Fig. 34.—Saxon Coffin-lid from Westminster Abbey.
Of material evidence little has survived. On the destruction of St. Benet Fink about fifty years ago a fragment of a Saxon grave-stone was found, which is now in the Guildhall Museum ([Fig. 32]). In Roach Smith’s Catalogue of London Antiquities, No. 571, is the head of a Saxon cross (“of the tenth or eleventh century”) which was found in the old burial-ground of St. John-upon-Walbrook. I am able to identify this with the cross-head in the Saxon Room at the British Museum from a sketch of Roach Smith’s, which I have, which bears the same number 571 (see the diagram, [Fig. 33]). It has been said that Roman foundations have been found under some of the churches.[188]
Several of the churches outside the walls can be traced back so far as to make it probable that they were founded before the Conquest.
The Assise of 1189(?), speaking of a fire in the first year of Stephen (1136), says it burnt from London Bridge to S. Clementis Danorum; in a charter of Henry II. this church is called S. Clementis quæ dicitur Dacorum (Dugdale, under “Temple”). It was still earlier the subject of a charter of the Conqueror’s (see [p. 85]). According to M. of Westminster the body of Harold I., buried at Westminster, was dug up in 1040 and thrown into the Thames, “but it was found and buried by the Danish people in the cemetery of the Danes”—“at S. Clement’s,” says R. Diceto, the London historian who wrote in the twelfth century. This is probably the cemetery of the Danes who were killed in London in Ethelred’s reign. M. of Westminster (under 1012) says many of the Danes fled to a certain church in the city, where they were all murdered. Stow says they were slain in a place called the Church of the Danes.
St. Mary le Strand.—Here Becket held his first cure. His biographer FitzStephen calls it S. Mariæ Littororiam. St. Andrew’s, Holborn, is mentioned in the somewhat doubtful charter dated 951 (see [p. 60]). St. Bridget, Fleet Street, was also of early foundation (Stow). St. Sepulchre’s is mentioned in the twelfth century.[189] Of the monasteries in the neighbourhood, Barking was founded in the seventh century, Westminster not later than the tenth, and Bermondsey, the fine new church of which is mentioned in Domesday, was probably only refounded by Alwyn Childe. A “monasterium” in Southwark mentioned in Domesday may be St. Olave, which is spoken of as early as 1096.[190]
All the manors round about London probably had churches before the Conquest, although the only one we can be certain of is that of St. Pancras, as the place is called by that name in Domesday. Stepney Church is said to have been rebuilt by Dunstan. It still contains a small sculpture of the Crucifixion, which is probably eleventh-century work. What these little churches were like we may know from the illustrations of the Saxon church at Kingston which was destroyed at the beginning of this century, and the log church at Greenstead, Essex, which still stands.
A story in the Heimskringla shows how London was early celebrated for its number of churches and London Bridge for its crowds.[191] A French cripple dreamt that an angel appeared to him and said, “Fare thou to Olaf’s church, the one that is in London.” Thereafter he awoke and fared to seek Olaf’s church, and at last he came to London Bridge and there asked the folk of the city to tell him where was Olaf’s church. But they answered and said that there were many more churches there than they might wot to what man they were hallowed. But a little thereafter came a man to him who asked whither he was bound, and the cripple told him, and sithence said that man, “We twain shall fare both to the church of Olaf, for I know the way thither.” Therewith they fared over the Bridge, and went along the street which led to Olaf’s church. But when they came to the lich-gate then strode that one over the threshold of the gate, but the cripple rolled in over it and straightway rose up a whole man. But when he looked around him his fellow-farer was vanished.