ST. SWITHIN’S CHURCH
St. Swithin, to whom this church is dedicated, was Bishop of Winchester and Chancellor to King Egbert. Formerly the usual designation of the church was St. Swithin’s in Candlewick Street, but Newcourt (1708) states that St. Swithin, London Stone, was becoming the more common title. The stone at that time stood on the south side of the road opposite to the church. No record exists of the original foundation of the church. Probably it was built soon after the death of St. Swithin in 862, or at any rate before A.D. 1000. It is mentioned in the taxation book of Pope Nicholas IV. in 1291. The first rector given by Newcourt is Robert de Galdeford, who resigned in 1331. In 1420 licence was obtained to rebuild and enlarge the church and steeple, and Sir John Hend, Lord Mayor, 1391 and 1404, was, says Stow, “an especial benefactor thereunto, as appeareth by his arms in the glass windows, even in the tops of them.” The hall of the Drapers Company was at that time Sir John Hend’s house in St. Swithin’s Lane. The church thus rebuilt consisted of a chancel and a nave separated from the north and south aisles by pillars. There was a chapel of St. Katherine and St. Margaret. From the date of rebuilding it is evident that the style of the architecture was Early Decorated. The maps of Aggas (1560) and Newcourt (1658) agree in showing a small battlemented church, with a square battlemented tower (without spire) at the west end and level with the street. In 1607-1608 the church was “fully beautified and finished at the cost and charge of the parishioners.” It was again repaired shortly before the Great Fire, when £1000 was spent upon it. The church was burnt down in the Great Fire, and rebuilt by Wren in 1678, when the neighbouring parish of St. Mary Bothaw was annexed. In 1869 and 1879 it was entirely “rearranged.”
The patronage of the church was in the hands of: Sir Robert Aguylum, Knt., who gave it by will dated February 28, 1285, to Richard, Earl of Arundel, who has licence from the King to assign it to the Prior and Convent of Tortington, June 21, 1367; the Prior and Convent of Tortington, Sussex, in whose successors it continued up to 1538, when Henry VIII. seized it and granted it June 8, 1536, to John de Vere, Earl of Oxford, who sold it, 1561, to John Hart, citizen and alderman of London, who gave it to George Bolles (his son-in-law), citizen of London, from whose descendants it was purchased about 1683; the Salters Company, in whose successors it continued up to 1666, when the parish of St. Mary Bothaw was annexed, and the patronage shared alternately with the Dean and Chapter of Canterbury; Elizabeth Beachcroft presented to it in 1765, the Salters Company having parted with their share of the patronage.
Houseling people in 1548 were 320.
The church measures 61 feet in length, 42 feet in breadth, and 41 feet in height. It is surmounted by an octagonal cupola, divided by bands, and powdered with stars on a blue ground. The tower, which rises at the north-west, is square but contracted at the top into an octagonal shape. Above this a simple spire rises with a ball and vane. The total height is 150 feet.
Chantries were founded here: By Roger de Depham at the Altar of SS. Katherine and Margaret, to which William de Kyrkeby was presented, November 5, 1361—in 1548 the mayor and commonalty of London paid to carry out the object of Roger de Depham’s will, £5 : 6 : 8; by William Newe, who endowed it with lands, etc., which fetched £17 : 8 : 4, when John Hudson was priest; by James de Sancto Edmund, who left five marks per annum for an endowment in 1312; by Geoffrey Chittick, who gave lands to endow it which fetched £13 : 6 : 8 in 1548, when Sir Roger Butte was priest; by John Betson, who endowed it with all his lands in this parish, which yielded £13 : 6 : 8 in 1548, when Richard Hudson was priest.
Sir John Hart and Sir George Bolles, patrons of the church, were both buried here, but their monuments perished in the Great Fire. There is a large tablet affixed to a column on the north side of the church commemorating Michael Godfrey, first deputy governor of the Bank of England; he was slain in 1695 by a cannon ball at Namur, whither he was sent on business to King William’s camp.
In 1663 Dryden was married here to Lady Elizabeth Howard.
Only two charities are recorded by Stow: 12d. per week in bread, 50s. per annum in coals for the poor, the gift of Henry Hobener; £10 : 10s. for a weekly lecture, the gift of Thomas Wetnal.
The parish churchyard is situated in Salters’ Hall Court, by which it is separated from the church. It is elevated above the court and contains two trees, two or three bushes and shrubs, and a few tombstones. Across it is a right-of-way to the premises of the National Telephone Company, to which it has the appearance of being a garden.
George Street was anciently Bearbinder Lane. Riley notes “Berbynderslane” in the City records so early as 1358. It was renamed George Street within the nineteenth century. If Charlotte Row, west of the Mansion House, was so called in honour of Queen Charlotte, surely this was rechristened in honour of George III., whom she married in 1761. It is quite small compared with its former extent, for it once ran from Walbrook past the south side of St. Mary Woolchurch into St. Swithin’s Lane, and also had a northern limb, passing the west end of Dove Court, into Lombard Street. Now the Mansion House stands upon all the old course west of Walbrook churchyard, and the northern limb is built over. This was the fatal spot where the plague of 1665 first made its appearance within the City. Defoe, in his history of the dire disease, relates how a Frenchman living in Long Acre, near the plague-stricken houses, moved hither “for fear of the distemper.” Alas! he was already stricken, and in the beginning of May he died, the first victim within the City walls. Strype calls Bearbinder Lane “a place of no great account as to trade: well inhabited by merchants and others.” In his time about thirty yards at the east end were reckoned in Langbourn ward, and apparently also most of the northern arm. It now belongs wholly to Walbrook ward, and is merely a narrow passage containing no houses older than the nineteenth century.
We now take Walbrook, leaving Cannon Street to be dealt with subsequently. The memory of the stream of the Walbrook coming down from the heights to the north is preserved in the name of this short street.
In 1279 and in 1290 we find that there were houses on the banks of the stream. In the year 1307, there was one William le Marischale living beside the stream. It must have been almost impossible, even then, to live near the stream, because it was a common open sewer with latrines built over it. These were farmed by certain persons. Part of the stream, however, was covered over by the year 1300; it was not till the close of the sixteenth century that it was completely covered over. Empson and Dudley, the instruments of Henry VII.’s extortions, lived in Walbrook; and later Sir Christopher Wren is said to have lived here at the house afterwards No. 5.
The modern street is chiefly composed of ordinary stone-faced business houses. But on the west side are three charming seventeenth-century buildings of mellow red brick, Nos. 10, 11, and 12. On the centre one is a stone tablet supported by brackets, and covered by a projecting cornice; this bears date 1668. A little farther up on the opposite side an eighteenth-century brick house stands over the entry to Bond Court. The doorway immediately opposite the entry is a nice piece of woodwork. There are also one or two doorways of different designs in the northern part of the court. These belong to old houses, though those buildings on the west facing them are quite modern.
Returning to the street, the ornamental front of the City Liberal Club, founded 1874, draws attention to itself. The front is of light stone with the windows and doorway framed in granite. Farther north on the same side is Ye Olde Deacons Tavern, next door to Bell Court, a narrow passage of no particular interest. Representations of almost every trade occupy the street; it contains two great houses let in flats, one of which, Worcester House, seems to be especially given up to the offices of company promoters.