St Bartholomew-the-Great: A Medieval Augustinian Priory Church in London
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.8
- Popularity
- Low
- Country
- United Kingdom
- Primary era
- Medieval
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Medieval, Early Modern, Modern
- Civilizations
- British, English, Norman
- Site type
- Religious
- Remains
- Church
On this page18 sections
History
St Bartholomew-the-Great is a medieval Anglican priory church in London, United Kingdom, founded in 1123 as an Augustinian priory in the Norman period. It was established by Rahere, a prebendary of St Paul’s Cathedral and an Augustinian canon regular, and dedicated to Bartholomew the Apostle. The priory was founded alongside St Bartholomew’s Hospital, making the church part of a religious and charitable foundation that continued to shape the history of Smithfield.
Foundation and medieval religious life
Two traditions explain Rahere’s decision to establish the priory. One says that he received a heavenly command after dreaming of a winged beast carrying him to a high place. The other links the foundation to his recovery from fevers contracted during a pilgrimage to Rome, followed by visions of St Bartholomew. The site was then a small cemetery on royal land. After hearing of Rahere’s vision, Henry I granted the land to him.
Augustinian canons regular were clergy who lived communally under the Rule of St Augustine. Their priory therefore functioned both as a religious house and as a community governed by a prior. Construction involved servants and children who gathered stone from across London. The church became associated with curative powers and miraculous healings, particularly on St Bartholomew’s Day, 24 August, while many sick people were treated at the adjoining hospital.
The church was distinguished from nearby St Bartholomew-the-Less, which had been founded at the same time as a hospital church. The two parishes were united in 2012, and on 1 June 2015 they were formally replaced by the united benefice of Great St Bartholomew. St Bartholomew-the-Great became the parish church, while St Bartholomew-the-Less became a chapel of ease.
Dissolution and religious change
Robert Fuller, who was also Abbot of Waltham Holy Cross, was the priory’s last prior. During the Dissolution of the Monasteries, the programme through which Henry VIII’s government suppressed England’s monasteries and transferred or sold their property, roughly half of the priory church was stripped for building material and demolished in 1543. The nave was removed as far as the last bay, while the crossing arches and choir largely survived, allowing the remaining church to continue as a parish church.
In December 1546, the priory buildings to the south and east were granted to the newly founded and royally endowed St Bartholomew’s Hospital. The church and parts of the former priory complex then acquired changing uses. Queen Mary I refounded the church in 1556 as London’s third Dominican friary, or Blackfriars, but the friary closed in 1559.
St Bartholomew-the-Great survived the Great Fire of London in 1666, the urban fire that destroyed much of the City, but later fell into disrepair. During the eighteenth century, parts of the former priory complex were occupied by squatters. The Lady Chapel was divided into workshops and houses, and the north transept was first used as a blacksmith’s forge before also being occupied by squatters.
Later uses and restoration
In the early 1720s, Benjamin Franklin worked for a year as a journeyman printer in the Lady Chapel, which was then being used commercially. He had taken employment in a nearby printing shop after the suggestion of Sir William Keith, Governor of Pennsylvania. The church’s later history also includes a continuing tradition of public disputation. From 1133, an annual debate associated with the opening of Bartholomew Fair was held there. It began as a theological discussion, later included political subjects, ended with the fair in 1855, and was revived in 2023 as part of renewed Bartholomew Fair traditions.
New parish schoolrooms, basement rooms for a youth club, and a soup kitchen were built on part of the former burial grounds in 1888. The work was partly funded by Rector Sir Borradaile Savory, and the foundation stone was laid on 5 July 1888 by the Duchess of Albany. From 1889, extensive restoration was directed by Sir Aston Webb. Further work during the 1920s took place under the rectorship of Edwin Sidney Savage and cost more than £60,000. The church was among the few City churches to escape major damage during the Blitz of the 1940s, Germany’s sustained bombing campaign against Britain during the Second World War.
St Bartholomew-the-Great became a Grade I listed building on 4 January 1950, a designation recognising exceptional historic and architectural interest. It served as the chapel of the Imperial Society of Knights Bachelor until that organisation established a permanent chapel in St Paul’s Cathedral in 2005. The church is also an adopted guild church for several City livery companies, including the Butchers, Founders, Haberdashers, Fletchers, Farriers, Farmers, Information Technologists, Hackney Carriage Drivers, Tax Advisers, and Public Relations Practitioners.
Religious and cultural traditions
The church remains Anglican and Anglo-Catholic. Its professional Priory Church Choir and amateur Rahere Singers provide music for services. A Good Friday charitable distribution continues a custom founded by a bequest of twenty-one sixpences placed on a woman’s gravestone to provide annual payments to twenty-one widows. Hot cross buns are now distributed to widows and others.
St Bartholomew-the-Great was the setting for the wartime marriage of the 11th Duke of Devonshire and Deborah Mitford in 1941. William Hogarth was baptised there in 1697, and W. G. Grace belonged to the congregation. A memorial service held in 2005 commemorated Sir William Wallace on the seven-hundredth anniversary of his execution in nearby Smithfield. A local tradition also tells that Rahere’s ghost appeared during nineteenth-century repair work after his tomb was opened and a sandal removed. The apparition is said to emerge from the vestry at 7 a.m. on 1 July.
Remains
The surviving church is a truncated medieval structure whose principal fabric is Norman, with later medieval Gothic additions. The demolished nave once extended westward, while the crossing, choir, and presbytery preserve major elements of the earlier church. The west entrance combines fragmentary medieval remains with a late-sixteenth-century half-timbered Tudor frontage built over a thirteenth-century stone archway. The path to the west door broadly follows the line of the demolished south aisle, and part of the former nave area is now open space and parish burial ground.
Church structure and medieval features
Crossing, choir, and presbytery
The crossing arches, choir, and presbytery form the core of the surviving medieval church. Their predominantly Norman construction belongs to the Romanesque style that developed in England after the Norman Conquest, with substantial masonry and rounded arches. Later Gothic work altered parts of the building, including elements associated with the Decorated and Perpendicular styles, which respectively favoured elaborate tracery and more vertical, rectilinear designs.
Lady Chapel
The Lady Chapel extends east of the choir and was newly built in 1336. Beneath it lie the remains of the original medieval crypt. After the Dissolution, the chapel was subdivided into workshops and houses. The parish reacquired it in the late nineteenth century, and Aston Webb restored it to an appearance close to its medieval form. Much of its original stonework survives.
Rahere Monument
Immediately north of the high altar stands the Rahere Monument. It combines Decorated and Perpendicular Gothic forms, with a painted effigy placed on a tomb beneath an elaborate canopy. The monument was made about 250 years after Rahere’s death in 1144, so its tomb may contain his remains, or it may commemorate him without serving as his burial place.
Prior Bolton’s oriel window
An oriel window, a projecting upper-level window supported from the wall, was installed beside the prior’s lodgings in the early sixteenth century by Prior William Bolton. It was allegedly intended to let him watch the monks. Its central panel contains a rebus, or visual word puzzle, showing a crossbow bolt passing through a tun, or barrel, as a reference to Bolton’s name.
Tower, transepts, and restoration fabric
South-west clock tower
A brick clock tower occupies the south-west corner of the truncated church. Built in 1628, it has a small timber cupola, a dome-like structure crowning a tower or roof. The tower houses an earlier ring of pre-Reformation bells cast between 1500 and 1514.
Transepts
The nineteenth-century restoration included surviving fragments of the south transept and a new flint-faced north transept. The new transept helped stabilise the crossing and concealed the scars left at the west end when the nave was demolished. The restored south transept was rededicated by Frederick Temple, Bishop of London, on 14 March 1891. A further transept ceremony took place in February 1893 in the presence of the Prince of Wales, Alexandra of Denmark, Edward White Benson, Archbishop of Canterbury, and other dignitaries.
Organ
The church’s organ history began with an instrument installed by John Knopple in 1715. Richard Bridge built its replacement in 1731. In 1886, an organ formerly at St Stephen Walbrook was installed by William Hill. Henry Speechly and Son modified it in 1931, N. P. Mander altered it in 1957, and Peter Wells worked on it in 1982 and 1983. The instrument is now considered unplayable, and services use a Viscount digital organ while a replacement is awaited.
Former priory enclosure and churchyard
Cloister
Very little of the monastic buildings survives above ground. Three bays of the approximately fifteenth-century cloister were restored during the 1920s. Five replica bays were then added using surviving medieval footings, creating a war memorial. In 2019, redevelopment of adjoining buildings recreated the approximate footprint of the cloister quadrangle as a grassed area.
Churchyard
The approximate extent of the former monastic enclosure is defined by modern Bartholomew Close and Cloth Fair. The principal surviving area of the churchyard is a raised garden on Cloth Fair, laid out in 1885 by Fanny Wilkinson, the landscape gardener for the Metropolitan Public Gardens Association.
