In 1830 occurred a great fire, which destroyed this chapel, together with all the upper part of the east cloister, and the greater part of the south transept. Whether the great dormitory, which extended southwards from the transepts, or any part of it, had been left standing seems uncertain, but if so, this fire must have destroyed it. The fine undercroft of the dormitory, which consisted of two vaulted aisles of the Transitional period, remained perfect, and was standing as recently as 1870, when it was ruthlessly, and, apparently, unnecessarily, destroyed to make room for some parochial offices.
Shortly before this fire happened, some small, and not very fortunate, attempt at a restoration was made within the church, which resulted in more loss than gain, as it entailed the complete destruction of any remains of the ancient altar-screen which might have survived the previous alterations. The Georgian reredos which had taken its place was removed, and the east wall was plastered over and ornamented with a blank arcade in cement, which its architect doubtless thought agreed with the Norman features of the church. The Georgian pulpit was removed, and a symmetrical arrangement of two was substituted, recalling the Gospel and Epistle ambones of an ancient Italian church, but lacking their beauty.
Thus, after the vicissitudes of over seven hundred years, the church was reduced to the appearance shown in our illustration ([fig. 8]), when its restoration was seriously taken in hand in 1863.
Fig. 8—Interior of Church in 1863.
The task which the restorers then set themselves to accomplish, and in which they have been eminently successful, seemed at the time well-nigh hopeless. All the conventual buildings, and everything outside the actual walls of the church had been alienated, and, to a great extent, destroyed, and of the church itself but a battered torso remained. The nave had been destroyed at the Dissolution, and its site had become the parish churchyard; the south transept had perished in the fire of 1830, and its unroofed area had also become a burying-ground; whilst the north transept had been gradually encroached upon, no one knew how, and a large part of it was then used as a forge. The desecration of the east end was almost worse. The great Lady Chapel, which had been rebuilt in the fourteenth century, and which had formed part of the assignment to Sir Richard Rich, had been for long employed for trade purposes, being at one time the printing shop in which Benjamin Franklin had worked, and was, in 1863, a factory for fringe. This factory had gradually extended, on the upper floor, over the eastern ambulatory, up to the back of the reredos wall and over the south aisle, so that it was lighted, in part, through Prior Bolton's window from the church itself. This encroachment over the ambulatory shows well in the illustration ([fig. 7]). The north triforium was the parish school, which, with its noises, interfered with the services of the church, and, with the roughness of its occupants, endangered the safety of the groining below, and of the north wall which then leaned dangerously from the upright. The whole area of the church, which had been raised in the fifteenth century, was filled with graves, many of which were dug below the very foundations of the piers; moisture oozed over the grave-stones and darkness overspread the walls, so that it struck a chill into all who entered it. It was a by-word and a desolation.
In draining the area of the church, in rebuilding the decayed piers, and in bringing up the north wall to the perpendicular, the restorers effected great and substantial improvements, but in lowering the floor to its original Norman level, and in rebuilding the apse as they believed it was first planned, they embarked on extensive operations which were by some regarded not only as unessential, but as going beyond legitimate restoration; in fact, as was pointed out by more than one, it was not unlike an attempt to restore the nave of Winchester Cathedral by clearing out first all the work of William of Wykeham. There was much to be said in favour of lowering the floor, but the building of the apse was open to considerable question, and there is but little doubt that had the restorers commenced the destruction of the east wall at the top, instead of at the bottom, and so discovered the ruins of the great traceried windows, they would have paused in their scheme; but the position of the fringe factory prevented this, and it was only many years after the ambulatory arcade of the apse had been completed that this discovery was made. The question of whether there ought to have been an apse according to Austin Canon rule was not properly considered, but when it was found, after the walls of Purgatory had been removed, that there were no traces of any foundations to the missing central piers, some doubt as to the correctness of the course they were following was necessarily suggested. It was then, however, thought to be too late to alter the plans, the most important part of the east wall having then been destroyed, and the result is that we now have a Norman apse of uncertain authority, crowned with a lofty traceried clerestory, which, though a clever architectural composition, is only a modern makeshift. In place of this, had the fifteenth century east wall been preserved, we should have had in the upper part the two great windows, much of the tracery of which still remains, and beneath them the reredos might have been renewed. In this case the eastern portion of Roger de Walden's screen, with its doorway, would have been saved, and Sir Walter Mildmay's picturesque monument been left intact, making altogether a more beautiful sacrarium, and a much more truthful representation of what had once been, than the doubtful restoration of the rude Norman apse.
In succeeding years the work of restoration went on slowly, but much was achieved. The great schemes of the earlier restorers were wisely reviewed, and reasonable limitations acknowledged. All idea of rebuilding the nave was abandoned, and the rude brick wall which had been built to the west end of the choir was refaced in a seemly but permanent manner. The south transept was rebuilt over a portion only of its former area, and, with the north transept, finished in an appropriate manner which does not pretend to be a literal restoration. In the Lady Chapel, when it was rescued from the fringe factory, much of the old work in the windows was found intact, and a complete restoration had been possible. The continuous work of the last forty years has been crowned with success, and, although portions are evidently modern in design and execution, the choir of St. Bartholomew's Priory Church has been preserved for future generations as an example of the earliest and most important ecclesiastical buildings of London.