The Church of St. Olave, Jewry, stood on the west side, near the middle of Old Jewry, and was sometimes called St. Olave, Upwell. It was destroyed in the Great Fire and rebuilt in 1673. It was subsequently taken down. The tower, which alone was left, is now part of a dwelling-house. The earliest date of an incumbent is 1252.
The patronage of the church was in the hands of the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul’s, who granted it in 1171 to the Prior and Convent of Butley, Suffolk, when it became a vicarage. Henry VIII. seized it, and so it continues in the Crown.
Houseling people in 1548 were 198.
The open space, belonging to the ancient graveyard, abuts on Ironmonger Lane.
A chantry was founded here by John Brian, rector, who died in 1322, and a licence was granted by the King, August 20, 1323; Robert de Burton, chaplain, exchanged with William de Aynho, June 15, 1327. In 1548 the endowment fetched £13 : 1 : 4.
Robert Large, Mayor in 1440, and donor of £200 to the church, was buried here. Among the later monuments is one in memory of Sir Nathaniel Herne, Governor of the East India Company; he died 1679.
The church was not rich in charitable gifts and legacies. Among the benefactors, Sir Thomas Hewet gave £5 : 4s. yearly; Henry Lo gave £10 for ever; Gervase Vaughan gave a house, rented at £14 per annum, to provide bread for the poor every Sunday.
On the west side of Old Jewry there was a free school, said to be founded by Thomas à Becket in 1160, for 25 scholars. There were two almshouses for 9 poor widows of armourers, each of whom received 6s. per quarter, and 9 bushels of coal a year; those past labour received £1 a quarter. These were the gift of Mr. Tindal, citizen and armourer of London.
Anthony Ellys, D.D. (1690-1761), Bishop of St. David’s, was rector, also Joseph Holden Pott (1759-1847), Archdeacon of London.
Old Jewry runs through into Gresham Street, which is roughly parallel with Cheapside.