the left, would have been the magnificent tower of the Priory’s church:

To the left of Church Entry was the Nave and the Choir was to the right, with the tower between. The name Church Entry for the alley is down to the alley being the entry point into the church, running north-south underneath the tower.

Along Church Entry is the entrance to a raised garden:

This open space was once part of the Preaching Nave of the Priory Church. After the Nave was demolished, the space was used as a churchyard for the parish of St. Ann, Blackfriars. Closed for burials in 1849, it is now a garden maintained by the City.

In the years when the Priory was in use, the Nave would have extended to the left of the following photo, and through the buildings that now occupy the space on the left. This would have been one of the most important parts of the Priory. In the plan of the Priory, it is labelled as the Preaching Nave, as this is where the friars would have fulfilled one of the Order’s main roles of preaching.

One of the major events early in the life of the Priory was the Priory’s role in the funeral of Eleanor of Castile. After the funeral of Eleanor at Westminster Abbey, there was one last act for her husband Edward I to attend to, and that was the burial of Eleanor’s heart at the Dominican Priory at Blackfriars on Tuesday the 19th of December, 1290.

The priory at Blackfriars was well known to Edward and Eleanor as the heart of their son Alfonso who had died in 1284 at the age of 10 had already been buried at Blackfriars, so Eleanor probably had been planning for her heart to be buried with that of her son. (for more on Eleanor of Castile, see my series of posts on the line of Eleanor Crosses and the journey from the place of her death, back to London, starting in this post),

It was also Edward I who had specified that the redirected City wall, along the River Fleet was to be built at the expense of the City. A decision which must have pleased the Friars.

There are very few records of life within the priory, and most recorded events come from the time of Henry VIII. In 1522, the visiting Emperor Charles V was put up by Henry VIII at the priory, and Henry VIII had a covered gallery constructed from the western edge of the priory across from the Porter’s Lodge down to Bridewell Bridge, which crossed the Fleet and gave access to Henry’s new palace at Bridewell, enabling Charles V to reach the palace from his lodging in the priory without getting wet if it rained.

The Gallery can just be seen on the left edge of the plan of the priory earlier in the post.

During Henry VIII’s divorce from Catherine of Aragon, Catherine was put on trial before the papal legate at the priory.

Where Church Entry meets Carter Lane:

Walking back to Play House Yard, I then turned east into Ireland Yard, as here we can see a small bit of stone wall that was possibly part of the medieval Priory.

Ireland Yard takes its name from the Ireland family. Early in the 17th century a William Ireland owned property here, and for some reason, the family gave their name to the street, which runs between Play House Yard and St. Andrew’s Hill.

A short distance along Ireland Yard, on the northern side are these brick walls with a gate and steps leading up to a raised open space:

Walk up the steps, look to the right and you will see the remains of a wall:

This fragment of a rubble wall is Grade II listed, and in the listing record it is stated that it is “Probably part of former Dominican Convent (Blackfriars)”.

The use of “probably” illustrates the problem of being really sure when describing the origins of small bits of a structure. If it is from the Priory, then it would possibly have formed the southern wall of the Provincial’s Hall.

The Provincial’s Hall had an upper floor so a strong wall would have been needed. The plan of the Priory states that over the hall was a Dorter (the sleeping area for the friars).

The open space at the top of the steps, looking back towards Ireland Yard is shown in the following photo. The Provincial’s Hall with the friars sleeping quarters ran across the southern part of this space, by the steps. To the right was the Chapter House, and it seems that the parish church of St. Ann may have used the Chapter House, with the churchyard occupying part of this space, as well as the space in Church Entry where the Nave of the Priory Church was located:

Continuing along Ireland Yard, and the next street running up to Carter Lane is Friar Street:

Friar Street marks the easterly limit of the buildings that made up the Priory. The Priory estate continued to the east with the Prior’s Garden which ran all the way to what is now St. Andrew’s Hill.

In the above photo, the eastern end of the Choir was to the left of the far end of the street, and where Friar Street meets Ireland Yard was the eastern end of the Provincial’s Hall. The Prior’s Gardens were to the right of the above photo.

Continuing along Ireland Yard, and we come to St. Andrew’s Hill, a street that runs up from Queen Victoria Street to Carter Lane.

St. Andrew’s Hill was originally Puddle Dock Hill as the street ran down to Puddle Dock on the Thames, which was used by the Friars as their access to the river.

St. Andrew’s Hill / Puddle Dock Hill formed the eastern boundary of the Friary, and it was at the junction with Ireland Yard that the east gatehouse was located.

On the left of the entrance to Ireland Yard is the Cockpit pub. The current pub building is mainly from 1842, however a pub is alleged to have been here from the 16th century and the name is a reference to cock-fighting and the associated gambling that once took place here. It would have been a logical place for a pub, right next to the gatehouse to the old Friary estate.

There is a reference to the gatehouse on the plaque on the building to the right in the above photo. The plaque records that William Shakespeare purchased lodgings in the Blackfriars Gatehouse on the 19th of March, 1613:

Walking up to Carter Lane, and looking west from the north east corner of the Friary estate:

It is interesting how street patterns retain a memory from what was there in previous centuries.

In the above photo, the boundary wall of the Priory estate cut across the wider part of the road, then turned a short distance up the road to the right, before heading north west, where it met the City wall at the point where it had been redirected to the west to free up space for the Friary.

So in the above photo, where Carter Lane narrows is the point where the street ran within the Priory, with Priory buildings to the left, and the principal graveyard of the Priory to the right. The narrowing of Carter Lane my reflect that the narrow part ran within the Priory grounds..

At the western end of Carter Lane, I meet the junction with Ludgate Broadway and Black Friars Lane, and the following photo is looking back along Carter Lane. The impressive nave of the church was on the right, the principal graveyard was on the left. Behind me, gardens ran down to the rerouted City wall which then ran along the banks of the River Fleet, now New Bridge Street:

Whilst a single part of what may have been a rubble stone wall of the Priory remains above ground, there are still arcaeological remains below ground, however the majority of the Priory remains have been lost.

During the mid-19th century, John Wykeham Archer recorded a number of the surviving parts of the Priory in a series of prints. The following print dates from 1853 and shows the remains of a wall and base of a pillar underneath the Times printing office (all the following three prints are: © The Trustees of the British Museum. Shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence.):

The following from 1855 shows the remains of an arch:

And the following print, also from 1855, shows the base of a tower. In the print above and that below, there are men looking as if they are breaking up the structure and carrying stones away in baskets. This must have been the fate of much of the old Priory with the stone being reused in other construction projects:

In a few decades time, it will be 500 years since the Dominican Order surrendered their Priory to Henry VIII, the site sold off and the area began the transformation to the place we see today.

The Priory occupied a large area, it required a significant rerouting of the City wall, and appears to have been an impressive place, with the central nave, choir and tower dominating the Priory.

It lasted for just under 300 years, but the name that came from the sight of the Friars in their black capes still resonates through the area today.

Resources – Mapping at the National Library of Scotland

And now for the second of my monthly additions to a post detailing some of the resources I use for research, and for this month there is a website that can easily lead to an evening of distraction as you explore the street layout of places from over 100 years ago.

The National Library of Scotland has an extensive range of maps which have been digitised and aligned with maps of today. These maps cover not only London, but much of the country, so for example, if you want to see the countryside and villages lost under Harlow new town, as they were at the end of the 19th century, or how much Lincoln has expanded from a country town to the city it is today, it is all there.

The website is at: https://maps.nls.uk/ where you will find the following page:

Click on Geo-referenced maps in the top row of options, and you will be taken to a map with an Ordnance Survey map overlaying a modern map.

From here you can zoom in and out and move the map with a mouse, and at bottom left there is a “Change transparency of overlay” slider where you can reveal the modern base map to help with locating a place before going back to the older map.

Above the slider, you can select a map. The OS Six Inch 1888-1915 is a good place to start, but clicking the down arrow to the right of the select a map box will bring up a list of other available maps. There are plenty to explore.

From the main page shown above you can also view a “Side by side viewer” which places an old and a modern map next to each other, and zooming in and out, or moving one of the maps synchronises with the other map.

There is much to explore at the site, and it is worthwhile spending some time exploring all the different features and options to get to know how the site work, or just zoom in on your current street or home town to see what was there at the end of the 19th century.

The National Library of Scotland have done a remarkable job with putting these maps on line, aligning with maps of today, and making the site so easy to use – a wonderful resource, not just for London, but the whole country.

What I Am Reading – Maritime Metropolis by Sarah Palmer

I also thought I would include in these resources additions to posts, a monthly book, and for this month it is a book that I have just purchased and am currently reading, Maritime Metropolis London and its Port, 1780-1914 by Sarah Palmer:

I have been hesitating to buy this book for some time as the published price of the book is £90, but finally purchased a copy as the subject to so close to my interest in the relationship between London and river and docks that made up the Port.

It is published by Cambridge University Press so could come under the category of an academic title, hence the price.

Many histories of London look at either the city or the port, almost in isolation, however the approach taken by Sarah Palmer in Maritime Metropolis is that the history of both are intertwined. London is a Port City and almost every aspect of the city’s development has been influenced by the port, and the port was able to develop because of London.

This is a view that I have long taken, and today, with the loss of the docks, London has in many ways lost its connection with the river, and the route to the world that the river provided.

It is also why London has in some ways lost its identity. It is no longer a port city, it is no longer home to the largest dock complex in the world, and the enormous volumes of trade that once passed through the city. Indeed up until the later part of the 20th century, ships taking goods to and from London has been a key part of the city’s function, and in the lives of the city’s residents, for almost its entire history.

If you want to understand the deep connection between London and its Port, then Maritime Metropolis is a comprehensive and very readable account.

alondoninheritance.com

St. James’s – The Essence of Piccadilly

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If you would like to explore the history and transformation of Puddle Dock and Thames Street, two tickets have just become available for my next walk on Sunday the 18th of May. Details and booking here:

The Lost Landscape and Transformation of Puddle Dock and Thames Street Tickets, Sun, May 18, 2025 at 11:00 AM | Eventbrite

St. James’s – The Essence of Piccadilly. The final part of the title of today’s post is a description of the church I took from a 1940s book about the area which I will quote from in more detail later in the post, but it does capture this historic 17th century church between Piccadilly and Jermyn Street, seen in the following photo from Jermyn Street:

The church was part of the same 17th century expansion of London that also resulted in nearby St. James’s Square, see my post from a couple of weeks ago.

A church was needed as the area was originally within the parish of St. Martin’s in the Fields, and the significant increase in population as fields were replaced by streets required a new, local church for the residents then moving into the new streets and squares.

The land was part of the original grant from King Charles II and was held as part of a leasehold by the Henry Jermyn, the Earl of St. Albans.

Construction of the church seems to have commenced around 1676, as the foundation stone was laid on the 3rd of April of that year.

The church was consecrated in 1684 after the freehold of the land had been obtained, and the majority of financing for the church was from the Earl of St. Albans.

The church gardens to the west of the church:

When consecrated, the church was lacking a steeple and spire, and the construction of these would cause some considerable problems.

The cost for building Wren’s design for the steeple and spire was estimated at around £800, and was rejected as being too expensive, so the vestry went for a design by Jonathan Wilcox (recorded as being a Mr Wilcox. Jonathan Wilcox was a carpenter who had worked on a number of other construction projects, including St. Vedas in the City).

In preparation for the spire, the steeple, brick and stonework up to the cornice at the top of the tower was completed, allowing work on the spire to start, first with the carpentry of the central structure to make ready for the lead sheeting that would cover the spire.

Before the lead sheeting was added, it was noticed that the structure was leaning to the west, and an investigation found that poor workmanship, wet clay and poor mortar used for constructure of the steeple had all contributed to the lean.

It seems that the construction did stabilise, but the vestry decided to replace the original spire with a new one, which appears to have been completed in 1700.

The spire does seem to have had a lean all the way up to the destruction of the spire, along with much of the rest of the church, in the bombing of October 1940.

The verger of St. James’s along with his wife both lost their lives as a result of the bombing.

The view of the church today from Piccadilly, rebuilt in the immediate post-war period:

Today, the church is known at St. James’s. Piccadilly, which makes sense as the church is to the immediate south of this major London street, and large ornate iron gates form the main entrance to the courtyard in front of the church from Piccadilly.

For many years after the church was built, it was known as St. James’s Westminster, reflecting a very different focus to the south, as in the years immediately following the completion of the church, the land to the north of Piccadilly was still being developed.

The use of Westminster rather than Piccadilly lasted into the early 19th century, as shown in the following print from 1814, the church is also referred to as being “situated on the north of Jermyn Street, fronting St. James’s Square”, even though St. James’s Square was not directly along side the church:

Image: © The Trustees of the British Museum. Shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence.

The early emphasis on Westminster rather than Piccadilly may have been due to the gradual evolution of the street into a major thoroughfare.

Whilst a road described as an early “route to Reading” had existed on the current route of Piccadilly for centuries before the development of the street, it was only during the late 17th and early 18th centuries that the street was fully developed, and even in the early 18th century, the street had still not taken its existing name for the full route from what is now Piccadilly Circus to Hyde Park Corner.

As shown in the following map from 1720, the stretch to the east of the church was known as “Pickadilly” and to the west of the church, the road was “Portugal Street”:

Image: © The Trustees of the British Museum. Shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence.

Walking into the church today, it is hard to imagine the state that the church was in, 85 years ago:

Looking to the west end of the church, with the fully restored organ:

The origins of the organ date back to 1686, when an organ was built by Renatus Harris for a Roman Catholic Chapel at Whitehall Palace.

With the Protestant William of Orange and Mary (who jointly ruled as William II and Queen Mary II) coming to the throne in 1689, the Roman Catholic Chapel was dismantled, and the St. James’s vestry petitioned the Queen to have the organ from the chapel installed in their new church., as a result, the organ was moved to St. James’s, being ready to play at Christmas 1691.

The organ was restored during the late 19th century, but was badly damaged during the bombing of 1940, luckily the organ case had already been dismantled and stored remotely. It was restored and rebuilt, ready for use in 1954.

After completion, and in the first decades of the 18th century, St. James’s Piccadilly was considered the most fashionable church in London. No doubt due to the residents of the new streets around St. James’s Square, and the large houses that were built along Piccadilly, which was also growing in prominence as an important London street.

There are a lovely series of books about the Piccadilly area in wartime by the author Robert Henrey.

Robert Henrey was a journalist, however his wife was the French writer Madeleine Gal who also wrote under the name of Robert Henrey. Writing was a joint enterprise with much of the material being hers and he supplied the editorship.

They lived in Shepherd Market, and I wrote about the area in this post. In “A Village in Piccadilly” (1942), Henry wrote the following about St. James’s Church:

“I decided to attend matins at St. James’s Piccadilly. Only the south aisle remained standing after high explosives and incendiaries had rained down on both the church and the adjoining rectory during the night raids of the summer.

St. James’s was the essence of Piccadilly. Wrecked and charred, it continued to arrest the attention of the passer-by as the most spectacular ruin of the neighbourhood.

My first interest in St. James’s was when, as a child, it was pointed out to me that the steeple was sloping – a local tower of Pisa!. This had struck me so deeply that I never walked past without looking up at it with fascination. This steeple was the only part of the church for which Wren was not responsible; his original design was refused on the grounds of expense, and the work was given to a local builder.

What gave the church its picturesqueness was the open-air pulpit , the big yard paved with old tombstones that originally stood upright, and the gnarled tree that in summer spread its leafy branches over Piccadilly.”

The following photo is from the book “A Village in Piccadilly”, which shows some of the damage to the church:

There is also a short British Pathe film showing the bomb damaged church:

And this British Pathe film shows the 1946 opening of a Garden of Remembrance at the church, as well as more scenes of the considerable damage to the church in 1940:

The church has some rather unique lights mounted on the pews:

The walls of the church have a good number of monuments and plaques, and some of these record that it was not just the living who suffered wartime bombing, but also the dead.

This plaque is to William McGillivray, who died in London in 1825 and with his wife Magdalen, were buried at the church, with their graves being destroyed in 1940:

William McGillivray was a Scottish born fur trader, who spent the majority of his life in Canada, with a home in Montreal, as well as retaining a significant estate in Scotland.

McGillivray’s time with the North West Company was during the expansion of their operations across Canada, and with considerable competition with the Hudson Bay Company.

Furs were one of the major exports of both the North West and Hudson Bay Companies, and during the first decades of the 19th century, the excessive numbers of beaver trapped for their furs was leading to the scarcity of what had been a common animal. Many of the furs exported by the North West Company would have been traded through the Port of London.

The fur trade from Canada was gradually replaced by timber as in 1809 Napoleon had blockaded the Baltic Sea which prevented timber being exported to the UK, and in the same year, the countries other main source of timber, the United States enacted their Non-Intercourse Act, which prohibited trade with the UK – an act which did contribute to the industrialisation of the United States as for the time that the act was in place, British manufactured goods could not be imported into the US – a parallel with recent US tariffs perhaps?

His death in London was during a visit, rather than when living in the city.

Another grave destroyed in 1940 was that of Bartholomew Ruspini, who apparently in 1788 established the “Royal Cumberland Freemason School for the Daughters of Deceased or Distressed Freemasons”:

The school is still going, and is based in Rickmansworth, although judging by their fees, it does not look as if it would cover the daughters of those in financial distress.

Another of the graves or tombs destroyed in 1940 was that of Mary Beale, who unusually for the time, was a portrait painter:

According to the National Portrait Gallery, Mary was the daughter of a Suffolk clergyman who married Charles Beale, who was an artists colour-man – a person who made and prepared the materials that an artist would use.

She had a studio in London and produced a considerable number of portraits, and the National Gallery records her as being the earliest professional female artist in their collection.

Mary Beale – a self portrait:

Image source: © National Portrait Gallery, London and reproduced under Creative Commons licence CC BY-NC-ND 3.0.

In her portrait, Mary is holding in her right hand a portrait of her two sons, and on the wall on the left is an artist’s pallet, highlighting both her family and her profession.

Mary’s portrait is believed to date from 1666 – the same year as the Great Fire of London. No connection – just interesting to see an image of someone who may have witnessed such a disastrous event in the history of London.

A memorial to two other artists who were buried in the church. The Dutch marine artists William van der Velde the Elder, and his son William van de Velde the Younger:

Father and son van de Velde left Amsterdam in 1672 and settled in England. They became favourites of King Charles II, who, to encourage them to stay, provided studio space in the Queen’s House in Greenwich, as well as a salary of £100 each, a year.

The van der Velde’s established maritime art as a key part of Britain’s maritime identity, at a time when trade via the sea was rising rapidly, as well as the strength of the Royal Navy.

The Royal yacht ‘Cleveland’ by William van de Velde the Younger:

Image: © The Trustees of the British Museum. Shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence.

A sample of some of the original monuments in the church. This is to Master Henry Nesbitt Brooke who died in Hammersmith at the age of 11 and was described as “A Most Promising Youth”:

Looking at some of the monuments, you do wonder about the history of the people recorded. Henry died in London in 1823 at the age of 11, and had been born on the Island of St. Helena.

St. Helena is the very remote island in the southern Atlantic, where Napoleon Bonaparte was held from his surrender in 1815 to his death in 1821.

The plaque does not record when Henry left St. Helena, but it is possible that he was on the island at the same time as Napoleon, and that they may have met.

The “artist, poet, visionary” William Blake, who was baptised in St. James’s in 1757:

William Yarrell – Treasurer and a Vice President of the Linnean Society of London:

The Linnean Society was founded in 1788 at a learned society devoted to the science of natural history.

The monument is a memorial to Yarrell, as he was not buried at St. James’s. Yarrell died in 1856, and I assume his memorial is at St. James’s as during the following year, 1857, the Linnean Society moved from Soho Square to Burlington House in Piccadilly (the current location of the society), so by the time the monument was completed, it was installed in the church nearest to the home of the society.

The font:

The font is believed to be the work of Grinling Gibbons, and dates from 1686. The font is of white marble. Gibbons is usually known for his work with carved wood, for example with the decoration on the reredos (wooden panels) behind church altars (such as the panels in St. James’s), but he was also exceptionally skilled at marble work as the ornate font demonstrates.

The font originally had a cover, however it is believed that this was sold by the church, possibly in 1822, when the font was moved to a location where the cover could not be hung.

The following print is from 1718 and lists Grinling Gibbons as the sculptor of the font, and also shows the ornate cover that was part of its original design and installation:

Image: © The Trustees of the British Museum. Shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence.

The courtyard of the church, between the church and Piccadilly is where the high explosive bomb fell in 194o, and that did so much damage to the church. Today, it is busy place with food stalls and people taking a lunchtime break:

The Grade II listed Southwood memorial located between the courtyard and the garden to the west of the church:

The memorial is to Viscount Southwood, who died in 1946 and bequeathed money for the memorial garden, the opening of which is shown in one of the British Pathe films shown earlier in the post.

A walk along Church Place to the east of the church, shows the eastern end of the church, whare the altar is located:

Church Place from Piccadilly:

St. James’s Church is a lovely late 17th century London church, which tells the story of the westward expansion of London, how the building of new streets and significant increases in population required the division of parish boundaries into smaller areas, as what had been fields disappeared.

A church that looked almost a lost cause after the bombing of 1940, but too important not to be rebuilt, and as Robert Henrey / Madeleine Gal wrote in 1942 – the Essence of Piccadilly.

alondoninheritance.com

St. Olave and the Coopers Arms Pub, Falcon Square and Silver Street

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One of the pleasures of researching posts for the blog is finding new stuff about places I have already written about. It gives me a chance to learn more, and to look at a place from a different perspective.

Searching through the three volumes of Wonderful London for a photo of a location for a future post, I came across the following photo which I had not noticed before:

The photo dates from the 1920s, and the text below the photo reads:

“The Coopers’ Arms From The Churchyard of St. Olave’s, Silver Street – In 1604 Shakespeare moved from Southwark and lodged in Silver Street, Cheapside, with one Christopher Mountjoy, a Huguenot. On the same site now stands the Coopers’ Arms, Falcon Square: and though the original house has gone, at least the playwright must have contemplated the little churchyard opposite every time he looked out of the window. Now the churchyard has, as it were, become fossilised by the Great Fire, for the church, St. Olave’s was never rebuilt; hence this is a genuine piece of Shakespearean London.”

I have written about the Shakespeare connection in a previous post when I looked at the blue plaque recording Shakespeare’s short residence here. There is a link to that post, along with other posts about the area at the end of this post.

And in this post, I will first look at St. Olave and then at the Coopers’ Arms.

I could not get a photo from exactly the same viewpoint, as the above photo was taken from an upper floor of the building to the south of the churchyard, and today there are also bushes at the southern end of the garden. The following photo is as near as I can get:

In the original photo, there are steps with metal railings and a gate leading down to the street. The height of the street is different today, and the garden has been extended into what was Silver Street, but there are now small steps in the same position, and the grave in the above photo behind the steps must be the middle grave in the original photo.

St. Olave was an old church, but appears to have been rather plain, and I cannot find any prints of the church, which is not surprising given that they would have had to have been pre-1666.

I found the following description of the church in “London Churches before the Great Fire” by Wilberforce Jenkins (1917):

“With John Stow the monuments in a church were the chief feature of interest, and he is rather contemptuous of the little church of St. Olave in Silver Street: ‘A small thing and without any noteworthy monuments’. The date of the original church was earlier than 1291, the date of the ‘Taxatio’ of Pope Nicholas, in which the church is called ‘Olav de Mokewell’ (i.e. Monkwell). We are told of a certain priest or curate in charge, Roger de Shardelawe, in 1343. The church was rebuilt in 1609. The income was stated to be £83, including the vale of the parsonage. It was not rebuilt after the Fire, but the Parish was joined to that of St. Alban, Wood Street. A small piece of the churchyard may still be seen in Falcon Square, and is used as a public resting-place.”

The reference to “Olav de Mokewell” will become clear later in the post.

The loss of the church was the first of three waves of church losses, beginning with those not rebuilt after the Great Fire, then the demolitions of the late 19th century as the City’s population decreased, along with Victorian “improvements” to the City, and finally those not rebuilt after the Blitz.

When you consider how many churches remain in the City today, it is remarkable to think of how many more there were before 1666.

So where was St. Olave’s? I have circled the location of the remaining churchyard in the following map, showing that it is close to the old Museum of London roundabout, and to the south of London Wall, the post-war dual carriageway that was build over part of Silver Street, and Falcon Square (© OpenStreetMap contributors):

The following photo shows the overall churchyard today, with London Wall to the left. The 1920s photo was taken from one of the upper floors of the building that was on the site of the building to the right:

In “London Churches before the Fire”, the churchyard was described in 1917 as a “public resting-place”, and that is still the same today, and I had to wait for a while to get a photo without anyone sitting on the seats – phone call and smoking refugees from the nearby offices:

The view to the right of the above photo:

St. Olave’s was one of about three in the City along with one in Southwark that were dedicated to St. Olave.

In the City, only St. Olave’s, Hart Street survives.

There are some very different interpretations of the story of Olave. He seems to have been baptised in the year 1010, in the Norman city of Rouen. He then helped the Anglo-Saxon King Æthelred II (also known as Æthelred the Unready) to regain his throne after the death of Danish King Sweyn Forkbeard.

Sweyn’s son was King Cnut, who took the thrones of England and Denmark in 1016, and would take the throne of Norway from Olave in 1028.

Olave was killed at the Battle of Stiklestad, when he was trying to retake his Norwegian throne.

He was declared a saint in 1031 by the English Bishop Grimketel who was working as a missionary in Norway at the time of Olave’s death.

Nidaros Cathedral, a wonderful Gothic cathedral, in Trondheim, Norway, which claims to be the world’s most northern mediaeval cathedral, is built over the site of Olave’s tomb.

St. Olave’s feast day is the 29th of July, and if you work in the Faroe Islands, it is a public holiday.

Back in the garden, in front of where the steps and gate were in the 1920s photo there is today, the following stone:

No idea whether this is a remnant from St. Olave, or from some other local building. It does not appear in the 1920s photo and post-war there was plenty of architectural stone available for uses such as this, and the water does provide a good reflection of Bastion House.

The City of London Corporation have approved demolition and redevelopment of Bastion House and the old Museum of London buildings, however their is currently a legal challenge to stop these plans, which would result in the loss of one of the two remaining towers built along London Wall completed between 1961 and 1976 (the remaining tower is Britannic House completed in 1964, refurbished in 1990 when it was renamed as City Tower).

Bastion House above the old Museum of London building:

On either side of the steps leading down from the churchyard to the small garden area alongside London Wall are two stone plaques. The first records that this was the parish church of St. Olave, Silver Street, and it was destroyed by the fire in 1666:

London Wall was a post-war, major new road to the north of the churchyard, however road changes have always taken place as the second plaque records that “St. Olave, Silver Street. This churchyard was thrown back and the road widened by eight feet by the Commissioners of Sewers at the request of the Vestry. Anno Domini 1865” and I think records the names of the churchwardens as Harris and Wilson:

Another view of the churchyard with the steps just visible between the bushes on the left, the grave seen in the 1920s photo on the right, and on the left is what appears to be the base of the grave on the left of the 1920s photo:

Before a look at the Coopers’ Arms pub, a quick look at how the area has changed. The following map is an extract from Rocque’s map of 1746. I have marked the site of the Coopers’ Arms with a red circle, and just below this, very slightly to the left is St. Olave’s Churchyard:

We can see Silver Street, and running north from Silver Street is Monkwell Street. The origins of the name Monkwell Street are the same as the 1291 name of the church mentioned earlier of ‘Olav de Mokewell’ .

Monkwell Street is a very historic street, now completely lost. I wrote a detailed post about the street at the link at the end of thios post.

Moving forward to the late 19th century, and this is an extract from the OS map, with the Coopers’ Arms ringed in red, and the churchyard ringed in orange (Map ‘Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland“:

We can see that Silver Street runs into Falcon Square, which was a name mentioned earlier in the post in relation to the churchyard.

According to Henry Harben’s “A Dictionary of London”, the first mentions of Silver Street date from the start of the 14th century, when it was known as Selverstret (1306) and Silverstrete (1311). The source of the name is believed to come from silver smiths living and working around the street.

Harben does not give a source for the name Falcon Square, but gives an earliest reference as dating from 1799, which looks right, as the square does not appear in Rocque’s map of 1746.

Strangely, the Coopers’ Arms does not have the PH notation for a public house in the above map. The building I have ringed is definitely the pub, as the position on the map is the same as can be seen in the 1920s photo. There is though a pub to the left, on the corner of Castle Street and Falcon Square.

Now move forward to the post-war period, and we see the impact of bombing during the Blitz (Map ‘Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland“:

The Coopers’ Arms has gone, the outline of the churchyard is still there, but so much of the buildings and streets shown only 50 years earlier in the previous map have been destroyed, and the area is now ready for redevelopment, with the dual carriageway of London Wall carving through Silver Street and Falcon Square, and the whole area being redeveloped with new office blocks, and to the north of the map would come the Barbican estate.

The outline of Monkwell Street can still be seen, but this street will also soon be gone.

I will now have a look at the Coopers’ Arms, and this is a photo of the pub I found a few years ago and used in the post on the link with Shakespeare:

The pub was destroyed during the Second World War, and not rebuilt as part of the post-war reconstruction of the area.

I cannot find when the pub was opened, the earliest references I can find to the pub date from the early 19th century. What I can be confident about is that the Coopers’ Arms shown in the above photo was the result of a rebuild after an 1828 fire destroyed the earlier pub building.

There is a very graphic account of the fire in the London Evening Standard on the 20th of September, 1828. The account is very graphic regarding the death of an occupant, and shows the almost casual approach to, and reporting of deaths, including violent death in London in the first part of the 19th century, when accidental and violent death was relatively common:

“LATE FIRE IN SILVER STREET – Yesterday an inquest was held in the vestry room of St. Alban’s Church, Wood-street, Cheapside on the body of Nathaniel Smith, aged 56 who perished in the above conflagration.

The jury first viewed the remains of the unfortunate deceased, which lay in one of the vaults under the church. The body was scorched to a cinder, and the whole of the limbs were burnt off. The following evidence was taken:

William Dix, landlord of the Coopers’ Arms, Silver Street, Falcon Square, deposed that the deceased, who had been a town traveller for many years, was a lodger in his house at the time of his death. On Wednesday night last, a little before twelve o’clock, witness locked up the house, and at that time considered everything safe.; before he and his wife left the bar to go upstairs to their bedroom, witness took off nearly all the coals in the grate, and only left a very small glimmer, which he had repeatedly done before; about 2 o’clock he was alarmed out of his sleep by cries of ‘fire’ which proceeded from the street.

He instantly got up, and could discern that the house was full of smoke, on looking out of the window, he saw a flare in the street, which seemed to be occasioned by the lower part of the house being in flames; witness, his wife, and two little girls made their escape up to the front garret, and got out of the window on the parapet of the house, before witness got on the house he ran to the whole of the lodgers rooms, and alarmed them. The deceased door was fastened, and he burst it open, and laid hold of him by the shoulder, and said ‘For God’s sake, get up, Mr. Smith, or else you will be burnt in your bed’.

The deceased, who seemed very drowsy, replied that he would put part of his cloths on and follow him to the garret window. Witness, in making his escape down the ladder, saw the deceased at a window on the second floor – he did not see him afterwards; the whole of the house was burnt down, with the exception of the outer walls.

The jury returned a verdict – That the deceased was accidentally burned to death.”

A horrific story, but so very common in London when almost every building in the city had a fire for either cooking, heating, or as part of an industrial process, when small businesses and factories sat within residential streets.

The Coopers’ Arms was back in business by 1833, as the pub was used as a mailing address for any business looking for men trained in paper-staining.

As with so many London pub’s, the Coopers’ Arms was also used as a meeting place for businesses, clubs and societies. One example was from 1857, when the City Coal Society held a meeting at the Coopers; Arms and advised that they would receive tenders at the pub for their quarterly supply of upwards of 160 tons of coal.

The following photo is looking east along London Wall. St. Olave’s churchyard is behind the greenery to the right, and Silver Street once ran into London Wall at this point, emerging from under the building to the right of the arch seen in the photo:

With a bit of changing the perspective of the photo of the Coopers’ Arms, I think I can get the positioning right, superimposed on the photo of the area today:

Not sure whether this will work, or appear in emails, but an animated GIF of the above photo:

Monkwell Street is the street running off to the left of the Coopers’ Arms, which is on the corner with Silver Street running off to the right. It does not follow the route of today’s London Wall, but heads to the right / south of the street, and disappears under the building on the right of the arch over London Wall.

St. Olave’s churchyard is the only part of an old streetscape that dates back to at least the 13th century, to remain. Silver Street and Monkwell Street were lost during redevelopment, and I doubt those who lived, worked, or simply walked along Silver Street could have imagined what the area would look like in the future – a recurring theme across the ever changing city.

I have written a number of posts about this area, and I find it fascinating to continue exploring to gain a fuller understanding of the place.

You may be interested in the following posts which also cover the area:

Monkwell Street, Barbican – Discovering A Lost Street

William Shakespeare and the Mountjoy Family, one of the plaques looked at in this post

London Wall – A Location Shifting Historic Street

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St. Olave’s, Hart Street

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St. Olave, on the corner of Hart Street and Seething Lane is a wonderful City church. One of the few medieval churches that survived the Great Fire of 1666, it was badly bombed in the last war with only the tower and walls surviving. Wonderfully restored in the 1950s, the church is well worth a visit.

The following print from 1736 shows the same view as in the above photo, and a visitor from 1736 would immediately recognise the church, although the surrounding buildings are now very different:

© The Trustees of the British Museum Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

There are minor changes, for example the crenellations along the top of the church walls have been lost, as has the porch over the door to the church on Hart Street. This door provides one of two main entrances today:

The above print from 1736 provides the following information about the church:

“This Church was dedicated to St. Olave, King of Norway, professing ye Christian Religion. he endeavoured to win his Subjects over thereto, but they took up Arms, and with ye Assistance of Canute King of England and Denmark overcame and murdered him A.D. 1028. he was deemed a Martyr, and is commemorated July ye 28th. the first Account we have of this Church is that William de Samford was Rector in 1319. It was repaired by ye Parish in 1633 with cost of £437. the Patronage of ye Rectory was formerly in the Family of Nevil, then in that of Cely (who were considerable Benefactors to ye Fabrick) and afterward in that of ye Lord Windsor, it is now in ye Gift of 5 gentlemen of ye Parish as Trustees by Appointment of Sir Andrew Richards who was Sheriff in 1651 and died in 1672. It was formerly called St. Olave neat ye Tower of London, but now St. Olave Hart Street from its situation n ye South side of Hart street at ye North West corner of Seething Lane near Crutched Fryers in Tower Ward within ye City of London.”

There are some very different interpretations of the story of Olave. he seems to have been baptised in the year 1010, in the Norman city of Rouen. He then helped the Anglo-Saxon King Æthelred II (also known as Æthelred the Unready) to regain his throne after the death of Danish King Sweyn Forkbeard.

Sweyn’s son was King Cnut, who took the thrones of England and Denmark in 1016, and would take the throne of Norway from Olave in 1028.

Olave was killed at the Battle of Stiklestad, when he was trying to retake his Norwegian throne.

He was declared a saint in 1031 by the English Bishop Grimketel who was working as a missionary in Norway at the time of Olave’s death.

Nidaros Cathedral, a wonderful Gothic cathedral, in Trondheim, Norway, which claims to be the world’s most northern mediaeval cathedral, is built over the site of Olave’s tomb.

St. Olave’s feast day is now the 29th of July, rather than the 28th as detailed in the text with the 1736 print, and if you work in the Faroe Islands, it is a public holiday.

View of the church from Seething Lane:

And the view of the church from Seething Lane today is much the same as it was in 1810:

© The Trustees of the British Museum Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

The gate from Seething Lane to what remains of the churchyard dates from 1658 and has three skulls in the centre and a skull on either side for decoration:

The gateway is Grade II* listed, and Historic England dates the wall and railing to perhaps the 18th century and the iron gates to the early 19th century.

Once through the gates, there is a small churchyard, steps down to the entrance to the church, and on the right an interesting post. Not sure what this could have been, possibly a parish boundary marker:

The Navy Office was once located close to the church, and on the wall to the right of the entrance is a plaque which records the following:

“Entrance to the South Gallery and the Navy Office Pew often mentioned in the Diary of Samuel Pepys. Tablet erected 1891.”

The entrance to the South Gallery of the church was discovered in 1883. The church had been granted a sum of £1,200 by the Charity Commissioners to undertake repairs to the fabric of the church.

A cement like material had been used to cover the walls, and on removing the cement, the old entrance was discovered, and was believed to have been where a wooden gallery extended to the Navy Office allowing Pepys to reach the Navy Office pew in the church from the Navy Office, without getting wet.

Inside the church, looking up to the altar:

The same view in the late 19th century:

Although the church had been very badly damaged during the war, and the wooden roof and wooden interior fittings had burnt, it still has the feel of an old church – which indeed it is.

On Wednesday and Thursday lunchtimes, well attended musical recitals take place in the church, but on the Friday afternoon of my visit, the church was very quiet, and for 20 minutes I had the church to myself.

Noise from the outside hardly penetrates the thick walls of these early City churches, and the sound of the camera shutter seemed excessively loud in this quiet space.

The southern gallery to the right of the altar:

The northern gallery to the left of the altar:

Looking back to the western end of the church:

St. Olave has four sword stands, two came from Allhallows Staining, and two have always belonged to St. Olave:

The book “The Annals of St. Olave Hart Street and Allhallows Staining” by the Rev Alfred Povah (1894) has the following to say about the sword stands:

“These picturesque pieces of church furniture – we have no evidence of such earlier than Queen Elizabeth’s reign – are often admired by visitors who have, perhaps, no precise notion of the purpose which they served. It was, till very recently, the custom for the Lord Mayor, accompanied by the Sheriffs to attend divine service at a City church on Sunday morning, and by their presence and their retinue, a larger congregation was drawn to the support of various charities.

On these occasions the Lord Mayor was escorted by the Bearer of the Mace and the Bearer of the State Sword, and our forefathers often did honour to a parishioner elected to be Lord Mayor, by causing a sword stand, sword rest, or ‘branch’ sometimes called a ‘Trophy of Arms’ to be placed upon his pew.”

Memorial to Samuel Pepys:

Samuel Pepys regularly attended services at St. Olave and when Elizabeth his wife died, she was buried in the church on the 13th of November, 1669. Her monument is high on the wall to the left of the altar.

When Samuel Pepys died on the 26th of May, 1703, he was also buried in the church. The entry in the church register reads “1703, June 4. Samuel Pepys buried in a vault by ye communion table”.

The memorial to Pepys would not be erected for well over one hundred years, and came about due to the actions of the London and Middlesex Archaeological Society, as the book, the Annals of St. Olave records:

“As far back as the year 1864, on the occasion of a visit by the Members of the London and Middlesex Archaeological Society. I proposed that a Memorial of Samuel Pepys should be placed in the Church of St. Olave, Hart Street, and promises of support were received from the Clothworkers’ Company, the Trinity House, Magdalene College Cambridge, and others.

It was not, however, till the Members of the Middlesex Archaeological Society paid a second visit to the Church in 1882, that the want of such a memorial was again publicly noticed. Mr. Henry B. Wheatley, who read a paper on that occasion, conferred with Mr. (now Sir) Owen Roberts, the Clerk to the Clothworkers’ Company and myself. At a meeting held July 5th, 1882, a committee, mainly representative of the great institutions with which Pepys had been connected, was appointed.”

Despite offers from a number of architects and sculptors, work on the design of the memorial was left to a Mr. (later Sir) Arthur Blomfield, and his design was met with approval by the committee.

An appeal for subscriptions to fund the memorial was met with a “liberal response”, and when complete, a service to unveil the memorial was arranged for Tuesday the 18th of March, 1884 at three p.m..

It was intended that the memorial was unveiled by the Earl Northbrook, First Lord of the Admiralty, given Pepys association with the Admiralty, however on the day, Northbrook could not attend, and it was instead unveiled by J. Russell Lowell, the United States Minister.

It was noted at the service that for the past 180 years, questions from visitors as to the location of the Pepys Memorial could only be meet with the reply that his only visible reference in the church was the entry about his burial in the church register, but now there was a stone monument placed on the wall, and in a fitting location as it was near the door where Pepys had entered from the Navy Office.

Whilst Pepys is probably the most famous of those with a memorial in the church, there are many other historic and fascinating memorials, including one which tells of the horrendous death rate for children in earlier centuries:

The memorial is to Reverend John Letts, who was rector of the parish for nearly twenty years. He died at the age of 57 on the 24th of March, 1857, and the memorial was erected by:

“His sorrowing Widow to the Memory of Her beloved Husband and of their children, Charlotte, Amy, Sarianne, Viola and Egerton who preceded their Father to the Grave”.

Five children who had died before their father. The monument does not record how many children John Letts and his unnamed wife had in total. There was at least one more as the monument records that Letts had died when on a visit to his Son at Staunton Harold, Leicestershire.

Life for the young was very precarious, even within a family who, with a father who was the Reverend of a City church, must have been reasonably well to do.

St. Olave’s association with Trinity House can be seen with a model of a lightship in the church. This is the lightship that was based in the North Sea at Smiths Knoll, an area a few miles off Great Yarmouth in Norfolk:

Stone tablet inlaid with brass – a memorial to John Orgone and his wife Ellyne:

There is no record of the death of John, but in the church registers there is an entry for Ellyn dated the 7th of June, 1580, which reads: “Ellin the wife of M’ John Organ aged 54 years of a swelling in the head”.

The two scrolls above the figures read: “Learne to dye” and “ys ye waye to life”. Between them is the representation of a wool sack, with a trademark and the initials IO (a merchants mark).

A fascinating record of a 16th century London merchant.

The next momument tells a story of how monuments were lost, and occasionally recovered, following wartime damage to the church.

This is the memorial to the physician Peter Turner who died on the 17th of May, 1614:

As mentioned earlier in the post, the church was badly damaged during the last war. Fire had gutted the interior, destroying the wood roof, pews etc. but leaving the stone walls, the tower and many of the monuments within.

There was a large amount of looting of bombed sites during the war. My father recorded furniture being stolen from one of the flats in his estate which had been damaged by an incendiary bomb.

Peter Turner’s monument was presumably stolen, as it went missing from the church.

It reappeared at an art auction in April 2010, and returned to its original position within the church the following year, almost 70 years after going missing.

There is much though that was lost from the overall monument as can be seen from the photo, with the original stone around the bust still missing, as is the stone below the bust and the plaque with the inscription, which are all new.

One that has remained in the church is this impressive memorial to Sir James Deane, who died on the 16th of May, 1608:

His entry in the church register states: “1608, June the 2. S’ James Deane Knight deceased on the 16th of Maie at his howse in hackneye being brought to London, was on the 2 of June following buried in the chancell.”

There is a related register entry which reads: “1600-1, March 16. A Cresom woman child of S’ James Deane’s”.

Cresom or “chrisomes” was an archaic term for death in infants. Chrisomes was used to describe the death of an infant under one month of age. The term came from the name of a white linen cloth that was used to cover a baby’s head when baptised, and was also used as a shroud for a dead baby.

If you look at the photo of the monument above, there is a central panel with a man and woman facing each other and praying. In the centre, below them, there are two babies, with the lower with its head resting on a skull, to symbolise death:

Another reminder of the terribly high child death rate, and how those who could afford a monument wanted to record their children, including those who died as babies, as being part of their family. My post on Bills of Mortality – Death in early 18th Century London, goes into some depth on the causes of death, and just how relatively few children reached adulthood.

Dame Anne, the wife of Sir John Radclif, Knight, who died on the 10th of December, 1585, and well over 400 years later, continues to kneel in perpetual prayer:

As does Andrew Bayninge, who died on the 21st of December 1610, aged 67:

Next is the statue of, and memorial to Sir Andrew Riccard, who died in 1672:

Sir Andrew Riccard was a leading member of two of the trading companies that contributed so much to the financial and trading success of the City of London in the 17th and 18th centuries; the East India Company and the Turkey Company.

The text below his statue reads:

“Sacred be the Statue here raised by Gratitude & Respect to eternize the Memory of Sir ANDREW RICCARD Kn’t. A Citizen &. opulent- Merchant of London Whose active Piety, inflexible Integrity & extensive Abilities alike distinguished and exalted Him in the Opinion of the Wise and Good. Adverse to his Wish, He was frequently chosen Chairman of the Honorable East India Company, and filled with equal Credit, for eighteen successive Years, the same eminent Station in the Turkey Company. Among many Instances of his Love to GOD and liberal Spirit towards Man one as it demands peculiar Praise deserves to be distinctly recorded. He nobly left the PERPETUAL ADVOWSON of this Parish, in Trust of five of its senior Inhabitants. He died the 6th of Sep’ In the Year of our LORD 1672 of his Age 68.”

I suspect that it was not too much “adverse to his wish” that he was frequently chosen as chairman, as these would have been prestige roles in the City and would have made him a wealthy man, as perhaps the scale of his monument suggests.

Another statue records one of the international inhabitants of London. This is Peter Cappone, originally from Florence, and who died in the City of London in1582:

The entry in the register records that he died of the plaque on the 27th of October, 1582, one of the many years during the 16th century when the plaque was a cause of death in London. Not on the scale of the outbreak in 1665, but a continuous risk among the many risks to health for Londoners over the centuries.

St. Olave is a wonderful City church. Restored following wartime bombing to a standard where it still provides a sense of the church when some of those commemorated around the walls once knew St. Olave, Hart Street.

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Churches at the City Boundaries – St Andrew, Holborn

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This is the church of St. Andrew, Holborn, photographed in the low sun of a bright winter’s afternoon:

I will be exploring the church later in the post, but to start, let’s look at the location of St. Andrew, because I suspect the church is here due to its proximity to the River Fleet, and it is one of a number of London’s churches that are located at key boundaries, crossings and entry and exit points, of a much earlier City of London.

In the following photo, I am looking along Holborn Viaduct, towards the bridge over Farringdon Street, the old route of the River Fleet. Part of St. Andrew is on the right of the photo (the ornate tower is part of the City Temple Church, a much later Nonconformist church which is currently undergoing significant rebuilding works):

If we stand in what remains of the churchyard around St. Andrew, we can see that Holborn Viaduct is much higher than the churchyard, which marks the original surface level of the area. Today there are steps up from the churchyard to Holborn Viaduct:

And because of the height of Holborn Viaduct, a bridge is needed to take the street over Shoe Lane, which runs alongside the eastern boundary of the church, a view which again shows how surface levels have changed around the church:

A short walk east from the church, and we can look over the bridge down to Farringdon Street, a view which shows the height difference between the upper road, and the original route of the River Fleet (which would have been lower than the current road surface due to building over the original water course):

The bridge over Farringdon Street is part of Holborn Viaduct, the 427m long viaduct designed to provide a bridge over the valley of the Fleet River and a level road between Holborn Circus and Newgate Street.

The construction contract for Holborn Viaduct was awarded on the 7th May 1866 and on the 6th November 1869 it was opened by Queen Victoria. One of the many 19th century “improvements” to the City, designed to address growing congestion along the streets, and to build a City that mirrored London’s global position.

Before the construction of the viaduct, there had been a hill which ran down from Holborn, down to the original route of the Fleet.

To get the level street surface of Holborn Viaduct, with sufficient clearance for the bridge over Farringdon Street, the level of the street needed to be raised, and is why the street is now higher than the churchyard around St. Andrew’s.

The church also lost part of the churchyard, as the new Holborn Viaduct was much wider than the street running down the hill, that it had replaced.

Whilst Holborn Viaduct now carries the street over a large road below, there has long been a bridge here, earlier versions of stone and wood, that carried the road from Holborn towards the City, and we can get an idea of how this looked in the following extract from William Morgan’s map of London from 1682:

I have underlined the location of St. Andrew’s with a red line, and you can see it had a large churchyard up to what was then called Holborn Hill, indicating that this was a hill from the higher ground of Holborn, down to the lower lying River Fleet.

The river can be seen to the right of the church, with Holborn Bridge spanning the river. In the late 17th century, the wide channel of the Fleet down to the Thames became a smaller river running north, although by this time, and with all the surrounding building, it was more an open sewer than a river.

We can get an idea of the gradient of Holborn Hill from the following two prints.

In the first, from the early 1800s, we can see the church and the surrounding churchyard, was originally higher than the street, and you can see the slope of the street outside the church as it heads down towards where the Fleet was once located:

© The Trustees of the British Museum Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

In the second print (from 1831), we are looking across Holborn Bridge (which was roughly at the level of Farringdon Street today), up Holborn Hill, with the tower of St. Andrew on the left:

© The Trustees of the British Museum Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

The above two prints show just how significant the impact of the 19th century Holborn Viaduct was on the area, and in the above print, we can imagine the River Fleet flowing in the foreground, marshy land on either side, then a hill rising up to the church – it would have been in a very prominent position.

St. Andrew occupies a place that has been the site of a religious building for very many centuries. The church we see today is just the latest version of the church.

The first written records of a church on the site date back to the year 959, when a charter of Westminster Abbey refers to an “old wooden church”’ on the hill above the River Fleet.

There was probably a church on the site for some years before the first written record, and we can imagine the scene with a small wooden church sitting on the high ground at the top of a hill from where the land runs steeply down to the River Fleet. A river that would have been wider prior to the buildings shown in the 1682 map, and with marshy banks.

So if you were heading towards the City, St. Andrew’s would have been just before the road descended down a hill to the Fleet, and if you were leaving the City, as you walked up the hill from the Fleet, you would come to St. Andrew’s.

Perhaps if you were entering or leaving the City, crossing the boundary of the Fleet, you would have wanted to pray, perhaps to ask for protection on the next stage of your journey.

Despite the amount of building across London over very many centuries, we can still see churches at what were major boundaries between the original City of London, and the rest of the city and the wider country. Churches are one of the few fixed points in the City’s landscape that have not moved for often over one thousand years.

We can use Morgan’s 1682 map for a quick tour of these boundaries. Just to the south of St. Andrew is another crossing over the River Fleet, where Fleet Street crossed the river up to Ludgate Hill, and just to the west of the Fleet, the same distance from the river as St. Andrew, we find what was St. Bridget, now St. Bride’s, which does have Roman and early mediaeval features in the Crypt, hinting at the age of the site :

Headimg back north, and just to the west of the entrance to the City through Newgate, we find St. Sepulcher:

We then come to Aldersgate, and just outside the gate we find St. Botolphs (there are three St. Botolphs outside the gates of the City of London. The relevance of the dedication will become clear later in the post):

Following the route of the wall, and next to Cripplegate, we find St. Giles:

On the approach to Bishopsgate, we find St. Botolph, which claims to have been built on the site of an earlier Saxon church:

St. Botolph is the patron saint of travelers, so a church dedicated to the saint would often be found where there are boundaries, or city gates, and another church dedicated to St. Botolph can be found just outside Aldgate, so three with the same dedication, to be found by gates in the old City wall:

Churches located at major boundaries, crossings, entry and exit points can be found south of the river, and in the 1682 map, close to the southern end of London Bridge, we find two churches, St. Olave’s on the right, and St. Savior’s, now Southwark Cathedral on the left:

There is no church just outside the old Moorgate. I suspect that this may have been due to the marshy nature of the fields outside this gate in early centuries, a moor which gave its name to the area we know today, and which was only drained in the 16th century.

So a church close to a gate into the City of London, or where you would have had to have crossed either the Thames or the Fleet is a feature we can still see today, although the gates or crossing points they marked (with the exception of the Thames) are long gone.

Now let’s walk back to the church, and to get an idea what the hill was like up from the River Fleet in the 18th century, this report from the 11th of February, 1743 gives an indication:

“It is hoped proper Care will be immediately taken to destroy this Gang of Thieves; who to the Number of 20 and upwards assemble every Night, and plant themselves on each Side of the Way, from St. Andrew’s Church to Holborn Bridge, commit all kind of Villainies, and make that Passage the most dangerous of any in the Town”.

You probably would have wanted to nip into St. Andrew for a quick prayer before risking the “Gang of Thieves” waiting for you as you walked down Holborn Hill.

No such dangers today, and as we walk towards the entrance to the church, there are two figures on either side:

The figures are not in their original location, they came from St Andrew’s Parochial School for children of the poor dating from the 1720s. The school was based in a Chapel of Ease built in Hatton Garden in the 1670s. The building is still there today, and I will return to it in a future post.

The interior of the church has white upper walls with gold decoration, and wood paneling around the columns and side walls on the ground floor, which lead up to a gallery with tiered seating on either side:

The interior of the church looks very new, and was the result of a rebuild by the architects Seely and Paget between 1960 and 1961 to repair the very considerable wartime damage to the church.

The church featured in one of a series of postcards called London under Fire, showing damage to the city. In the postcard, the church can be seen on the left. the roof gone and the interior gutted. The side walls and tower surviving. The result of an incendiary bomb falling on the church:

The full series of London under Fire can be found in this post.

The church we see today, and the walls and tower in the above photo are from Christopher Wren’s rebuild of the church between 1684 and 1690. The previous church escaped any damage from the Great Fire, however it was a 15th century rebuild of an earlier medieval church, and was in need of significant repair.

Looking up to one of the galleries that run either side of the church:

Today, St. Andrew is a non-parochial Guild Church, meaning that the church serves the local working population rather than any resident population, so you will not find a Sunday service held at the church.

The pulpit:

The interior of the church looking back towards the main entrance and the organ:

There are very few memorials in the church, perhaps because of the destruction of the interior during the last war. There are a few on the wall, on either side of the main entrance, including one that dates from 1722:

St. Andrew, Holborn does have a wide range of associations with people and events over the years.

In 1799, Marc Brunel, the father of Isambard Kingdom, was married in the church, and in 1817 Benjamin Disraeli, a future Prime Minister, was christened in the church at the age of 12.

Another story connects the church with the founding of the Royal Free Hospital. The story concerns a local surgeon, William Marsden, who found a young girl dying from exposure in the churchyard on a winter’s night in 1827.

Marsden tried to get the girl into a hospital, however none would accept her, and she went on to die. Hospitals at the time usually required a letter of recommendation from a subscriber to the hospital

Marsden was so appalled by the attitude of these hospitals, and the lack of any care for those who had no ability to pay, that he decided to open a new hospital for those who could not pay or provide a letter of recommendation..

Marsden had the support of the Cordwainers Company, and in April 1828 he opened the Royal Free Hospital in a small house in Greville Street, Hatton Garden (originally just the Free Hospital, with Royal added not long after through the patronage of the Duchess of Kent and Princess Victoria).

I could not find any reference from the time to the founding story of the discovery of the girl in the churchyard, however reports of annual general meetings of the hospital do confirm the aims of providing free care for those who could not afford to pay, and who could not get a letter of recommendation from a subscriber. For example, from the record of the 1837 anniversary dinner:

“This institution has been established to afford immediate assistance to all applicants, but more particularly to meet the wants of the poor and diseased, whose wretched situation and circumstances render them, in most instances, unable to procure the recommendations required to obtain admission or assistance from the hospitals and dispensaries of the metropolis, and from which this institution differs in these important facts – that its doors are always open to the poor and afflicted, without any passport save their own infirmities.

No ticket or recommendation from a subscriber is necessary; poverty and disease are alone the wretched qualifications which entitle them to the benefit the charity is capable of affording.”

The Royal Free Hospital is now in Pond Street, Hampstead, and William Marsden would also found, in 1851, the Brompton Cancer Hospital, which would become the Royal Marsden Hospital.

St. Andrew’s has another connection with someone who would try and help the poor of the city.

Just inside the main entrance to the church is the tomb of Thomas Coram, the founder of the Foundling Hospital, which started out in a temporary building in Hatton Garden in 1741.

Foundlings were abandoned very young children, or the young children of single mothers or poor parents, who could not afford to bring up their child.

The Foundling Hospital deserves a full post, but in the entrance to St. Andrew’s, we can see Coram’s tomb. He was originally buried on the site of the original Foundling Hospital, but in 1955 his tomb was moved to St. Andrew’s when the hospital buildings in Berkhampsted (the location of the Foundling Hospital after moving from where Coram Fields is today) were demolished:

The font and pulpit from the Foundling Hospital chapel were also moved to St. Andrew’s.

Another survivor from another place at St. Andrew’s is a resurrection stone, showing Christ standing over the dead, as they rise from their coffins preparing for the final day of judgment:

The resurrection stone came from the entrance to a cemetery used by St. Andrew’s for burying the poor, located a short distance from the church with an entrance from Shoe Lane, ringed in the following extract from Morgan’s 1682 map:

Another survivor, very different, but no less interesting, is the war memorial from the stores of A.W. Gamage and Benetfink & Co:

Not exactly what you would expect to find hidden in a City churchyard. Gamages was a large department store in Holborn and Benetfink were a Cheapside based ironmongers, taken over by A.W. Gamage in 1907.

Gamages closed in March 1972, and the war memorial was moved to St. Andrew’s churchyard.

I have no idea why it is in the churchyard rather than inside the church, however it is good that it remains in Holborn, and is the last trace of the Gamages company and department store to be found in Holborn.

As usual, a quick run through some fascinating history, and St. Andrew, Holborn is an interesting example of how churches were located at important boundary points, boundaries that are not (with the exception of the Thames) visible today.

We cannot get into the minds of mediaeval inhabitants of London, so it is difficult to fully understand the importance of a church at such a location, but given the number of churches through the City, it does show how important religion was, including at places where you were crossing a boundary, entering or leaving the City, crossing the Fleet or the Thames.

alondoninheritance.com

Christopher Wren, London Transport and St Mary Aldermary

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Christopher Wren, London Transport and St. Mary Aldermary – there is an obvious link between two of those subjects, but London Transport looks out of place, hopefully it will become clear.

One of the pleasures of buying second hand books is not just the book, but what can be found in the book. A few years ago, I purchased the book “Wren and His Place In European Architecture” by Eduard Sekler.

There is no publication date listed in the book for the edition I found in the bookshop in Chichester, however at the end of the preface to the book, the date August 1954 is given, so the book possibly dates from the mid 1950s.

The purpose of the book was to “promote a better understanding of Wren’s work as an architect by relating it t contemporary architectural activity on the Continent and Wren’s own intellectual and spiritual background” – a task that it does rather well.

The bonus with the book, was what was tucked in between the pages, a small booklet published by London Transport in 1957:

The booklet was one of a number published by London Transport which had the underlying aim of encouraging people to get out and explore the city. and to “Make the most of your public transport”.

The Latin “Si monmentum requiris, circumspice” is taken from Wren’s tomb in St. Paul’s Cathedral, and which translates as “If you seek his monument, look around you”.

The use of the phrase on the tomb is meant to refer to the cathedral which Wren designed, but in this case, London Transport have admitted that this is freely translated to making the most of your public transport, presumably to explore London to find the many buildings designed by Christopher Wren which are also his monuments.

The London Transport booklet is a 19 page guide to the architecture of Christopher Wren, in and near London:

The booklet is organised into 7 chapters, which cover:

Chapter 1 – An overview of Christopher Wren
Chapter 2 – Architect, an overview of Wren’s work
Chapter 3 – St. Paul’s Cathedral
Chapter 4 – City Churches
Chapter 5 – Remnants, Wren’s churches that still survive although their fabric had been devastated by bomb damage
Chapter 6 – Secular Buildings, Including Chelsea Hospital, Morden College and the Royal Naval Hospital etc.
Chapter 7 – How to get there, underground stations, bus routes and trains to use to get to the places mentioned in the booklet

At the back of the booklet, there is a map showing Wren’s City Churches, along with Underground Stations, so the visitor could work out which station to use to visit some of Wren’s City churches:

It is a wonderful little booklet, and an example of when London Transport probably had more of a budget for publications and maps aimed at encouraging people to make more use of the city’s transport network.

This year would have been an ideal time for an updated booklet, as this year it is 300 years since Christopher Wren’s death in 1723.

At the start of the year, I had been intending to follow the advice of the booklet and visit all of Wren’s City churches for a series of blog posts, however time and poor planning has forced that idea to be abandoned, so to link the London Transport booklet with one of Wren’s churches, I had a look around a church I have not written about before – St. Mary Aldermary.

The church is located within a triangle of land, with Queen Victoria Street, Bow Lane and Watling Street forming the three sides of the triangle. The church is at a strange angle to Queen Victoria Street and is also hemmed in by surrounding buildings:

A plaque on the church hints at why the church is positioned as it is, as it follows its mediaeval outline:

The plaque also states that the church was rebuilt between 1679 and 1682 by “Wren’s Office”. This is an interesting phrase as it does hint at the question of how much Wren was involved in the buildings attributed to him.

The amount of post Great Fire rebuilding, along with all his other building projects, interests and responsibilities must have meant that for many of his buildings, whilst he was probably responsible for the overall design, he had others working on the detail and overseeing the construction of the buildings.

The following photo is looking along Queen Victoria Street as it heads down towards Blackfriars. Part of the church can be seen on the right and a narrow building making use of a small plot of land between street and church can be seen in the middle.

The following map is an extract from a map of Bread Street Ward and Cordwainer Ward, dated 1754 and for an edition of Stow’s Survey of London. The map shows St. Mary Aldermary in the centre, with Bow Lane at the front of the church and Watling Street to the right.

The map shows the church within a typical City streetscape, surrounded by buildings, streets and narrow lanes.

The reason for the strange triangular plot of land on which the church sits today is down to the 19th century construction of Queen Victoria Street, when this wide street was carved through a dense network of streets, as part of Victorian “improvements” to the City, with the aim of providing a fast route from the large junction at the Bank, down to the newly constructed Embankment.

In Watling Street, the side of the church is more visible:

Entrance to St. Mary Aldermary in Bow Lane:

Due to the narrowness of the street, it is impossible to get a photograph of the church showing the front façade and tower. The following print from 1812 provides a view of the church which is impossible to get today:

The trees and railings have gone, as has the building on the left, however the rest of the church looks the same, the lower part of the church can be compared with my photo above.

In the above print, the body of the church is to the left and the tower on the right. The book on Wren in which I found the London Transport booklet, includes a floor plan of all of Wren’s City of London churches, and it is surprising just how much variety there is across his City churches.

The floor plan for St. Mary Aldermary from the book is shown below:

The floor plan clearly shows the location of the square tower at bottom left of the plan.

The church has a Gothic feel to the design, and according the Eduard Sekler, in the book on Wren, he had an “obligation to deviate from a better style”, because the patron who was funding the rebuild of the church insisted that it was rebuilt as an exact copy of the church that was destroyed in the Great Fire.

The book “If Stones Could Speak” by F. St. Aubyn-Brisbane (1929) states that the patron was a certain Henry Rogers, who had bequeathed £5,000 towards the expense of rebuilding, and it was his widow who insisted that the church was rebuilt as an exact imitation of the former church. It does not state why this was so important.

There appears to be no image of what the church looked like prior to the Great Fire, but it would seem that we are looking today on a church that is a replica of the one that stood on the site prior to 1666.

The church has a long history, with a church possibly being on the site from the 11th or early 12th centuries.

Looking through the entrance into the church from Bow Lane:

The area of the church just inside the entrance is used as a café when services are not being conducted. It is a really good place for a drink and to sit down after some miles of walking.

As shown in the image of the floor plan, the church has three aisles. The central aisle is the highest and has a magnificent plaster fan-vaulted ceiling:

View towards the altar at the eastern end of the central aisle:

In the above photo, you can see that the rear wall is at a slight angle from the rest of the church, a feature which is confirmed by the floor plan shown earlier.

A look at the ceiling:

The organ:

The following photo shows the altar and reredos (the wooden screen at the rear of the altar). As can be seen, the wooden screen is at an angle to the rear wall, to allow the screen and altar to face directly down the centre of the church despite the angled rear wall:

St. Mary Aldermary did not suffer too much damage during the last war, although much of the Victorian stained glass windows were lost.

There is an interesting set of stained glass at the end of the southern aisle of the church:

At the bottom of the windows are three panels:

At the centre is an image of the church surrounded by the flames of the Great Fire. The windows to left and right record the rebuilding of the church by Christopher Wren and the amalgamation of parishes.

St. Thomas the Apostle was not rebuilt after the Great Fire and the parish was united with St. Mary.

St. John the Baptist was destroyed in the fire and the parish was united with St. Antholin’s Watling Street which was demolished in 1874 and these two parishes united with St. Mary Aldermary, so the church today is the sum of four parishes, which highlights just how many churches there were in the City prior to the Great Fire.

The Aldermary part of the name and dedication of the church is believed to come from “Older Mary” which has been assumed to indicate that it was the oldest church in the City to be dedicated to Mary, however this does seem unlikely, given that the church seems to date from around the late 11th / early 12th centuries, however given how long ago this was, and the lack of supporting documents, it is impossible to be sure.

There are a number of monuments remaining in the church, and one of the more ornate of these is to a Mr. John Seale who was apparently “Late of London Merchant”. I assume there should have been a comma between London and Merchant:

City church monuments often tell stories of how those recorded travelled the world. This was off course only those who could afford to have monuments were those who were able to travel.

John Seale is recorded as being “Born in the Island of Jersey. resided many years in Bilboa in the Dominions of Spain”. He died aged 48 on the 11th of July, 1714, by when he had presumably moved to London.

The Seale’s appear to have been a long standing Jersey family, and the use of the first name of John stretched back several generations. The first John Seale was born in 1564 and as an adult was a Constable at St, Brelade, Jersey in the Channel Islands.

His son. also a john was also a Constable in Jersey. His son was also a John, and it was this John whose son was the John Seale buried in St. Mary Aldermary.

The buried John Seale also had a son called John who is recorded as being a London Merchant and Banker and who took on an apprentice from Westminster School in 1736.

The next John Seale would become a Baronet, and the Whig Member of Parliament in 1838, and although he had several children, including boys, none of them were called John.

The loss of the first name of John was only for one generation, and the name John Seale returned in 1843, and four generations later, John Robert Charters Seale is the current Seale Baronet.

A bit of monument trivia, but it is interesting that the dusty monuments in City of London churches still have traceable, living descendants.

The font, which according to the description of the church in “If Stones Could Speak”, dates to 1682, the same time as Wren’s reconstruction of the church. It was apparently a gift from one Dutton Seaman, when wealthy members of the parish would have been expected to contribute to the rebuilding and furnishing of their parish churches.

St. Mary Aldermary is a lovely church, and a small bit of Gothic among Christopher Wren’s City churches. Back to the book “Wren and His Place In European Architecture” by Eduard Sekler, and as well as the London Transport booklet, there was also a photo of a bust of Wren. On the back were notes that it was by Edward Pierce, 1673 and that it was in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford:

Christopher Wren had been knighted the year before the date of the bust, so perhaps this was to mark his becoming Sir Christopher Wren. The full bust can be seen in the Ashmolean’s imagae archive, at this link.

I have mentioned this in a previous post, but leaving bookmarks in books is something I have been doing for years, usually it is the latest London Underground map, museum or exhibition tickets etc. Hopefully something that a future owner of the book may find of interest.

I am very grateful to whoever left the 1957 London Transport guide to Wren in the city in the book.

alondoninheritance.com

St. Paul’s Covent Garden, the Actors Church

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The tickets for all the walks of my new Limehouse walk sold out by Monday morning, so a very big thank you. The proceeds from these walks go towards the hosting, maintenance and research of the blog, so it is very much appreciated. I have had a number of requests for new dates, so have added two more, on the 31st of August and 10th September, which can be booked by clicking on the dates.

In 1951, my father took a couple of photos of the main entrance into St. Paul’s Church, Covent Garden:

St Paul's Covent Garden the Actors Church

He was far better at timing the position of the sun and weather conditions than I am, however the view is much the same today, some 72 years later:

A view of the main entrance to the church from the opposite side of the churchyard:

And the same view in 2023:

The church of St. Paul’s was one of the first buildings to be constructed as part of the development of the Covent Garden Piazza by Francis Russell, the 4th Earl of Bedford.

The Russell family were significant land owners, and within London this included the area around Covent Garden, along with significant holdings across Bloomsbury. The land at Covent Garden came into their position in 1552 when the first Earl was granted the land by the Crown.

Development of the Covent Garden Piazza and St. Paul’s Church commenced around 1630 when Inigo Jones designed the overall layout of the square. Construction of the church began in 1631 and it appears to have been completed and furnished by 1635, but was not consecrated until 1638 due to a dispute with the vicar of St. Martins-in-the Fields, mainly about the physical boundaries and the degree of independence of the new church. The Earl of Bedford had a family pew in St. Martin’s, but released this in 1635 when his new church in Covent Garden was ready.

The main entrance to the church is in Bedford Street, where the brick façade of the church can be seen between two pillars with ornate railings on either side, and providing a gate between the pillars:

Through the gates and we are into the churchyard:

The churchyard was closed to burials in 1853 and in the following couple of years all the tombstones were either removed or laid flat. The churchyard was renovated between 1878 and 1882, when the ground was also lowered and flattened.

Today, the churchyard has a wide path leading up to the entrance of the church, with seating along both sides of the path. To either side of the path are gardens and grassed spaces.

As can be seen in the above photo, the main body of the church and the churchyard are surrounded by tall terrace buildings along either side, and the church has long had a complex relationship with these buildings.

On both sides of the churchyard, there is a space between the wall of the churchyard and the adjacent buildings:

The plaque reads: “This lightwell is part of the burial ground of St. Paul’s Church. Written consent must be obtained before any use is made of this lightwell.”

Originally, the churchyard ran up to the walls of the buildings, and doors and windows in these buildings which provided access to the churchyard were long a cause of concern for the church, as there was an issue with people getting into the churchyard and causing a nuisance, as well as the general issue about security where all the surrounding buildings provided access.

In 1685, any door in these buildings onto the churchyard was ordered to be blocked up, unless it had been given permission by the church, who also then sold licences for the making of windows that looked out onto the churchyard.

During the later half of the 18th century, the churchwardens also had concerns regarding the rising levels of the churchyard due to the many people being buried, which seems to have included large numbers of non-parishioners as well as “with the remains of multitudes of Paupers”.

In the 1870s, the lightwell shown in the above photo was built, with lightwells on the north, west and south sides of the church. These lightwells served a number of purposes. They provided light into the lowest floors of the surrounding buildings, they provide a degree of security for the churchyard to prevent the churchyard being used for “various and improper purposes”, and as a benefit for the houses, they prevented “soakage” from the graves into the houses.

London churchyards must have been appalling places in the 18th and 19th centuries, and no wonder that burials were stopped in the mid 19th century. The vast majority seem to have been overflowing with the bodies of the dead, and the rising levels of churchyards gave an indication of the many thousands that had been buried in such a small space.

If we walk around the church into the old piazza and market area of Covent Garden, we get a very different view of the church:

This would have been the very visible side of the church on the new piazza that the Earl of Bedford was having built, and despite Bedford’s apparent request for a cheap church that would be “not much better than a barn”, Jones designed a grand Tuscan portico.

Whilst the portico is to the original designs, only the columns are probably original as the church was gutted by a fire in 1795, which required a significant rebuild.

The side of the church facing onto Covent Garden looks as if it should be the main entrance. When the church was built, Jones intended that it should have been the main entrance, with the altar being at the western end of the church.

This approach did not accord with the usual placement of the altar at the eastern end of Christian churches, so the entrance facing onto the Covent Garden Piazza was blocked up, and the altar is now behind this eastern wall.

The portico does though provide an excellent place to photograph the performers in Covent Garden and the large crowds that gather to watch:

The white building above the columns is the Punch and Judy pub, and Punch has an important link with Covent Garden as indicated by this plaque on the church:

In the years after the restoration of Charles II, a number of Italian entertainers came to England, including the puppet showman Pietro Gimonde who came from the city of Bologna.

It was Gimonde who Pepys saw in Covent Garden. At the time a Punch puppet show used the form of a marionette, where strings tied to a figure were manipulated by rods above the figure’s head.

Pepys must have been impressed by the show as two weeks later he returned to show his wife, and Gimonde must have made an impression on London society as in October 1662, he was part of a Royal Command Performance for Charles II.

Punch and St. Paul’s, Covent Garden featured in the first book of the Rivers of London series by Ben Aaronovitch, when the main character, Peter Grant meets the ghost of murdered actor Henry Pyke, who also takes on the personae of Mr. Punch, in the churchyard.

Whilst the Rivers of London series is fictional, some strange, violent and sad events have happened in St. Paul’s churchyard.

The London Bills of Mortality for the week of the 22nd to the 29th of January 1716 recorded that a person was “killed by a sword at St Paul’s Covent Garden”. Bills of Mortality also recorded a number of people who were simply found dead in the churchyard – possibly those who were sick, too poor, unable to find housing or food, or perhaps just found the pressures of life in 18th century London too hard to bear.

Time to take a look inside the church, away from the crowds around Covent Garden, and this is the view when entering through the main door from the churchyard:

As with any building of such age, it has been through very many repairs and restorations that have changed the church from its original form.

In the years after completion, the roof seems to have been a recurring cause for concern, with repairs having to be frequently undertaken, with the gradual loss of the decoration and painting across the ceiling.

By the 1780s, the church was in such a state that extensive repairs were needed. The architect Thomas Hardwick was chosen from the three that put in bids for the work. The church was closed and then followed a major programme of works that expanded as more problems were found.

From an initial budget of £6,000, the final cost when the church reopened in 1789 was £11,723.

This could have been money very well spent, however just six years later in 1795, some plumbers were carrying out work in a bell turret. They left the church for a midday break and left an unguarded fire still burning.

The fire escaped to the surrounding fabric, and soon spread to rapidly to gut the majority of the church.

The church apparently looked like one of the City church’s after the bombing of the 1940s, with only the exterior walls standing, the roof collapsed and the interior gutted.

You can probably imagine the feelings of the churchwardens when they viewed the gutted church just a few years after the period of closure and expense of a major rebuild, and they were now faced with a much larger challenge, and the difficulty of trying to raise yet more large sums of money, not long after having sought funds for the 1780s restoration.

Thomas Hardwick was again appointed for the rebuild, and money to fund the project was raised by the levy of a rate of one shilling in the Pound, and by selling annuities based on the security of the local rates.

The church was rebuilt and reconsecrated in 1798.

The pulpit (on the left of the following photo) is possibly by Grinling Gibbons, or by one of his pupils. Above the altar, is a copy of the Madonna and Child by the artist Botticelli:

There seems to have been an almost continuous programme of repair work to the church, along with occasional significant restorations, including one in the early 1870s by William Butterfield, which focused on the interior of the church, with an aim of making the interior a brighter and more pleasant place to worship. Butterfield’s work included the removal of the majority of the monuments on the internal walls.

Henry Clutton, who was architect to the Duke of Bedford made a number of proposals for restoring and improving the church in the late 1870s. Clutton’s view was that Inigo Jones had almost gone along with the original Earl’s requirement for a barn-like church, with a simple brick body to the church and with only the stone portico embellishing a simple brick barn.

Some of Clutton’s proposals were taken on by the architect A. J. Pilkington in the late 1880s. The major change to the church at this time was the replacement of the ashlar exterior (square cut stones used as a facing on a wall), by the red bricks we see today.

Following Pilkington’s work, the church has stayed much the same apart from repair and decoration work. There was some bomb damage to buildings around the church, but St. Paul’s survived the war without any damage.

The font in St. Paul’s church:

St. Paul’s Church is known as the Actors Church. The area around Covent Garden has long had an association with the acting profession. The Theatre Royal Drury Lane which was built by Thomas Killigrew in 1663, just thirty years after the church is nearby. Killigrew had received a Royal Charter from King Charles II allowing the theatre to be built.

In 1723, the Covent Garden Theatre was built. This is now the Royal Opera House.

The association with the acting profession can be seen in a number of ways. Performances are put on within the church and in the churchyard, and St. Paul’s has the Iris Theatre, its own professional theatre company.

Walking around the interior of the church and there are very many memorials to actors and those associated with the profession, including Gracie Fields:

Dame Anna Neagle-Wilcox. Usually better known as just Anna Neagle, but on the memorial including the surname of her husband, Herbert Wilcox, and below is Flora McKenzie Robson who had a long career in film, theatre and the stage:

Dame Diana Rigg, again another actress with a long and wide ranging career, and who was still working right up to the year when she was “Called to rehearsal”:

Nicholas Parsons, again another long career, and probably best known for Sale of the Century on TV in the 1970s and the BBC long running comedy show Just a Minute:

Three “Sirs” of the theatrical and film world who all died within 4 years of each other, Sir Terence Rattigan, Sir Noel Coward and Sir Charles Chaplin:

Memorial for Dame Barbara Windsor, with her well known line from the BBC soap EastEnders:

Barbara Windsor memorial Get out of my pub

In what is a brilliant bit of placement, which cannot be a coincidence, the memorial for Barbara Windsor is located behind the small bar in the church:

Memorials to actors Roy Dotrice, Edward Woodward, Sir Ian Holm, Geoffrey Palmer and John Tydeman, a former BBC Head of Radio Drama:

There are very few early plaques remaining in the church, as mentioned earlier in the post, William Butterfield’s work on the church in the 1870s removed many of the monuments that lined the walls of the church. A few remain including that of Thomas Arne, who wrote the music for a large number of stage works between the years 1733 and 1776, including works performed at Drury Lane and the Covent Garden Theatre.

Thomas Arne also put the words of a poem by James Thomson to music, to create the song Rule Britannia, as is recorded on his memorial, which also records that he was baptized in the church and buried in the churchyard:

There are very few memorials to those outside of the entertainment industries. One though records the dreadful death rate of children. On the right is recorded John Bellamy Plowman, the father who died aged 67, however on the left is what must have been his oldest son, also called John Bellamy Plowman who died aged 17 and was buried in the vault under the vestry, along with six other children who all died in their infancy:

View of the rear of the church, with organ and gallery.

There were once galleries down either side of the church which provided additional seating at an upper level. These must have made the church seem very crowded when full, and they were removed during an early restoration.

St. Paul’s Covent Garden will soon be 400 years old. Although it was rebuilt significantly after the fire in 1795, and restored and repaired many times over the centuries, it still is an Inigo Jones church, and goes back to the time before the market, and when the Piazza was first established.

It is also a church that connects to the profession that is still so important in this part of London.

alondoninheritance.com

A London Inheritance

A Private History of a Public City

Category Archives: London Churches

The King’s Chapel of the Savoy

Union Chapel, Islington – Live Music and a Nonconformist History

St Martin in the Fields and Historical maps of Southwark and City Ward Maps

Resources – Historical maps of Southwark and City Ward Maps

In Search of Blackfriars and Resources, Part 2

Resources – Mapping at the National Library of Scotland

What I Am Reading – Maritime Metropolis by Sarah Palmer

St. James’s – The Essence of Piccadilly

St. Olave and the Coopers Arms Pub, Falcon Square and Silver Street

St. Olave’s, Hart Street

Churches at the City Boundaries – St Andrew, Holborn

Christopher Wren, London Transport and St Mary Aldermary

St. Paul’s Covent Garden, the Actors Church

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Resources – Historical maps of Southwark and City Ward Maps

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Resources – Mapping at the National Library of Scotland

What I Am Reading – Maritime Metropolis by Sarah Palmer

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