Category Archives: London History

All Hallows Staining

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Another in the series on historic churches in the City of London …

By the time of the Great Fire of London in 1666, there were over a hundred parish churches and other places of Christian worship within and immediately without the walls of  the City, despite a number having been closed down during the Reformation. To be precise, according to  Parish Clerks’ records, there were 97 churches within the walls of the City, and 16 without, making a total of 113.

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All Hallows Staining (reverse “C” on sixteenth-century “Agas” map/Map of Early Modern London) was originally built  around 1177, and rebuilt in the fourteenth  or fifteenth century (sources differ) .

 

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The church was undamaged   in the Great Fire of 1666, but large parts of it  collapsed  in 1671, and it was subsequently rebuilt in 1674-5, only to be substantially demolished in 1870 (the year this etching was made).    The parish was then merged with that of St Olave Hart Street.

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It is thought that the collapse of 1671 was due to undermining of the foundations by burials following the “Great Plague” of 1665.  The “Bills of Mortality” show that 112 parishioners died of the plague in 1665, most of them in the late summer or early autumn.

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The  fourteenth- or fifteenth- century tower still stands, thanks to the initiative of the Clothworkers’ Company, who were also responsible for restoring it in 1873.  The foundations are  original, twelfth-century.  The crypt is also twelfth-century, although it has been transported from its original location in the chapel of St James-in-the-Wall.  Two sword-rests salvaged from All Hallows can be seen in St Olave Hart Street, a third in St Andrew Undershaft.

 

All Hallows Lombard Street

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Another in the series on historic churches in the City of London …

By the time of the Great Fire of London in 1666, there were over a hundred parish churches and other places of Christian worship within and immediately without the walls of  the City, despite a number having been closed down during the Reformation. To be precise, according to  Parish Clerks’ records, there were 97 churches within the walls of the City, and 16 without, making a total of 113.

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All Hallows Lombard Street (“H” on sixteenth-century “Agas” map/Map of Early Modern London) was originally built sometime between 1052-1070, and rebuilt between 1516 and 1544.

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The church was subsequently burned down   in the Great Fire of 1666,  and rebuilt by Wren in 1686-94, only to be allowed to fall into disrepair, and declared an unsafe structure and demolished in 1938-39, when the parish was merged with St Edmund.

Lost Wren Churches

It  is one of the twenty-one lost Wren churches.

All Hallows Lombard Street (1)

Only parish boundary markers survive at its former site.

All Hallows Twickenham

Some of the fabric and furnishings survive in the church of All Hallows in  Twickenham, including the rebuilt tower.

Highgate

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Another in the occasional series on historic sites on the “Capital Ring” walk …

Highgate was first recorded in 1354 as Le Heighgate, meaning, in Middle English, high (toll) gate.  The gate was originally set up on the Great North Road by the Bishop of London, who was also the Lord of the Manor of Hornsey.  The surrounding area remained essentially rural and sparsely populated until post-Medieval times, and after the Great Fire of London in 1666 was temporarily used to accommodate displaced persons, as noted by John Evelyn in his diary.  A number of aristocratic country houses were built here at this time, including Arundel, Cromwell, Fitzroy and Lauderdale Houses.  The area eventually became rather more developed in the nineteenth century,  although even to this day it still retains much open green space.

Lauderdale House

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Lauderdale House was originally built by Richard Martin, Master of the Royal Mint and thrice Lord Mayor of London,  in 1582.  However, it was not known as such until the early seventeenth century, when it was bequeathed by the then-owner Mary, Dowager Countess of Home to her daughter  Anne, the wife of John Maitland, the Earl of Lauderdale.  In 1649, during the Civil War, Lauderdale, who was a Royalist, was forced to surrender the house to John Ireton, a leading Parliamentarian (General Henry Ireton’s brother and Cromwell’s son-in-law).  After the Restoration of the Monarchy in 1660, it reverted to the Lauderdale family’s ownership, Lauderdale being a member of the CABAL advising the restored king, Charles II – and the king’s  mistress, Nell Gwynne, lived in it  for a while.   The house changed hands many times in the later seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, before undergoing radical alteration in the early nineteenth. Its last private owner was Sidney Waterlow, another Lord Mayor, who gave it and its surrounding grounds to the London County Council in 1883, “for the enjoyment of Londoners”. The recently restored house is now an  arts and education centre.

All Hallows the Less

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Another in the series on historic churches in the City of London …

By the time of the Great Fire of London in 1666, there were over a hundred parish churches and other places of Christian worship within and immediately without the walls of  the City, despite a number having been closed down during the Reformation. To be precise, according to  Parish Clerks’ records, there were 97 churches within the walls of the City, and 16 without, making a total of 113.

ahtl

All Hallows the Less (“M” on sixteenth-century “Agas” map/Map of Early Modern London) was originally built in the early or mid thirteenth century, at least in part over a vault or cellar, such that it was  referred to as Omn’ Scor’ super Celar in Pope Nicholas IV’s Taxatio Ecclesiastica of 1291.  It was repaired and partially rebuilt around the turn of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

The church was subsequently burned down in the Great Fire, and never rebuilt,  the parish merging with that of All Hallows the Great.

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Essentially nothing now remains of the church at its former site, the churchyard having been damaged by bombing in the Second World War, and lost to post-war redevelopment.

All Hallows the Less (site of)

However, the name lives on,  in that of Allhallows Lane.

 

All Hallows Honey Lane

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Another in the series on historic churches in the City of London …

By the time of the Great Fire of London in 1666, there were over a hundred parish churches and other places of Christian worship within and immediately without the walls of  the City, despite a number having been closed down during the Reformation. To be precise, according to  Parish Clerks’ records, there were 97 churches within the walls of the City, and 16 without, making a total of 113.

Bee, Honey Lane

All Hallows Honey Lane (not shown on sixteenth-century “Agas” map/Map of Early Modern London) was originally built around the turn of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the oldest record of it being in  a deed dating to between 1191 and 1212.  By the early sixteenth century, the church was known for its Lutheran leanings, and in 1540, its curate, Thomas Garret or Gerrard, was burned at the stake  at Smithfield for heresy.  It was described by Stow in his “Survay of London” of 1598 as a “small parish church”, with “no monuments … worth the noting”.  The church was subsequently burned down in the Great Fire of 1666, and never rebuilt, and the parish was merged with that of St Mary-le-Bow.

All Hallows Honey Lane (1)

Only parish boundary markers survive  at  its former site.  However, some “Anglo-Norman” structures were uncovered during post-fire redevelopment, and a twelfth-century column  capital in the  form of a serpent, possibly from the church, was salvaged, and may now be seen in the  British Museum.  Buried human remains  were uncovered during archaeological excavations at No. 111 Cheapside in 1954-5.

 

All Hallows the Great

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Another in the series on historic churches in the City of London …

By the time of the Great Fire of London in 1666, there were over a hundred parish churches and other places of Christian worship within and immediately without the walls of  the City, despite a number having been closed down during the Reformation. To be precise, according to  Parish Clerks’ records, there were 97 churches within the walls of the City, and 16 without, making a total of 113.

All Hallows the Great

The church of All Hallows the Great (“V” on sixteenth-century “Agas” Map/”Map of Early Modern London”) was originally built in around 1235.

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Wren’s_All_Hallows_the_Great,_John_Crowther,_1884

The church was subsequently burned down  in the Great Fire of 1666,  and rebuilt by Wren in 1677-84, only to be demolished between 1876 and 1894,  when the parish was merged with St Michael Paternoster Royal.

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It  is one of the twenty-one lost Wren churches, and one of the ten lost between 1860 (“Union of Benefices Act”)  and 1900.

Essentially nothing now remains of it  at its former site, other than the name, which lives on in that of Allhallows Lane (the last vestige, the churchyard, having been   lost during the construction of the City Fire Station).

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Note, though, that the salvaged  chancel screen survives,  in St Margaret, Lothbury.  Salvaged statues of Moses and Aaron, and a carved figure of Charity, also survive,  in St Michael Paternoster Royal.

 

 

Kingsbury

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Another in the occasional series on historic sites on the “Capital Ring” walk …

Kingsbury takes its name from the Old English cyning, meaning king, and burh, meaning manor.   It was first referred to, in a Saxon Charter of 1003/4, as Cyngesbyrig, at which time it was evidently  a royal possession.  The old  church of St Andrew  was founded at least as long ago as the thirteenth century (see below).  It is surrounded by the remains of an early Medieval ditch.  Settlement of the surrounding area is thought to have begun in the fourteenth century, after the Black Death of 1438-9.  The  new church,  which had stood in Marylebone  from 1845 to 1931, was relocated to Kingsbury in 1933, by which time Kingsbury was becoming  assimilated into suburbia.  Television pioneer John Logie Baird received the first combined sight and sound transmission here in 1930.  Earlier, Oliver Goldsmith wrote She Stoops to Conquer at Hyde House Farm here in 1773.

Old Church of St Andrew

General view of old church

Graveyard of old church

Detail of wall of old church highlighting flint and Roman tile used in construction

The old  church of St Andrew  was founded at least as long ago the thirteenth century, with surviving records indicating that it was administered by the Hospital of St John of Jerusalem between 1244-48.  Interestingly,  there are certain indications  that it is ultimately  of Saxon rather than Medieval origin, including the characteristically, although not diagnostically, Saxon “long-and-short” stone-work on  the quoins.  A significant amount of recycled Roman brick and tile was used in its construction.

The old church was extended and modified in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and restored after long neglect in the nineteenth and early twentieth, by which time it had become a chapel-of-ease to the newly built nearby Church of the Holy Innocents.  It was eventually closed down some years   after the new church of St Andrew was built directly adjacent to it in 1933.   In 2010, it   re-opened  for use as a Romanian Orthodox Church.

Inside the church are a thirteenth-century font, and a fourteenth-century bell  that  is the oldest still hanging anywhere in Middlesex.  Also inside are  memorials to John Shepard of Kingsbury (d. 1520), and to John Bul of Roe Green, Gentleman and Keeper of the King’s Poultry (d. 1621).