St Bartholomew the Great

Visited briefly a few years back I decided to call in to St Bartholomew’s again while on a recent walk around Smithfield. I remember it then as a dark, rather forbidding place but this time, there for a lunchtime concert, my eyes had time to adjust and I was able to appreciate the magnificent structure and decorative features of this amazingly atmospheric and very historic place of worship.

The Grade I-listed Church of St Bartholomew the Great close to Smithfield market has been around for nearly 900 years. Built in Romanesque style it is London’s oldest parish church, built when William the Conqueror’s son was King of England.

Entrance to St Bart's-the-Great

Tomb of Rahere

The founder, Rahere, had been a jester at the court of Henry I before becoming a monk. While on a pilgrimage in Rome he fell seriously ill and had a vision of St Bartholomew telling him to build a church, a priory and a hospital back in London. 

In 1122, Henry I granted a charter giving permission to build on “Smooth Field”, then an area used for a cattle market, jousting and public executions, and the priory and hospital were completed in 1123. Rahere’s tomb from 1405 is in a gothic style which contrasts with the Romanesque main body of the church.

The medieval priory was run by Augustinian “black” canons (so-called because of their black robes) and their income came from altar offerings and tolls from the famous Bartholomew Fair. The Hospital of St Bartholomew, founded at the same time as the church,  cared for the sick but also for orphans, the poor and the homeless.

The Reformation brought the surrender of the priory to King Henry VIII in 1539. The west front, the chapels on the north side of the quire and the entire north transept were torn down and the Lady Chapel sold off for commercial or residential use. (Interestingly, during the 18^th century, these included a printer’s workshop and it was here that Benjamin Franklin was employed as an apprentice in 1725 while living in nearby Little Britain). The nave was also demolished and the space that it had occupied was filled in to create a burial ground. Without a nave, the heart of St Bartholomew’s today is the Quire – the choir of the original monastery where the canons would gather every day to sing the offices and celebrate Mass. It is worth noting that the church’s interior today is much darker than it would have been in medieval times since the rebuilding of the truncated end of the building removed the big windows that had provided light.

Dilapidated church in 1822

 

Unfortunately, the church underwent considerable decay in subsequent centuries until this decline was reversed under the architect Sir Aston Webb from 1884 to 1921, his work including rebuilding the north and south transepts, adding a west porch and reinstating the Lady Chapel.

Prior Bolton's oriel window

The interior of the church today has many interesting features. The internal oriel window overlooking the quire dates from 1515 and is the last surviving part of the lodgings built by the penultimate Prior, William Bolton. The lodgings were built adjacent to the south wall of the church taking over a portion of the south triforium. The window allowed him and is household to watch services below from the comfort of his home. At the bottom of the window is a ‘rebus’ showing a crossbow bolt going through a barrel (or ‘tun’), a visible pun on the name Bolton.

The medieval font

The octagonal font dates from 1405 and is believed to be one of only two pre-Reformation fonts in London (the other being St Dunstan’s in Stepney). The satirist and painter William Hogarth was born in Bartholomew Close and baptised in the font in November 1697.

 

The church’s tower dates from 1628 and stands 75 feet high. It has a set of 5 pre-Reformation bells from the former priory, believed to have been cast as early as 1510, and these are still in use today.

The gateway arch was the original southern entrance to the nave of the church. The gatehouse itself dates from 1595, its Tudor timbers only revealed following damage caused by a Zeppelin bomb in 1916. It was fully restored in 1932.

 

The Golden Boy at Pye Corner

St Bartholomew's the Great has survived much over the centuries: the ravages of the Reformation period, the Great Fire of London (which stopped at nearby Giltspur Street, a fact commemorated by the Golden Boy statue), WW1 Zeppelin raids and the bombing of WWII. It is one of very few remaining Norman churches in London and is closely linked to 8 livery companies of the city, several with roots in the Middle Ages (the Butchers' Company, Founders' Company, Fletchers' Company, and the Haberdashers' Company) and some more modern ones: the Information Technologists Company, the Tax Advisors' Company, the Guild of Public Relations Practitioners, and the Hackney Carriage Drivers' Company!

Four Weddings...

St Bartholomew’s is known to many outside London as the backdrop to a number of films, including Four Weddings and A Funeral, Shakespeare in Love and The Other Boleyn Girl.

 

For a short tour see Joolz Guides’ excellent video entitled ‘London’s Most Splendid Churches’: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCoV0E969_4&ab_channel=JoolzGuides-LondonHistoryWalks-TravelFilms