ST. BOTOLPH, ALDERSGATE
This church is opposite the General Post Office, at the corner of Little Britain. The building was repaired in 1627, but was damaged by the Great Fire. It was pulled down in 1754, when the present church was erected. The earliest date of an incumbent is 1333.
The patronage of the church was in the hands of: The Dean of St. Martin-le-Grand, as a Rectory, 1333; the Dean and Canons of St. Martin-le-Grand, as a Donative or Curacy, united to St. Martin’s December 18, 1399; the Abbot and Convent of Westminster; the Dean and Chapter of Westminster, who are still the patrons.
Houseling people in 1548 were 1100.
The present church is divided into a nave and side aisles by Corinthian columns, and contains galleries on the north, south, and west sides respectively. The building is of brick. The tower rises at the west, crowned by a turret. There is a façade of four Ionic columns on the east side, constructed in 1831. The churchyard is of considerable size and extends to the south and west of the church; it is open to the public and is well laid out.
Chantries were founded here: For Thomas de Lilsington and Lucy his wife; by John Bothe. Here was the Brotherhood of Holy Trinity at that altar in the south part of the which, and for which the King granted a licence to Lady Johanna Asteley, Robert Cawode, and Thomas Smythe, sen., July 9, 1446.
The oldest monument remaining is that of Dame Anne Packington, a benefactress to the parish, who died in 1563. There are also monuments to Sir John Micklethwait, President of the College of Physicians, and Dr. Bernard, also a medical practitioner of the seventeenth century; to Richard Chiswell, principal bookseller of his time, who died in 1711; and to Daniel Wray, F.R.S., F.S.A., one of the original Trustees of the British Museum and friend of the poets Dyer and Akenside.
The charitable gifts belonging to this parish recorded by Stow are very numerous. Richard Chiswell, bookseller, was the donor of £50 to the schools at his death; Mrs. Hannah Jones of £60 in all during her life and at her death.
Fifty boys and fifty girls were clothed and educated by subscription.
The churchyard has been converted into a pleasant garden with smooth grass plots and irregularly growing trees, and is locally known as the Postmen’s Park. In the Daily Chronicle of April 16, 1896, a condensation of a speech by Mr. Norman, senior, churchwarden of St. Botolph Without, appeared, part of which was as follows:
“The land in question had been let by the Charity Commissioners for building in spite of the protests of the parishioners. It was in digging for foundations that an enormous quantity of human remains came to light, and the workmen at last became disgusted and refused to remove any more the masses of bones disturbed. The building lessees, however, determined to go on and legal proceedings were taken. The result was a declaration by the judge that although about one half of the site was a portion of the churchyard, technically, the whole site had now been dealt with in such a way as to enable the central governing body to build upon it.
“Many tons of human remains were still unexcavated, while a vast quantity piled pell-mell against the church tower—preparatory to the intended removal—had been covered with a few inches of earth. It seemed impossible that the central governing body should now treat the ground as a building site, especially as one of their principal duties was the preservation of open spaces where they were most wanted, viz. in the heart of the City, besides which they had now vested in them the whole of the parish property of the value of about £100,000. He had every hope that they would see their way to foregoing the small profit derivable from letting the site for building purposes, and he believed there was now a probability of the ground being secured for the public, in which event the churchyard garden would not only be preserved, but enlarged and greatly improved.”
On the west side of St. Martin’s Lane, Aldersgate, near Blowbladder Street stood a great house called Northumberland House, which at one time belonged to the Percies. Henry IV. gave it to the Queen and it was called her wardrobe; in Stow’s time it was a printing house.
In Bull and Mouth Street stood the Bull and Mouth Inn. It became one of the famous coaching inns of London.
The principal towns served from the Bull and Mouth were: Holyhead, Oxford, Birmingham, Shrewsbury, Kidderminster, Worcester, Leominster, Ludlow, Hereford, Kendal, Glasgow, Leeds, Halifax, Sheffield, Nottingham, and Northampton. Coaches started from these places daily, three times, or twice a week. The traffic appears strangely divided; this, however, was due to the competition of other coaches. Thus, a coach started twice a day for Birmingham, and also twice a day for Kendal.
Twenty-one coaches ran out of the Bull and Mouth every Monday. The same number came in. Other days were quite as busy. Besides, there were the wagons, of which twelve went out every week. The offices of the Post Office are now built over the site of this inn.
Farther north to the west of Aldersgate is the district ravaged by the fire of 1897, which burned down blocks of houses and streets. Jewin Crescent and Australian Avenue were the centre of the conflagration, but both have risen from their ashes. In Jewin Street Milton lived before his third marriage.
Little Britain was in the reigns of the Stuarts the centre of the bookselling trade, as Paternoster Row was later. Here lived Richard Chiswell (d. 1711), “the Metropolitan bookseller”; also Samuel Buckler, publisher of the Spectator; and Benjamin Franklin lodged for a time in “Little Britain.” But the association which confers the greatest distinction upon the street is that it was for a short time the residence of Milton when he lodged with the bookseller Millington about 1670.
The street at present is lined on one side by the uniform row of the buildings in the hospital precincts; these are of dingy brick with stuccoed ground-floor. On the east, there are a few modern buildings mingled with one or two older ones, which give the street a quaint aspect. No. 37 and the two numbers to the south of it are decidedly picturesque.
A full account of St. Bartholomew’s Hospital and Priory has been given in Mediæval London, vol. ii. p. 251.
The Priory on its suppression was granted to Sir Richard, afterwards 1st Baron, Rich, with the exception of the choir and south transept of the church, which were given to the parishioners, and it is this beautiful fragment that now forms the church of St. Bartholomew the Great.
ST. BARTHOLOMEW THE GREAT