St Brides has a long history, probably due to the proximity of a Holy Well once dedicated to St Bridget, from which the church received its dedication. Indeed, the name Bridewell has been synonymous with the area for centuries, and is now the name of a nearby theatre.

On the site of the future church, the Romans dug a mysterious extra-mural ditch which was bigger than the one they eventually dug around the city walls, only a stone’s throw away at Lud Gate. Soon after they put up an equally mysterious building, which has puzzled arcaeologists since its discovery. Why build just outside the walls of Londinium? Could this building, under the site of the present St Brides, have been connected to the Well? Or could it have been one of the earliest Christian sites, erected away from the settlement due to fear of persecution? The answers remain elusive, but the relics do not: the line of the ditch is marked on the floor of the crypt, and a section of tessellated pavement can still be seen.

In the sixth century the first definite church was built here, a nave and chancel with a typical Saxon rounded apse. This was rebuilt many times over the following centuries, with the result that the marvellous crypt contains remains from seven previous St Brides! It was, as the first church encountered between London and Westminster, of considerable importance: in 1205, the Curia Regis, first court of the realm, was held in St Brides and in 1210 King John held his Parliament there.

By 1500 the area had become a magnet for the clergy. The Bishops of Salisbury, Peterborough and Ely all had buildings in the neighbourhood, and this in turn led to the area’s enduring association with printing and journalism. At the time, the printing press was still a relatively new development but Wynkyn de Worde, the apprentice and successor of Caxton, knew that the principal purveyors of literature were churchmen – so he erected his printing press in the heart of the clergy’s quarter, the churchyard of St Brides, where he has been buried since 1535. Other printers soon followed his example and flocked to the area.The connection between St Brides and the world of journalism is today still as strong, despite the mass defection to the Docklands in the 1980’s.

The growing number of printing presses attracted Dryden, Milton and Evelyn to the neighbourhood. Samuel Pepys was born in a road adjacent to the church, and was baptised there along with his eight siblings. Later, he recorded in his Diary the necessity of having to bribe the gravedigger with sixpence to ‘jostle together’ coffins in the crypt to make way for his brother Tom. Other notable interments at this time were Mary Frith (1659), otherwise known as ‘Moll Cutpurse’, a rather notorious local criminal, and the Cavalier poet Richard Lovelace (1658), who wrote ‘Stone walls do not a prison make’. One speculates if these really were his thoughts, as he sat in the Gatehouse Prison doing time for his Royalist beliefs.

The Great Fire destroyed St Bride’s, other than the remains in the crypt, now very extensive due to the number of preceding churches on the site. Rebuilt to Wren’s design at a cost of £11,430:5:11d, it was one of the first post-fire churches ready for worship. The steeple, one of the most remarkable in London, was completed in 1703.

The steeple is of Portland stone. It consists of rising and diminishing octagons, ending in a spirelet, and until a lightning strike was eight feet higher. Its shape gave rise to one of St Brides most romantic stories, that of Thomas Rich.
Rich was, as a young man, apprenticed to a baker near Ludgate. He fell in love with his master’s daughter and, at the end of his apprenticeship when he set up his own business, asked for her hand in marriage. The proposal was given her father’s approval. As a baker, Rich wished to create a spectacular cake for the wedding feast, but was unsure of how to create something completely new for his betrothed… until, one day, he looked up at the steeple of the church in which they were to be married, and the inspiration hit him. A cake in layers, tiered, diminishing as it rose. And thus began, according to the story, the tradition of the tiered wedding cake, based on Wren’s steeple for St Brides.
This story may be fanciful, there is no concrete historical proof to its veracity. However, walking through St Brides Churchyard, now paved over and with benches for lunching workers, one can still find – among about a dozen now prone gravestones – the names of Thomas Rich and his wife, still together after centuries, and one hopes the story is true.

The area – and its printing presses – continued to attract the great and the good. Johnson, Boswell, Reynolds, Garrick, Goldsmith, Pope, Hogarth, Sarah Siddons, Richardson, writers, actors, artists all. A later generation saw Wordsworth, Hood, Keats, Hazlitt and Lamb holding deep discussions in local coffee houses. Naturally, the rise of the newspaper was here – the crypt holds a copy of the first edition of the ‘Daily Courant’, the first newspaper.

On December 29th 1940, the area suffered massive bombardment. By morning, all that remained of St Brides was the wedding-cake steeple and outer walls. With financial help from newspapers, Godfrey Allen studied Wren’s original plans and created a faithful rebuilding, keeping the clear glass which Wren loved, but not rebuilding the galleries, instead laying out the stalls in collegiate style. The church today has a light, open feel of symmetry, the floor is paved with marbled parquets of black from Belgium and white from Italy. The church is very much a living church in a modern world – an altar in the NE corner carries sympathy messages to reporters who have lost their lives in current conflicts. A bust of Virginia Dare, the first child to be born of settlers in the New World, is a reminder that her parents were married here.

The crypt has the feel of a medieval charnel, which is exactly what it is – in a bricked up chamber to the south are the bones of several thousand Londoners. On display are the remains of former churches, the Roman pavement, an iron coffin (to deter grave robbers) and the brass plate once attached to the coffin of Samuel Richardson, author of ‘Pamela’ and ‘Clarissa’, often proclaimed – alongside DeFoe and Fielding – to be the ‘Father of the English Novel’.

Richardson was buried at St Brides in 1761. Something of a hypochondriac, he left behind several letters bemoaning his mediacal complaints. His coffin seems to have been disturbed during W F Grimes’ post-War excavations, but was rediscovered in 1993 by the osteologist Dr Louise Scheuer, who scientifically compared the state of the bones with the complaints Richardson listed. Along with Christ Church Spitalfields, on the opposite side of the City, the many hundreds of named remains at St Brides are an invaluable resource for those studying illness in antiquity.

Set back from Fleet Street, only yards from the tremendous bustle of Ludgate Circus yet seemingly existing in its own peaceful space, St Brides is one of the most historic, vibrant and beautiful churches to be found in London. The list of people connected with it reads like a Who’s Who of historical personages, and even now, in this high-rise age, the famous spire draws the eye from surrounding vistas. A historic, architectural and thought-provoking gem.

Author Mark McManus 

Navigate for more: St Clement Danes St Bartholomew The Great

Smithfield is not an attractive area, with the sprawling hospital complex of St Barts on one side and the untidy meat market on the other. A couple of plaques on the hospital wall remind the passerby of certain less savoury aspects of the area’s history, by memorialising Protestant martyrs who were burned here during the reign of Mary Tudor, and the Scottish patriot Sir William Wallace who was hanged, drawn and quartered.
However, on the east side of Smithfield lies one of the City’s best kept secrets. A Tudor gatehouse rises over a Norman archway. This was once the main entrance of a Priory Church, and is now the gateway that leads to the parish church of St Bartholomew The Great.

The story of its founding is an interesting one. The White Ship disaster of 1120 had robbed England of the heir to the throne, Prince William, and had plunged the court of his father Henry I into gloom. A courtier named Rahere undertook a pilgrimage to Rome, and while there he contracted a fever. He may have been treated at the hospital on the Isolo Tiberina, supposedly the site where St Bartholomew’s relics rest, and we know that he vowed to build a hospital for the poor if he were fortunate enough to recover. Regaining his health, he embarked upon his return journey, during which he experienced a vision of Bartholomew, who ordered him to build a church at a place called the Smooth Field.
Smooth Field/Smithfield was an unpleasant site even in Norman times, being used for cattle markets and executions as well as occasionally being utilised for tournaments. Nevertheless, with the backing of King Henry and the Bishop of London, the Priory Church of St Bartholomew – and the Hospital of the same name – began to rise in 1123.

Rahere died in 1143 and the work was completed by his successor. In 1250 there was a skirmish at the Priory between the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Sub-Prior, and the Pope had to intervene to lift several excommunications that resulted. The year 1381 saw a famous brawl outside the entrance, during which the rebel Wat Tyler was fatally injured by the Lord Mayor, William Walworth.
The Priory was never particularly large, nor wealthy, and was surrendered to Henry VIII, although a Dominican convent was briefly established there during Mary’s reign. After this, the Nave of the Priory was demolished, but the area of the Quire, Sanctuary and Lady Chapel became the parish church of ‘Greate Saint Bartholomew next Smithfield’. It now stands as one of only two monastic foundations in the City that still exist as churches, the other being St Helens Bishopsgate.

The approach through the majestic Gatehouse is an impressive one. Through the archway, the visitor sees a small playground on the right, standing on the site of the cloisters, and on the left is an elevated burial ground that was once the Nave of the Priory. Ahead is the facade of the church, a mixture of styles due to various additions through the ages. Norman masonry is visible in the cloister to the right of the church door, a brick built Jacobean tower (containing a pre-Reformation set of bells) rises above, and the porch is a Victorian work by Sir Aston Webb.

Through this door, one enters a church which is utterly unlike any other City church. The light airiness of Wren, and the pretentions of the Victorians, cannot be seen here. What you have is superb Norman glory, the old Quire now serving as a nave, the old Sanctuary as a chancel, and north and south aisles with bays divided by massive Romanesque columns. What immediately catches the eye, however, is the triforium gallery above the columns, and the clerestory above that. It is the best example of Norman arcading in the City, and one can see here what all those ruined monastic sites across the country must have looked like.

The floor of the Sanctuary is a mosaic laid in 1904, and to its north is the canopied shrine-tomb of the founder, inscribed ‘Hic Jacet Raherus, Primus Canonicus et Primus Prior hujus Ecclesi&’. The tomb is a 1405 rebuild, although the effigy is believed to be the original. Many other fine monuments exist in the Quire, dating from Elizabethan through to the early Georgian period; that of Sir Robert Chamberlayne, d.1615, has an armoured effigy kneeling under a canopy with curtains being held back by winged figures.

The aisles also contain impressive monuments, especially the south aisle. The largest is the monument to Sir Walter Mildmay, d.1589, who was a member of Queen Elizabeth’s Privy Council, her Chancellor, a treasurer of the Exchequer, and still managed to find the time to found Emmanuel College at Cambridge. Nearby is the 1652 monument to the philosopher and doctor Edward Cooke, which was once an object of visitor curiosity. Before the installation of central heating in the church, condensation used to form on the monument and make it ‘weep’. The inscription actually invites the reader to weep as well. At the east end of this aisle is an altar for the Imperial Society of Knights Bachelor, the membership of which is made up of those who have been knighted by the Queen, and who hold annual services in the church.

The north aisle was once lined with chapels, all gone at the Reformation. A monument here commemorates John and Margret Whiting. He died in 1681, a year after his wife, and the excellent epitaph by Sir Henry Wootton reads ‘Shee first deceased, Hee for a little Tryd/ To live without her, likd it not and dyd’. At the western end of this aisle a battered, lead-lined stone coffin is on display, discovered in 1865, probably belonging to one of the priors. Another coffin is under the quire screen and apparently its skeleton wears leather sandals – as does the skeleton of Rahere, seen during repair work to his tomb. Being buried in leather sandals was an Augustinian custom.

The Lady Chapel, at the rear of the church, is the most modern looking part of the building. It is the third on the site, being built by Sir Aston Webb and dedicated in 1897. For three centuries after the Reformation it was used for secular purposes, such as dwellings, lacemaking, and at one time a printing press at which worked the young Benjamin Franklin in 1725.

One corridor of the cloister remains, having spent its post-Reformation centuries also being used secularly. It has been a smithy, a stable, even a pub! The cloister was not fully returned to church use until 1928. The church’s font dates from 1405 and is the only pre-Reformation font in the City. The artist William Hogarth was christened here in 1697.

This church is truly startling on a first visit. I can imagine further visits being scarcely less rewarding. The sheer force of its survival from Norman times, with so much of the architecture of that period intact, is remarkable considering the bustle and tumult of Smithfield over the years. London’s best kept secret? Shout it out!

Author Mark McManus 

Navigate for more: St Brides Fleet Street St Andrew Undershaft

At the start of the new Millenium, after centuries of obselescence, St Andrew’s suffix has now gained new meaning, as it stands today in the shadow of the soaring Swiss RE building, more colloquially known as the Gherkin. Originally, however, the name had a different meaning.

The history of the site may extend as far back as Saxon times, and it has previously been known as St Andrew Cornhill, St Andrew juxta Aldgate and plain St Andrew the Apostle. The name Undershaft appeared in the 15th Century due to a custom that took place in the street nearby – the erection every year of a large maypole. This custom was described by Chaucer in his typically dense Middle English:
‘Right well aloft, and high ye beare your heade
The weather cocke, with flying, as ye would kill
When ye be stuffed, bet of wine then brede
Then looke ye, when your wombe doth fill
As ye would beare the great shaft of Cornehill
Lord, so merrily crowdeth then your croke
That all the streete may heare your body cloke.’

This tradition was suspended in 1517 after the so-called ‘Evil Mayday’, when City apprentices rose in riot against foreigners. Clearly the authorities did not wish any more public gatherings on this particular day. The maypole was hung aloft on houses along Shaft Alley, and today a replica maypole can still be found hanging on the wall of this alley, east of Leadenhall Street next to Marks & Spencer. Presumably the original was kept preserved in the hope that the tradition may some day be restored, but this was not to be.

In 1520 the more wealthy parishioners joined forces to rebuild the late medieval church which still stands – with various alterations – to this very day. Its major benefactor at this time was Steven Gennings, a merchant tailor and one time Mayor, with ‘every man putting to his helping hand, some with their purses, others with their bodies.’ The church was finished in 1532.

In 1549, the curate of St Katherine Creechurch – a neighbour of St Andrew, further along Leadenhall Street – was a rather fiery preacher named Sir Stephen. He denounced the dormant maypole during a sermon at St Paul’s Cross, claiming that it was idolatrous. As a consequence of this, the maypole was removed from its resting place in Shaft Alley and sawn into pieces. These events were witnessed, and later recorded, by a Cornhill tailor named John Stow. Sir Stephen was later forced to flee the City after informing against, and therefore condemning to the gallows, a popular Romford bailiff who may well have been innocent. This execution took place virtually on Stow’s doorstep.

In 1565, the nearby church of St Mary Axe was closed down and its parish united with St Andrews. This church had been dedicated to St Mary the Virgin, St Ursula, and the 11,000 virgins, and keen observers of Undershaft’s exterior today will spot a reference to the Axe. St Andrews seems to have led a quiet existence, being fortunate enough to escape the Great Fire and any significant Blitz damage. Its parish was eventually merged with St Helens Bishopsgate, and both churches were seriously damaged by the terrorist bomb which exploded in St Mary Axe in 1992, destroying the historic Baltic Exchange which now boasts the Gherkin on its site. St Andrews was repaired as quickly as possible, with none of the major changes which became so controversial at St Helens.

Generally speaking, St Andrews is not open for tourists. It is used by study groups, for prayer meetings, and a Sunday school. Pews have been cleared from the interior and corners of the building are cluttered with catering equipment and toys! A bain marie stands in the northern aisle, ready to provide a buffet for study group luncheons, and visitors need to ask prior permission at St Helens Rectory if they wish to view the interior for themselves.

The style of the building is late Perpendicular Gothic, and the crowding of surrounding buildings gives the deceptive impression that the church is very small. This impression is dispelled when the visitor actually enters – it consists of a nave and two aisles, plenty of windows both clear and stained, and the absence of pews makes the interior seem even more spacious. The roof is mainly comprised of flat wooden beams, mostly modern following the post-1992 repairs. Font and pulpit are Jacobean, and the Harris organ dates to 1696.

The church contains some notable monuments. A brass remembers Nicholas Leveson, d1539, a Sheriff who was one of the benefactors dusring the church’s construction. His father in law, Thomas Bodley, founded the Bodleian Library in Oxford. This is the oldest brass remaining in the church. A lovely monument by Cornelius Cure, Master Mason to Elizabeth I and James I, commemorates Sir Thomas Offley and his family. He was Lord Mayor in 1556.
A recess contains a memorial to Alice Byng, d1616, consisting of a small figure of Alice kneeling in prayer. She was married three times, and the monument lists her husbands and children. A monument in the south aisle remembers the Datchelor family, one of whom – Mary Datchelor – founded a well known girl’s school in Camberwell.

Three monuments deserve special attention – the large memorial to Sir Hugh Hammersley, Lord Mayor in 1627, his kneeling figure flanked by soldiers. This represents his presedential connection to the Honourable Artillery Company, which once had land near Spitalfields. Artillery Lane now marks the spot. Hammersley was also the president of Christ’s Hospital in Newgate Street, which used buildings from the old Greyfriars monastery. Another monument in the NE corner, is the terracotta figure of John Stow, seated at a desk and holding a quill. Despite his popular and influential writings, Stow ended his days in poverty and was granted a licence to beg by the King James I. His wife erected the monument; one wonders how she was able to afford it. A Latin inscription reads: ‘Sacred to the memory. Here awaits the resurrection in Christ, John Stow, a citizen of London who, having with the greatest care and diligence studied the ancient monuments, wrote the ‘Annals of England’ and ‘A View of the City of London’. He deserved well of his own time and of posterity.’
Stow’s work provides the most complete record of the City before the Great Fire, and are highly valuable primary historic sources. He was the first man to fully describe the City Churches, most of which have either disappeared or been completely altered. I resisted the temptation to kneel and wail, ‘I’m not worthy!’

The third notable monument is a simple brass to the great Tudor court painter, Hans Holbein. He lived in the parish and died during an outbreak of the plague in 1543. Opinion was divided among historians as to whether he was buried here or in St Katherine Cree, but most now follow the conclusion of John Strype – a successor of Stow – who claimed the latter. This would make more sense – more land was available for plague pits at St Katherine, due to the land to its rear belonging to the recently dissolved Holy Trinity Priory. St Andrew’s churchyard is small, and today only a tiny garden exists to the rear of the building.

According to its guardians, thanks to its recent repairs St Andrews ‘probably looks the best it has for at least 100 years’. It is well worth a visit, but remember – arrange it with the St Helen’s Church Office first!

Author Mark McManus 

Navigate for more: St Bartholomew The Great All Hallows by the Tower

Barking Abbey, the remains of which still be seen, was founded by Erkenwald in the year 666. Owning land on the eastern edge of the City, the Abbey constructed the Saxon church of All Hallows Berkyngechirche on Tower Hill in 675. Over the centuries, the name mutated to All Hallows Barking.

The exterior of the building is quite large and imposing, but its different architectural styles bring attention to its historic troubles: medieval masonry dominated by the brown brickwork of the post-Blitz restoration, its tower of 1659 being a rare example of a Cromwellian rebuild.

Despite the somewhat forbidding exterior, the inside of the church is a spacious and light surprise. This is due mostly to Lord Mottistone’s post-WWII rebuild, which replaced the previously gloomy Norman nave with concrete and stone, blending well with the medieval work of the aisles with a grace that the cluttered exterior can only dream off. The plain east window allows light to flood into the church, and the glass placed in the recently reopened southern entrance also helps to maintain this airy atmosphere.

All Hallows is eager to tell its story. As you first step in through the main entrance in Great Tower Street, you are greeted by a large facsimile showing Vischer’s famous engraving of pre-Great Fire London seen from the South Bank, and a gift shop which is the largest I’ve seen in a City church. This is probably due to a greater amount of visitors than is usual, tourist overflow from the nearby Tower. A good selection of historic books can be purchased, displayed in glass cabinets… and All Hallows is certainly not short of history. Its proximity to Tower Hill obliged it to be the temporary resting place of various victims of the axe, such as Sir Thomas More (1535), Bishop John Fisher (1535),Henry Howard Earl of Surrey (1547), and Archbishop William Laud (1647). These notable bodies have all since been re-interred elsewhere, with the probable exception of their heads.

On Wednesday 5th September 1666, the recently rebuilt church tower received a visitor from adjacent Seething Lane, one Samuel Pepys, whose Diary records, ‘I up to the top of Barking Steeple, and there saw the saddest sight of desolation that I ever saw. Everywhere great fires, the fire being spread so far as I could see it.’ He was looking west; Sir William Penn of the Admiralty, father of the founder of Pennsylvania, saved All Hallows from the conflagration by ordering an intervening row of houses to be blown up, thus creating a fire-break. The irrepressible Diarist, never one to let a local apocalypse ruin his appetite, wrote, ‘to Sir W Penn’s, and there eat a piece of cold meat, having eaten nothing since Sunday but the remains of Sunday’s dinner.’

All Hallows’ connection with notable figures is impressive. Apart from the short-lived interments mentioned, it was also host to the baptisms of Lancelot Andrewes, the Bishop who helped prepare the Authorized Version of the Bible for James I, and William Penn Jnr. Weddings included the notorious Judge George Jeffreys and John Quincey Adams, who became the 6th U.S. President.

Many of the church’s registers survived the ravages of the Reformation by being hidden in a lead cistern in the tower, and they were not discovered until 1923. These records include various plague entries, a mention of the Gunpowder plot, and names Penn, Quincey Adams and Laud in the register of baptisms, marriages and burials. They are the only unbroken record of events on Tower Hill in the sixteenth century.

In the 20th Century the incumbent, Revd Philip Clayton, made two important contributions to the history of the church. He founded the international movement called ‘Toc H’, which promotes the spirit of war-time camaraderie through Christian fellowship, and he also changed the name, removing the obsolete Barking ( the Abbey had been dissolved since 1536) and replacing it with the more practical By The Tower. The parish Bounds are still ritually ‘beaten’ on Ascension Day, which involves a boat trip as part of the boundary is on the Thames, and sometimes a mock ‘clash’ with Beefeaters beating the Bounds of the Tower of London.

Many historical treasures are displayed in the church. The canopy tomb of Alderman John Croke (1477) was destroyed in the 1940 air raid and reconstructed from over 150 fragments. Today it holds a bronze casket containing the Lamp of maintenance of Toc H. There are seventeen brasses, the earliest being that of William Tongue of 1389. The wonderful font cover, depicting cherubs and vines, was carved by master woodworker Grinling Gibbons in 1682 for £12, and a triptych of c1500, known as the Tate panel after the benefactor who commisioned it, shows the figures of St Joseph, St John the Baptist, St Jerome, St Ambrose and Tate himself kneeling in prayer! One example of survival is the pulpit, originally from the church of St Swithins London Stone, pulled from the rubble after it was completely demolished in the Blitz.

The Undercroft is a museum in its own right. It contains an in-situ Roman tessellated pavement from a 2nd century house on the site, and a Saxon archway from the original church which was rediscovered after the Blitz. There are three chapels, one of which – dedicated to bSt Francis – was once a crypt of c1280 which managed to get lost for three centuries before rediscovery in 1925. A small neighbouring oratory, dedicated to St Clare, has a ‘squint’ through which services could have been observed. There are models of Roman tombstones, a model of Londinium made in 1928 and sadly dated ( no ampitheatre!), archives dating back to the year of the Armada (1588), the burial pit in which Laud once rested, and small artefacts from the Roman and Saxon periods.

Overall, the Church is a marvellous surprise to the unwary. One could spend a couple of hours there, gazing at the relics of two thousand years of history. It was around 400 years before the neighbouring Tower was started, and the Londinium relics date back even further. It’s also cheaper than the Tower, asking only for donations and a small fee for the Undercroft!

Author Mark McManus 

Navigate for more: St Andrew Undershaft City of London Churches Introduction