St Bartholomew The Great

Smithfield is not an attractive area, with the sprawling hospital complex of St Barts on one side and the untidy meat market on the other. A couple of plaques on the hospital wall remind the passerby of certain less savoury aspects of the area's history, by memorialising Protestant martyrs who were burned here during the reign of Mary Tudor, and the Scottish patriot Sir William Wallace who was hanged, drawn and quartered.
However, on the east side of Smithfield lies one of the City's best kept secrets. A Tudor gatehouse rises over a Norman archway. This was once the main entrance of a Priory Church, and is now the gateway that leads to the parish church of St Bartholomew The Great.

The story of its founding is an interesting one. The White Ship disaster of 1120 had robbed England of the heir to the throne, Prince William, and had plunged the court of his father Henry I into gloom. A courtier named Rahere undertook a pilgrimage to Rome, and while there he contracted a fever. He may have been treated at the hospital on the Isolo Tiberina, supposedly the site where St Bartholomew's relics rest, and we know that he vowed to build a hospital for the poor if he were fortunate enough to recover. Regaining his health, he embarked upon his return journey, during which he experienced a vision of Bartholomew, who ordered him to build a church at a place called the Smooth Field.
Smooth Field/Smithfield was an unpleasant site even in Norman times, being used for cattle markets and executions as well as occasionally being utilised for tournaments. Nevertheless, with the backing of King Henry and the Bishop of London, the Priory Church of St Bartholomew - and the Hospital of the same name - began to rise in 1123.

Rahere died in 1143 and the work was completed by his successor. In 1250 there was a skirmish at the Priory between the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Sub-Prior, and the Pope had to intervene to lift several excommunications that resulted. The year 1381 saw a famous brawl outside the entrance, during which the rebel Wat Tyler was fatally injured by the Lord Mayor, William Walworth.
The Priory was never particularly large, nor wealthy, and was surrendered to Henry VIII, although a Dominican convent was briefly established there during Mary's reign. After this, the Nave of the Priory was demolished, but the area of the Quire, Sanctuary and Lady Chapel became the parish church of 'Greate Saint Bartholomew next Smithfield'. It now stands as one of only two monastic foundations in the City that still exist as churches, the other being St Helens Bishopsgate.

The approach through the majestic Gatehouse is an impressive one. Through the archway, the visitor sees a small playground on the right, standing on the site of the cloisters, and on the left is an elevated burial ground that was once the Nave of the Priory. Ahead is the facade of the church, a mixture of styles due to various additions through the ages. Norman masonry is visible in the cloister to the right of the church door, a brick built Jacobean tower (containing a pre-Reformation set of bells) rises above, and the porch is a Victorian work by Sir Aston Webb.

Through this door, one enters a church which is utterly unlike any other City church. The light airiness of Wren, and the pretentions of the Victorians, cannot be seen here. What you have is superb Norman glory, the old Quire now serving as a nave, the old Sanctuary as a chancel, and north and south aisles with bays divided by massive Romanesque columns. What immediately catches the eye, however, is the triforium gallery above the columns, and the clerestory above that. It is the best example of Norman arcading in the City, and one can see here what all those ruined monastic sites across the country must have looked like.

The floor of the Sanctuary is a mosaic laid in 1904, and to its north is the canopied shrine-tomb of the founder, inscribed 'Hic Jacet Raherus, Primus Canonicus et Primus Prior hujus Ecclesi&'. The tomb is a 1405 rebuild, although the effigy is believed to be the original. Many other fine monuments exist in the Quire, dating from Elizabethan through to the early Georgian period; that of Sir Robert Chamberlayne, d.1615, has an armoured effigy kneeling under a canopy with curtains being held back by winged figures.

The aisles also contain impressive monuments, especially the south aisle. The largest is the monument to Sir Walter Mildmay, d.1589, who was a member of Queen Elizabeth's Privy Council, her Chancellor, a treasurer of the Exchequer, and still managed to find the time to found Emmanuel College at Cambridge. Nearby is the 1652 monument to the philosopher and doctor Edward Cooke, which was once an object of visitor curiosity. Before the installation of central heating in the church, condensation used to form on the monument and make it 'weep'. The inscription actually invites the reader to weep as well. At the east end of this aisle is an altar for the Imperial Society of Knights Bachelor, the membership of which is made up of those who have been knighted by the Queen, and who hold annual services in the church.

The north aisle was once lined with chapels, all gone at the Reformation. A monument here commemorates John and Margret Whiting. He died in 1681, a year after his wife, and the excellent epitaph by Sir Henry Wootton reads 'Shee first deceased, Hee for a little Tryd/ To live without her, likd it not and dyd'. At the western end of this aisle a battered, lead-lined stone coffin is on display, discovered in 1865, probably belonging to one of the priors. Another coffin is under the quire screen and apparently its skeleton wears leather sandals - as does the skeleton of Rahere, seen during repair work to his tomb. Being buried in leather sandals was an Augustinian custom.

The Lady Chapel, at the rear of the church, is the most modern looking part of the building. It is the third on the site, being built by Sir Aston Webb and dedicated in 1897. For three centuries after the Reformation it was used for secular purposes, such as dwellings, lacemaking, and at one time a printing press at which worked the young Benjamin Franklin in 1725.

One corridor of the cloister remains, having spent its post-Reformation centuries also being used secularly. It has been a smithy, a stable, even a pub! The cloister was not fully returned to church use until 1928. The church's font dates from 1405 and is the only pre-Reformation font in the City. The artist William Hogarth was christened here in 1697.

This church is truly startling on a first visit. I can imagine further visits being scarcely less rewarding. The sheer force of its survival from Norman times, with so much of the architecture of that period intact, is remarkable considering the bustle and tumult of Smithfield over the years. London's best kept secret? Shout it out!

St Martin In The Fields

St Martin In The Fields is not only the most well known of the parish churches in London, it is probably one of the best known in the world. Thanks to its position overlooking Trafalgar Square, it has appeared in countless paintings and photographs, and its orchestra - the Academy of St Martins - has received global acclaim. Ironically, the building was once concealed from view in St Martins Lane. Only the clearing of the area to the southeast for the construction of Trafalgar Square in 1820 afforded the church its famous vista and prominent position. Although the Oranges and Lemons rhyme 'you owe me five farthings' may refer to the City church of St Martin Orgar ( of which nothing remains but a tower), it is this baroque church in Central London that is the one everybody thinks of. It is believed that the present St Martin is the fourth building on the site. The earliest recorded mention came in 1222, when the Abbot of Westminster disputed the Bishop of London's authority over the church. The Archbishop of Canterbury mediated and decided in favour of the Abbot, so St Martin was probably used by monks from Westminster until 1542, when Henry VIII built a church which was added to in 1609 by Prince Henry, brother of the future Charles I (who was christened here).

In the seventeenth century, with the nearby Whitehall Palace in full use, St Martin became the parish church of the Court, and started to receive notable Jacobean interments. In 1615, Anne Turner was laid to rest here. A Court dressmaker, she had been involved in one of the greatest scandals of James I's court. Sir Thomas Overbury had been poisoned by his enemy, the unstable Frances Howard Countess of Essex, and it had been Anne who had delivered the fatal potion. She was hanged for her troubles. Four years later, St Martin hosted the funeral of the celebrated Nicholas Hilliard, the first true painter of miniatures. Some of his work can be found in the National Portrait Gallery, adjacent to the church.

Following the Restoration, Whitehall resumed its place as the centre of Court. John Taylor, Thames boatman celebrated as the 'Water Poet', was buried here in 1654. Nell Gwynn, actress and probably the most celebrated Royal Mistress in British history, was laid to rest in the chancel following a fatal stroke (1687), and the renowned philosopher /scientist Robert Boyle found his resting place here in 1691. Other notable actors interred here include John Lacy in 1681, Susannah Mountfort Verbruggen in 1703 and her husband John Verbruggen five years later. The artist Thomas Manby was buried in 1695, and the playwright George Farquhar in 1707.

In 1721 the architect James Gibb designed a replacement for the Tudor building. It was consecrated in 1726 and, as the church that stands to this day, has proved extremely influential. Its style has been copied many times since, even abroad in Ireland and North America. However, it was not universally acclaimed at the time; the architect John Gwynn complained that 'the absurd rustication of the windows, and the heavy sills and trusses under them, are unpardonable blemishes'.

People of repute continued to find their way into the churchyard, notably the highwayman and multiple prison escapee Jack Sheppard (1724), Louis Roubiliac the sculptor (1762), Thomas Chippendale the furniture maker (1779) and Dr John Hunter, the pioneer of modern surgery ( 1793). New catacombs were constructed around St Martin's when Duncannon Street was installed as part of John Nash's re-ordering of London, and coffins were exhumed from the yard and removed to the catacombs. They were, for a time, open as a somewhat macabre tourist attraction. In the 1850's, when London churchyards were closed to further burials, Hunter was transferred to Westminster Abbey, but most coffins were transferred to cemeteries outside London, such as the St Martin's extra-parochial ground in Pratt Street, Camden.

The last of the coffins were removed in 1938 to Brookwood in Surrey. The catacombs and the crypt beneath the church serve a variety of purposes, such as the popular 'Cafe In The Crypt', a centre for relief of the homeless, the London Brass Rubbing Centre, a bookshop and a gallery.

From whatever angle the visitor approaches St Martin, one cannot fail to be impressed by its sheer presence. In an area also containing the NPG, Trafalgar Square and the English National Opera House, the church more than holds its own. The facade is one of the best in London. A pediment displaying the Royal Arms of George I ( the only monarch to be a churchwarden of St Martin) is supported by a row of large, solid Corinthian columns. Above the pediment the tower soars, its steeple topped with a gilt crown.

The interior is scarcely less impressive. Columns rise from the galleries to support the barrel-vaulted ceiling, and the ceiling of the chancel is resplendent with gilding. The church has an box pew for the Admiralty (who, at one time, worshipped at St Olaves Hart Street) and it is festooned with the Royal Navy White Ensign and the flag of the Admiralty Board. Based in Whitehall, the Admiralty falls within the parish boundaries and the bells are traditionally rung on the occasion of Naval victories. In the north aisle is a portrait of the architect Gibb. Originally the church owned a bust of Gibb, by Rysbrack, but this is now in the V&A Museum.

Perhaps the most welcome aspect of the interior, in my experience, is that it is truly a haven of peace. I visited during the weekend of the Chinese New Year. Trafalgar and Leicester Squares were holding thousands of visitors, the roads between a constant flow of movement... but I took a few paces away from the bustle, stepped into the cool interior of St Martin and spent a while walking around the nave with admiration. The drums and whistles of the celebration, only a stone's throw away, were muted and unintrusive. I sat on a pew and contemplated the irony that the mighty plaza across the road, with its four stone lions and its soaring monument to our greatest naval hero, is not the real historic gem of this corner of the cityscape...

(with thanks to churchwarden Mr Jeff Claxton for further information.)

St Giles In The Fields

St Giles In The Fields is certainly a site of contrasts. To begin with, there have been no proper fields in this area of high urban density for a long time, unless one counts the large but somewhat shabby-looking churchyard, so the name is in conflict with the reality.

The second noticeable contrast is the building itself. Its facade is a triumph of Palladian majesty, striking loftily above the bustle of the West End, but the high, rectangular building behind the facade is sombre brownstone, with rows of small windows that put one in mind of a Victorian workhouse.
The last contrast is the impression conveyed by the interior. Walking into St Giles leaves the visitor breathless at its beauty, not least because it is so unexpected. The sheer scale of it leaves your lower jaw sagging. Large, ornate chandeliers, gilded patterns on the white ceiling, galleries with imposing arcades. This place looks as though it were designed to be a palace, not a parish church... and yet this site, with all its impressive architectural features, its glorious fittings, its colourful array of monuments to the great and good of the parish, has more dark moments in its history than most of the other London churches put together.

Its history begins in the year 1101 when Matilda of Scotland, Queen to Henry the First, founded a leper hospital on the site. Not an auspicious start, you might think, and you'd be right - this was not to be the last time in its history that the parish was connected with pestilence. The hospital had a chapel, which was most probably used by local villagers as a church, although one cannot imagine too much mingling with the inmates.

Little seems to be known about this medieval phase of the site's history (other than the fact it was probably surrounded by fields!), apart from an event during the reign of Henry the Fifth, an event which was to be the prelude to St Giles' later connection with condemned prisoners: the story of Sir John Oldcastle.
Oldcastle was a leader of the heretical religious movement known as the Lollards. Originally a friend of Henry the Fourth, and companion of the future Henry the Fifth during his campaigns in the Welsh Marches, Oldcastle fell from favour when his religious leanings were discovered and he refused to renounce them. Convicted of heresy, he managed to escape from the Tower and start an uprising, easily dispersed, at St Gile's Field. Fleeing to Herefordshire, Oldcastle remained at large - and plotting - for four years, until being seized by Earl Powis and returned to London on a horse litter. Oldcastle was hanged at St Gile's Field in Decmber 1417, and his body (including the gallows!) burned to ashes.

At the Dissolution of the Monasteries, the hospital was surrendered but the chapel remained as the parish church, the first rector being appointed in 1547. For the first time, it became known as St-Giles-In-The-Fields. In the 1620's the delapidated building was replaced by a proper Gothic church, mostly paid for by the noble Dudley family.

In 1665, the parish was once again connected with pestilence as, unfortunately, the first recorded outbreak of the plague in London was reported in the nearby street called Long Acre. The outbreak ravaged the parish, and the churchyard was extended to accomodate the plague pits. However, this had a detrimental effect on the relatively young building, which began to suffer from damp.

Fifteen years later, another dark episode was written in the church's history. The Popish Plot, inflamed by Titus Oates, saw widespread panic over rumours to assassinate King Charles the Second and re-introduce Catholicism. Between 1678-81, twelve executed victims of the Plot were interred at St Giles, including Oliver Plunket, the Archbishop of Armagh. Plunket has since been re-interred elsewhere, and was canonised in 1975. The other eleven, mostly Jesuit priests, have been beatified. No other London church has this many prospective Saints in its graveyard.

By the early 1700's the damp problem had become intolerable. After years of wrangling, the parishioners finally received a grant of £8000 and in 1730, work began on a new church created in Palladian style by the architect Henry Flitcroft, who is better known as the designer of the Duke of Bedford's sumptuous home, Woburn Abbey. This is the church that occupies the site today.

When completed in 1734, St Giles must have stood as one of the most impressive churches outside of Wren's work in the City. But, wouldn't you know, the bad publicity just kept rolling in. The population of the parish well nigh exploded in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and furthermore it was one of the most notorious parishes in the capital for poverty and squalor. The church's connection with executions continued; it was the last church on the route from Newgate Prison to Tyburn, and the churchwardens would often pay for condemned prisoners to have a last drink of ale at the neighbouring tavern.Slight architectural alterations were made during Victorian times, but still the parish received censure from social observers. An article in the 'Weekly Dispatch' of September 1838 gave a vivid and gruesome picture of the scandalous condition of, and inhumation practices witnessed at, St Giles overcrowded churchyard. I won't repeat any of it here in case you're eating.

Parliamentary Acts closed London's churchyards in the 1850's, which solved the hygiene problem, and the parish's poverty problems faded with the gradual fall in population - from over 30,000 in 1831 to about 4,600 at present.

The church survived the War with a few broken windows, and was restored during the early 1950's well enough for the work to be fulsomely praised by John Betjeman, writing in the Spectator. The internal appearance of the church today is mostly owing to that restoration.

As well as the wonderful, striking galleries, and the intricate gilded patterns on the ceiling, St Giles has two paintings beyond its altar, of Moses and Aaron, painted by Francisco Viera, court painter to the King of Portugal. A model of the church, built by Flitcroft himself as a template, is displayed in a glass case and a wooden pulpit by the north wall turns out to be from John Wesley's principal chapel at West Street. The founder of Methodism himself regularly preached from it, as did his brother Charles.

The monuments are many: in the entrance, before even stepping into the main body of the church, one can see a monument to the sculptor Flaxman who lived in the parish. He was buried at St Pancras - but the remaining monuments are to notable folk who were interred here. These include the Jacobean poet Andrew Marvell, Cecil Calvert 2nd Lord Baltimore, the first proprietor of Maryland, the poet George Chapman who first translated Homer into English (and whose monument was designed by his architect friend Inigo Jones), William Balmain, a surgeon who was one of the founders of New South Wales and who has a suburb in Sydney named after him, Luke Hansard printer to Parliament (after whom Parliamentary records are still called 'Hansard'), and - resting in the crypt with no memorial - one John Pell, a clergyman and mathematician who invented the symbol for division.

St Giles' most notorious monument is to Richard Pendrell. Generations have found mirth in his overblown epitaph, with which I close this history of St Giles In The Field:

'Here lieth Richard Pendrell, preserver and conductor to his sacred majesty King Charles the Second of Great Britain, after his escape from Worcester Fight, in the year 1651, who died Feb 8, 1671.
Hold, passenger, here's shrouded in this Herse,
Unparalell'd Pendrell, thro' the universe.
Like when the Eastern Star from Heaven gave light
To three lost kings; so he, in such dark night,
To Britain's monarch, toss'd by adverse war,
On Earth appeared, a second Eastern Star.
A Pope, a Stern, in her rebellious Main
A pilot to her Royal Sovereign.
Now to triumph in Heav'n's eternal sphere,
Whilst Albion's Chronicles, with matching fame,
Embalm the story of great Pendrell's Name.

St Pancras: Old And New

St Pancras Old Church

Behind the British Library, situated between the extensive works of the Channel Tunnel Rail Link and a housing estate, lies St Pancras Gardens. This public patch of peace, still scattered with monuments of all shape and fashion, contains towering trees, stunted grass, a network of carelessly meandering paths and a curious air of melancholy. A tall brick wall at the rear divides it from the encroaching railway works; a powerful iron fence at the front, through which The Beatles once peered for a photo opportunity, firmly separates it from the busy thoroughfare of St Pancras Road.

The Gardens are the combination of two burial grounds, although the boundary between them can no longer be traced: the northern section was an extra-parochial ground for St Giles In The Field, the southern section the ground of St Pancras itself. Here the Old Church remains, one of the most historic sites in Camden and, believed by some, to be one of the oldest church sites in Britain.

Pancras was a Phrygian orphan raised at the court of the Roman Emperor Diocletian. He was beheaded on the Aurelian Way in 304 AD for refusing to offer incense to the Emperor as a symbol of worship. He was 14 years old. Some believe that the first church was raised in this spot only ten years later, on the site of a Roman encampment and on the banks of the River Fleet. Others claim that the church was actually consecrated after the arrival of St Augustine in 597, as the monk was known to have an interest in the cult of Pancras.

In truth, either theory may be correct or, indeed, completely wrong. The origins of St Pancras Church are lost in time. It was certainly restored or rebuilt in Norman times, as the church still contains material from that period, and a chapel of ease - later dedicated to St John The Baptist - was built not far away in Kentish Town.

The chapel in Kentish Town proved a touch too convenient. St Pancras, due to its position on the banks of the Fleet, was prone to flooding and this seems to have encouraged the congregation to favour the firmer ground at Kentish, leading to the virtual abandonment of the Old Church which, not surprisingly, fell into disrepair - although the ground surrounding it remained the burial ground for the parish.

For centuries, the building deteriorated while the burial ground continued to fill. Obscurity did not accompany this abandonment, and writers scribbled of St Pancras and its ancient connotations with a tone of awe: Norden, in his Elizabethan 'Speculum Britanniae', describes it as 'all alone, utterly forsaken, old and weatherbeaten' although it did not 'yield in antiquitie to Paules in London'. He later added this curious anecdote: 'Although this place be, as it were, forsaken of all, and true men seldom frequent the same, but upon deveyne occasions, yet it is visayed by thieves, who assemble not there to pray, but to waite for prayer; and many fall into their handes, clothed, that are glad when they are escaped naked. Walk not there too late.'
Oliver Goldsmith's 1794 'Citizen Of The World' claims that 'if you except the parish church and its fine bells, there is little in Pangrace[sic] worth the attention of the curious observer.'

Maximilian Missom compared it in importance to St John Lateran in Rome, and Charles Dickens mentioned it in 'A Tale Of Two Cities' (appropriately enough, the ground had become a major burial site for French refugees), but it was not to be until the nineteenth century, with the explosion of the local population which rose in half a century from 600 to 35,000, that the parish was to receive a new chance of glory.

The delapidated building on the site of the parish burial ground was considered too 'unworthy' of some of the area's more opulent residents (in truth, it was probably too small!), and in 1818 a plot was purchased on the Euston Road for the erection of a replacement. The architects were to be a local father and son team, William and Henry Inwood. The New Church was consecrated in 1822, its cost £89, 296, the largest amount spent on a church in London since Wren's rebuilding of St Paul's Cathedral. Its vaults were used for burials - for those who could afford it - while the majority of burials continued at the Old Church. By the time the burial grounds of St Pancras were closed in 1854, replaced by the St Pancras & Islington Cemetery, 476 burials lay in the crypt, including Wiliam Prowse who captained HMS Sirius during the Battle of Trafalgar.

St Pancras New Church

However, this was still not enough for the burgeoning population, and in 1848 St Pancras Old Church was restored in a heavily Victorianised fashion, although traces of its ancient fabric can still be seen. The tower was replaced and the building lengthened. The churchyard was closed to new burials, and before long faced a new problem: the rise of the Railway.

The Midland Railway Company would have happily obliterated the ground as it constructed its tracks into St Pancras Station, but due to public outcry and articles in periodicals such as the Builder, the damage was reduced to some curtailment on the eastern part of the grounds, an area that had been popular with local Catholics and had provided the last resting places of many French notables fleeing from the Revolution. One of the trainee architects involved in the repositioning of graves was Thomas Hardy. Many gravestones were piled together in a spot where they have become intertwined with the roots of a tree; this curious reminder of the march of technology in Victorian London is now known as the 'Hardy Tree' and remains one of the more unusual curiosities to be found in a London churchyard. The churchyard was landscaped into a garden in 1891, and today is the largest public space in Camden.

The Victorian period was damaging to many of the churches and church grounds of London, but of course this was not to be the end of the troubles. World War II saw the Old Church being renovated once again following bomb damage, and in recent times the churchyard was further curtailed by the Eurostar workings which still continue today. On this occasion, however, archaeologists were on hand to help with the removal of some 1500 sets of remains, and the scientific study of these exhumed remains have revealed that Arthur Richard Dillon, the colourful Archbishop of Narbonne, was interred with a set of false porcelain teeth! These are now on display at the Museum of London.

A perambulation of the two sites provides a remarkable contrast. St Pancras New Church is a magnificent edifice, standing firm against the constant roar of traffic from the neighbouring Euston Road (this traffic means that the Church faces a perpetual battle to keep the white Portland stone clean). The Inwoods turned to the Classical world for inspiration. They based their design for the church building upon the Ionic Temple of the Erectheum at the Acropolis. This building is famous for its caryatids, sculptered female supports taking the place of pillars - and the most eye-catching feature of the New Church are the caryatids, four on the north and four on the south, built of terracotta around cast-iron columns by John Rossi, guarding the entrances to the crypts. An error during their construction meant that they were too tall, and they had to be truncated at the waist. The tower is an inflated copy of the 'Tower Of The Winds', by Andronicus Cyrrhestes, found on the Roman agora in Athens.

The impressive entrance portico dwarfs the entrance to an octagonal vestibule, and a clear view down the axis of the church displays the apse at the other end, ringed with six magnificent Ionic columns. Remarkable apses seem to be a feature along this road - further west, the broadly contemporary church of St Marylebone also boasts an impressive apse. The interior of St Pancras is very spacious and very high. Extensive galleries exist above the aisles and the pulpit, veneered in mahogony, towers over the pews. It was created from the 'Fairlop Oak' in Hainult Forest, toppled by wind in 1820. The windows, originally clear, have been gradually replaced by stained glass, most notably the three panels by Clayton and Bell in the apse. More recent innovations can be seen in the North Chapel, which has a screen of etched glass dating from 1970.

The church is still a vital part of the community. During the War, the cleared crypts were used to shelter the local populace from the bombs which damaged the Old Church, and more recently flowers were laid at the entrance after the 7/7 bombings, one of which happened close by at King's Cross. The sculptor Emily Young created a memorial, an onyx head of the Archangel Michael, its plaque inscribed with 'In memory of the victims of the 7th July 2005 bombings and all victims of violence. 'I will lift up my eyes unto the hills' Psalm 121'.
Sir John Summerson stated, 'St Pancras is the Queen of the early 19th century churches; its architecture earns it the title as much as its size and cost'. In marked contrast, the older Church, tucked away to the north-east, may seem humble and sidelined, but it is certainly no less venerable. The length of its history alone guarantees equal worth with its formidable descendant. New Church has been listed Grade I, the Old Church Grade II, but the elder stateman sits quietly above Pancras Road, course of the now subterranean Fleet, seemingly oblivious to the hum of the traffic and the cacophony of construction. It is indeed curious to notice just how peaceful the old churchyard seems, considering that it surrounded by top representatives of 21st Century urban noise.

To meander through the gardens is to wander through the faded glory of history itself. Various features catch the eye. A range of monuments, of varying styles and antiquity, culminating in the fence-ringed Mausoleum of the architect John Soane. This structure, designed by Soane himself and crowning the family vault, is one of only two grave memorials in London that has been listed (the other is Karl Marx at Highgate). Its shape was the inspiration for the famous red telephone boxes. The Hardy Tree, sitting snugly behind the church and almost seeming to defy the encroachment of the huge brick wall separating it from the Eurostar works. The Burdett-Coutts memorial sundial, holding the names of many of the notables who rest in this grouns, with particular emphasis on the French emigres. At the base of its protective fence can be found a supine memorial to Johann Christian Bach, the composer and son of the composer Johann Sebastian. Known as the 'English Bach', he rests nearby.

Other notable memorials can be traced. A squat block stands above the burial site of the authors William Godwin and his wife, Mary Wollstonecraft. Their daughter, Mary Godwin, used to meet her beau Shelley at this spot. The Godwins were removed to St Peter's, Bournemouth in 1851, to rest alongside their daughter, yet the original memorial remains here. Not far from this, right by the side of a path, can be seen two ledgers with faded inscriptions, that cover the vault of sculptor John Flaxman and members of his family. A plaque fixed to one gravestone reveals it to be the marker of William Jones, schoolmaster to Charles Dickens. Behind the church, close to the Hardy Tree, can be seen a stone for Samuel Webbe the church musician. In the church itself lies Samuel Cooper, considered by many to have been the greatest painter of miniatures.

Many others lie in spots now unmarked, some of them memorialised on the Sundial, others not:

• James Barenger, painter of animals
• Tiberius Cavallo, scientific essayist
• Jeremy Collier, clergyman and polemicist against the stage
• Chevalier D'Eon, French diplomat, spy and transvestite
• William Franklin, Colonial Governor and son of Benjamin
• Giacomo Leoni, architect of Lyme Park
• John Mills, last survivor of the Black Hole of Calcutta
• John William Polidori, Lord Byron's doctor and author of 'The Vampyr'
• Simon Francois Ravenet, engraver
• Thomas Scheemakers, sculptor
• William Woollett, engraver
• Mary Young, the infamous pickpocket 'Jenny Diver'

Jonathan Wild, the notorious thieftaker turned criminal, was also buried here following his date with the gallows; however, he was stolen by Resurrectionists and apparently ended up in the hands of the dissection lobby.

Caryatids at New St Pancras (c) SilverTiger

Once sited in liminal areas, the Churches of St Pancras now stand surrounded by the bustle of Camden, yet still they dominate. The history of the entire area begins with these buildings, and they have proved obstinately resistant to the ever-changing landscapes around them. The grime on the New Church will continue to be removed, the Old Church will continue to cast its faded gentility across its environs. Without the Churches of St Pancras, there would BE no area named St Pancras in London. They have been here possibly since Roman times, the first significant buildings in the locality, and they will endure.

St Olaves Hart Street

St Olaves

When I visit London, and disembark at Fenchurch Street Station, so long as I'm not in a hurry I try to step round the corner to the nearest church, St Olaves which stands at the corner of Hart Street and Seething Lane. I've visited it many times, and hope to visit it many more. Despite all its splendid rivals, this small and unassuming building is my favourite of the London Churches.

At first glance, it has little to catch the eye. It's medieval, built circa 1450, has a small tower of the seventeenth century, survived the 1666 Fire, and its external walls are something of a patchwork due to repairs made necessary by wartime bombing which gutted the building. So what is special about it?

The first thing the visitor should do is walk around the side of the church, to the churchyard with its entrance in Seething Lane. Betjeman described this building as 'a country church in the world of Seething Lane', with 'a real churchyard not got up as a garden of rest'. He was correct: unlike most City churchyards, this one is small and surprisingly rustic. The ground is elevated, due to thousands of burials and a plague pit, so elevated that steps actually lead down to the old south entrance. An oblique line scars the exterior of the building, the last vestiges of a stair which once led to a gallery pew that was reserved for staff from the Admiralty offices in Seething Lane. In this quiet ground are interred Mary Ramsay, reputedly the woman who brought the Plague to London, Sir Anthony Bacon the brother of the celebrated Sir Francis, and an eccentric Elizabethan known as 'Mother Goose'. This woman used to knit little boots for her geese so that their feet wouldn't get sore as they were herded to market. The 1658 arch over the churchyard's entrance is crowned with a cluster of skulls, a Memento Mori carved from the stone, and it bears a Latin inscription which translates as 'for me to live is Christ; to die is gain'. Charles Dickens was much taken with this. In his 'Commercial Traveller', he referred to it as the church of 'St Ghastly Grim', and wrote of '...a small small churchyard, with a ferocious strong spiked iron gate, like a jail. This gate is ornamented with skulls and cross bones, larger than life wrought in stone.' After a century and a half, his description is still accurate.

Through the north entrance in Hart Street, one enters a small vestibule before stepping into the church proper. Now it is possible to see why it is special. Following the wartime damage, the interior was lovingly restored, and the small building gives an almost palpable feeling of intimacy. The walls hold many colourful monuments from the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods, including memorials to the father and son horticulturalists William and Peter Turner, all in excellent condition despite the damage the church sustained in 1941, and all worthy of examination and admiration. The bust of Peter Turner disappeared when the church was bombed, but was recently rescued from.an auction and returned to its proper place in the church.
The interior is clerestoried, with north and south aisles of three bays. There is modern stained glass but, unlike some other churches which have been cast into gloom by this form of decoration, St Olave's maintains brightness. The pulpit is 17th century, originally came from the now destroyed St Benet's Gracechurch and may be a Gibbons work, and there are swordrests and Communion rails which date to the same period.

However, despite its ingrained sense of intimacy, there is one other aspect of St Olave's which adds to its atmosphere, and that is its most important historic connection: the parishioner Samuel Pepys. If ghosts really exist, then the spirit of this colourful Restoration figure surely blesses the church with his presence.

Pepys lived and worked for the Admiralty, and he lived in Seething Lane. The site of his home is now a small garden adorned with a bust of the Diarist. He would dutifully visit the church on Sundays, strolling with other Admiralty staff up the steps that led to the Gallery on the south wall. The sermons did not always please him, he is honest enough in his Diaries to admit that he sometimes slept soundly through them.

Although he also admitted impure thoughts about his maid, and had an affair with his wife's best friend, there is little doubt that he thought the world of his spouse Elizabeth. She died in 1669 at a sadly young age, but Samuel ensured that her memory would continue. After her burial in a vault below the altar, he commissioned the sculptor John Bushnell - who was known for carving figures in animated poses, for example in conversation - to carve a bust which now adorns the wall high over the Sanctuary. Pepys died in 1703 and was also interred below the altar.

And this is what I mean by intimacy. Why is the bust set so high? Stand against the south wall of the church. Directly above your head is a memorial to the Diarist, set where the Admiralty pews were once fixed. This is where Pepys would have sat.

And now see what he would have seen. Every Sunday, when he sat in that pew, he would have been able to gaze across the church straight into the eyes of his much-mourned Elizabeth. When I first noticed this, I smiled to realise that such affection could still be traced after three centuries, and I could almost feel the ghost of Samuel Pepys standing at my shoulder and saying, "Yes, I know, I'm a sentimental fool!"

But it won't be Pepys I finish with, it'll be Dickens, and his own amusing anecdote:
"I once felt drawn to it in a thunderstorm at midnight. 'Why not?' I said, in self-excuse, ' I have been to the Colosseum by the light of the moon; is it worse to go and see St Ghastly Grim by the light of lightning?' I repaired to the Saint in a hackney cab and found the skulls most effective, having the air of a public execution and seeming, as the lightning flashed, to wink and grin with the pain of the spikes. Having no other person to whom to impart my satisfaction I communicated it to the driver. So far from being responsive, he surveyed me - he was naturally a bottle-nosed, red-faced man - with a blanched countenance. And as he drove me back, he ever and again glanced in over his shoulder through the little front window of his carriage, as mistrusting that I was a fare originally from a grave, in the churchyard of St Ghastly Grim, who might have flitted home again without paying."

Ghastly Grim