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!