Medieval Priory in centre with
Sir Robert Chamberlayne's
monument (1615) on the left wall, opposite a
memorial tablet to
Alderman Sir John Percival and Agnes Smallpace The church was founded in 1123 by
Rahere, a
prebendary of
St Paul's Cathedral and an
Augustinian canon regular. While at
the Vatican, Rahere dreamed that a winged beast came and transported him to a high place, then relayed a message from "the High Trinity and...the court of Heaven" that he was to erect a church in London's Smithfield. Rahere travelled to
London and was informed that the area in his vision – then a small cemetery – was royal property, and could not be built upon.
Henry I, however, granted title of the land to Rahere upon hearing his divine message. While many of the Priory's buildings survived the
Dissolution of the Monasteries, about half of the priory's church was ransacked for building materials then demolished in 1543.. The
nave was pulled down up to the last
bay although the lofty
crossing arches and
choir survive largely intact from the
Norman and later Middle Ages, enabling the surviving parts to be converted from priory for use as a parish church. The dissolved Priory's buildings to the South and East were granted in December 1546 to a newly founded and royaly endowed
St Bartholomew's Hospital which continues to the present day the care for the sick initiated by the medieval Priory.
Later history The church and some of the priory buildings were briefly used as the third
Dominican friary (Black Friars) of London, refounded by Queen
Mary I of England in 1556 and closed in 1559. Having escaped the
Great Fire of London of 1666, the surviving parts of the church fell into disrepair. Fragmentary remains of the West entrance to the church remain on West Smithfield, recognisable by its half-timbered, late 16th-century,
Tudor frontage built on top of the 13th-century stone archway. This adaptation may have been carried out by the Dominican friars in the 1550s,
Lord Rich, Lord Chancellor of England (1547–51).. From this
gatehouse to the
west door of the church, the modern entrance path leads roughly along the alignment of the demolished south
aisle. In the early 1720s, at the suggestion of
Governor of Pennsylvania Sir William Keith Bt, the American polymath and patriot
Benjamin Franklin worked as a typesetter in a printer's shop in what is now the Church of St Bartholomew-the-Great., looking east towards the
Sanctuary and
Lady chapel The
Lady chapel at the east end had been previously used for commercial purposes and it was there that Benjamin Franklin worked for a year as a
journeyman printer. The north
transept of the present church was formerly used as a blacksmith's forge, then occupied by squatters in the 18th century. In 1888, new parish school rooms, with basement rooms for youth clubs and a soup kitchen, were built on part of the former burial grounds. The works were funded by in part by the Rector,
the Revd Sir Borradaile Savory. The foundation stone was laid on 5 July 1888 by the
Duchess of Albany.
Restoration From 1889, the church was extensively restored under the direction of architect
Sir Aston Webb. This saw the restoration of the Lady Chapel and surviving fragments of the south transept and the construction of a new flint-faced north transept, both to stabilise the structure of the crossing and to hide the scars at the West end where the demolished nave had once connected. The south transept was re-dedicated by
Frederick Temple,
Bishop of London, on 14 March 1891; and the south transept in February 1893 in the presence of the
Albert Edward, Prince of Wales,
Alexandra of Denmark (Princess of Wales),
Edward White Benson (
Archbishop of Canterbury) and other dignitaries. During
Canon Edwin Savage's tenure as
rector in the 1920s, the church was further restored at the cost of more than £60,000.. The Priory Church was one of the few City churches to escape major damage during
the Blitz of the 1940s. Charitable distributions in the
churchyard on
Good Friday continue a tradition established when twenty-one
sixpences were placed upon the gravestone of a woman stipulating that the bequest fund an annual distribution to twenty one widows in perpetuity,.
Hot cross buns are nowadays given not only to widows but others. The Priory Church was designated a
Grade I listed building on 4 January 1950. In April 2007 it became the first Anglican parish church to charge an entrance fee to tourists not attending a
worship, an experiment that was discontinued. The church is open free of charge daily except during events and services.
United Benefice For a few years the
rector of St Batholomew the Great church was simultaneously
priest-in-charge of the nearby
St Bartholomew the Less. On 1 June 2015 the two parishes were dissolved and replaced with the new united
benefice of Great St Bartholomew. The Rector of the former parish of St Bartholomew the Great became Rector of the united benefice and the parish boundary follows those of the two former parishes. A single
Parochial Church Council and
churchwardens are responsible for both churches. The parish church is St Bartholomew the Great, and St Bartholomew the Less is a
chapel of ease within the
parish. The latter sits within the curtilage of
St Bartholomew's Hospital and now participates in an eucumenical and inter-faith chaplaincy to the patients and staff at the Hospital. == Features==