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.