Patrick Comerford
During a walk around London last week after the SPCK and USPG Founder’s Day in Saint Alban the Martyr Church in Holborn, I visited the Priory Church of Saint Bartholomew the Great. This mediaeval church is in the heart of the Smithfield area, beside Saint Bartholomew’s Hospital and in a busy area that includes many pubs, restaurants and the Smithfield Market.
The church claims to be one of the oldest continuing parish churches in London. It was founded as an Augustinian priory 900 years ago in 1123, and was once part of the same foundation as Saint Bartholomew’s Hospital. The church built when Henry I was king, and it has survived the Reformation, the Great Fire of London in 1666, and the Zeppelin bombs in World War I and the Blitz in World War II.
The church is known for its Romanesque architecture, its traditional formal worship, music and preaching, and its appearance in a series of award-winning films – including Four Weddings and a Funeral.
Saint Bartholomew’s was established by Rahere, a courtier and favourite of Henry I. The death of the king’s wife Matilda, followed two years later by the drowning of their heir Prince William, his brother, half-brother and sister, caused Rahere to step away from his life as a courtier and to set off on pilgrimage to Rome.
Rahere fell ill in Rome, and, as he lay delirious in the hospital of San Bartolomeo, he prayed that if he survived he would set up a hospital for the poor in London. His prayers were answered and he recovered. As he returned home, he had a vision of Saint Bartholomew calling on him to build a church in Smithfield.
Back in London, Rahere was told that the area in his vision – then a small cemetery – was royal property, and that nothing could be built upon it. Henry I, however, granted the land to Rahere after he spoke about his divine vision.
Rahere built a church and a priory of Augustinian canons, and his promised hospital, and served as both prior of the priory and master of the hospital. The church and Saint Bartholomew’s hospital (‘Saint Bart’s’) next door were founded in 1123, making Saint Bartholomew the Great one of oldest parish churches in London.
Rahere died in 1145, and his tomb is in the church.
Building work at first was in the Romanesque style of architecture, characterised by rounded arches and large chunky columns. However, as the church was being built, the Gothic style become more popular, and so the southern end of the church was finished in the Gothic style, with Romanesque columns next to Gothic columns, and a mixture of pointed and rounded arches in the church.
The Virgin Mary is said to have appeared to a monk in a vision in the Lady Chapel in the late 12th century. The font dates from 1405 and is one of only two pre-Reformation fonts in London.
The priory became known as a healing and curative place, with many sick people filling its aisles, notably on Saint Bartholomew’s Day, 24 August. Many of the cures took place at the church hospital, which still exists as Saint Bartholomew’s Hospital.
The priory once extended out to where the Tudor gatehouse stands. The gatehouse dates from around 1595 and stands on top of a 13th century archway. This archway was the southern entrance to the nave until the 16th century.
The oriel window in the church was installed in the south gallery in the early 1500s by the Prior, William Bolton, who is said to have used it to keep an eye on the monks below. The symbol of a barrel or ‘ton’ with a bolt through it on the front is a heraldic pun on his name as together they form the word ‘Bolton’.
The last Prior was Robert Fuller, the Abbot of Waltham Holy Cross. He was favoured by Henry VIII, who invited him to attend the baptism of Prince Edward, the future Edward VI.
The Priory was dissolved in 1539, and the monastic complex was acquired on favourable terms in 1540 by Sir Richard Rich (1496-1567), Thomas Cromwell’s collaborator in the dissolution of the monasteries.
The church was ransacked and the nave was demolished in 1543. However, the crossing and choir survived largely intact from the Norman and later Middle Ages, and continued to be used as a parish church.
During Queen Mary’s reign, the church and some of the priory buildings briefly became the third Dominican friary (Black Friars) in London, refounded by Queen Mary I in 1556. But the Dominican priory was closed in 1559, and Saint Bartholomew’s became a parish church under Elizabeth I.
Ben Jonson’s play Bartholomew Fair, satirising English society, was first performed in 1614.
A memorial to Edward Cooke, a philosopher and ‘medicine man’ who died in 1652, is on the south aisle wall. Until the Victorian restoration of the church, it was known as the ‘weeping monument.’ The porous nature of the bust meant it would appear to weep from condensation. The introduction of heating by the Victorians ended that phenomenon.
The church escaped the Great Fire of London in 1666, but fell into disrepair. Over the centuries, various parts of the church were damaged or destroyed, and it was occupied by squatters in the 18th century.
The Lady Chapel was used as printer’s shop in the early 18th century, and a young Benjamin Franklin, a future signatory of the American Declaration of Independence, worked there as a typesetter in 1725-1726. Some blackened stonework in the north transept was left behind by an ironmonger’s workshop based there in the 18th century.
Outside the church, the façade of the gatehouse remained covered up from the 18th century and the Tudor details were only revealed by damage caused by a zeppelin bomb during World War I.
The half-timbered, late 16th century, Tudor frontage onto West Smithfield was built on an older, 13th century stone arch. It is the most easily recognisable feature of the church remains today, and may have been adapted by the Dominican friars in the 1550s.
From the gatehouse to the west door of the church, the path leads along roughly where the south aisle of the nave formerly existed. Very little trace of the monastic buildings now survive. The remaining parts of the churchyard are a raised garden, laid out by the landscape gardener Fanny Wilkinson in 1885.
Restoration began in the 19th century, first in the 1860s and then, under the architect Sir Aston Webb (1849-1930), in the 1880s and 1890s, including the restoration of the Lady Chapel and the south transept and a new north transept. The restored south transept was opened by the Bishop of London, Frederick Temple, in 1891.
The Priory Church was one of the few City churches to escape damage during the Blitz and Lord Andrew Cavendish, later the 11th Duke of Devonshire, and Deborah Mitford, were married there in 1941.
The church was designated a Grade I listed building in 1950. The poet and heritage campaigner Sir John Betjeman, who had a flat near the churchyard, considered the church to have the finest surviving Norman interior in London.
The works of modern art in the church include Damien Hirst’s ‘Exquisite Pain’ (2006). It depicts Saint Bartholomew, one of the 12 apostles, who met his end by being skinned alive. He is depicted with muscles exposed, his skin draped over his arm and holding the tool used to flay him.
Damien Hirst gave his work two special twists linking Saint Bartholomew’s, church and hospital: the body is based on anatomical model, and the knife is a surgeon’s scalpel.
He said: ‘I like the confusion you get between science and religion … that’s where belief lies and art as well.’
Saint Bartholomew the Great is the church of many City livery companies, including the Butchers, one of the seven oldest livery companies, the Founders, whose hall abuts the church, the Haberdashers, incorporated in 1448 and No 8 in City precedence, and the Fletchers, Farriers, Farmers, and the more recently formed Information Technologists, Carriage Drivers, Tax Advisers and Public Relations Practitioners.
An organ by John Knopple was installed in 1715. This was superseded by an organ by Richard Bridge in 1731. It was replaced in 1886 by the organ from Saint Stephen Walbrook, was installed by William Hill. Further modifications were made in by Henry Speechly & Son in 1931, by NP Mander in 1957, and by of Peter Wells in 1982-1983. Unusually for a parish church, the Priory Church Choir has professional singers. A choir of amateur singers, the Rahere Singers, sings for some services. The Organist and Director of Music is Rupert Gough.
The church is a popular film location. It was the venue for the fourth wedding in Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994) and appears in scenes other films – including Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, Shakespeare in Love and The Other Boleyn Girl – and in many television programmes.
Services have been broadcast live on the BBC Radio 3 programme Choral Evensong, including an Evensong service in 2023 to celebrate the 900th anniversary of the foundation of the Priory, Church and Hospital.
The annual Bartholomew Fair, starting at the time of the Saint’s Day on 24 August, took place all from 1133 until 1855, when it was closed down for licentiousness. The City of London revived the fair last year for the 900th anniversary.
One of the traditions of the Fair was a Disputation, originally on theological matters, on the Priory Grounds and great thinkers of the day came and took part in this. With the revival of the fair last year, this tradition was also revived, and the topic was ‘This House believes that the love of money is the root of all the nation’s problems.’
The name Saint Bartholomew the Great distinguishes the church from the neighbouring smaller church of Saint Bartholomew the Less, founded at the same time within the precincts of Saint Bartholomew’s Hospital. The two parish churches were reunited in 2012 under one benefice.
The Revd Marcus Walker has been the Rector Saint Bartholomew the Great since 2018. The Sunday services are: 9 am Holy Communion (BCP), 11 am Choral Eucharist (Traditional Language); 5 pm Choral Evensong (BCP). The church is open 10am-5pm Monday to Saturday, and 1pm-5pm on Sundays.
