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‘The Rector presents his compliments’: Worship, Fabric, and Furnishings of the Priory Church of St Bartholomew the Great, Smithfield, 1828-1938
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 March 2016
Extract
For nearly 900 years the Priory Church of St Bartholomew the Great has functioned as an expression of wider religious moods, movements, and aspirations. Founded in 1123 by Rahere, a courtier of Henry I, at a time when the Augustinian Canons gained a brief ascendancy over older forms of religious life, it represents the last flowering of English Romanesque architecture. The Priory was dissolved by Henry VIII, became a house of Dominicans under Mary, and saw the flames that consumed the Smithfield martyrs. Since Elizabeth’s reign it has been a parish church serving a small and poor but populous area within the City of London but outside the walls. Its history is fairly well documented. Richard Rich lived in the former Lady Chapel. Walter Mildmay worshipped, and was buried, there. John Wesley preached there. Hogarth was baptized there. Parts of the church had been turned over to secular use. There was a blacksmith’s forge in the north transept beyond the bricked-up arch of the crossing and the smoke from the forge often filled the building. A school occupied the north triforium gallery. The Lady Chapel was further divided, and early in the eighteenth century Samuel Palmer, a printer, had his letter foundry there. The young Benjamin Franklin worked there for a year in 172 s and recorded the experience in his autobiography. The church, surrounded by houses, taverns, schools, chapels, stables, and warehouses, was a shadow of its medieval glory; but between 1828 and 1897 it changed internally and externally almost beyond recognition. The process of change continued over the next forty years and indeed continues still. These changes in architecture and furnishings were closely linked to a changed attitude to medieval buildings, to issues of churchmanship, and to liturgical developments.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Studies in Church History , Volume 35: Continuity and Change in Christian Worship , 1999 , pp. 320 - 332
- Copyright
- Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1999
References
1 A medieval account of the foundation is given in BL, MS Cotton Vespasian B. IX.
2 The primary printed source is Webb, E. A., The Records of St Bartholomew’s Priory and of the Church and Parish of St Bartholomew the Great, 2 vols (Oxford, 1921) [hereafter Webb].Google Scholar
3 Webb, 2, p. 376, quoting Vestry Minute Book 4, p. 625. He gives two dates for the letter - 8 and 18 February.
4 Ibid., 2, p. 376.
5 A similar pair survive in St George’s, Portland (Dorset); photograph in Yates, Nigel, Buildings, Faith, and Worship: the Liturgical Arrangement of Anglican Churches 1600-1900 (Oxford, 1991), pl. 18.Google Scholar
6 Webb, 2, p. 20.
7 The information here is drawn from a collection of leaflets and cuttings assembled by the churchwarden, E. A. Webb, now in London, Guildhall Library, MS 14,375/1.
8 Webb, Aston, Report on the Proposed Restoration (London, 1886), pp. 1–4.Google Scholar
9 Webb, 2, p. 411.
10 The original altar, possibly late sixteenth- or early scvcntccnth-ccntury, is now in the north transept Chapel of Sacrifice. Ibid., 2, p. 52.
11 Cutting in Webb’s scrapbook, London, Guildhall Library, MS 14,375/1.
12 Phillips, F. P., A Sermon preached in the Priory Church of S. Bartholomew Smithfield, on 8th fune, 1889, the second Anniversary of the death of the late Rector, The Rev. W. Panckridge, M. A. (Guildford, 1889), p. 8.Google Scholar
13 Ibid., p. 9.
14 Ibid., p. 14.
15 Ibid., p. 15.
16 Webb, 2, p. 49.
17 Printed ibid., 2, pp. 505-6.
18 Ibid., 2, pp. 22, 421, with reasons for omitting a canopy.
19 Ibid., 2, p. 419.
20 Bell, G. K. A., Randall Davidson, Archbishop of Canterbury, 2nd edn (London, 1938), ch. 25.Google Scholar
21 Abbreviated text in Webb, 2, pp. 505-7; full text in a bound volume in the cburcb safe.
22 Minutes of the Evidence taken before the Royal Commission on Ecclesiastical Discipline, in Parliamentary Papers (London, 1906), p. 33.
23 Letter of 20 November 1904: ibid.
24 The Service Registers replace Preachers’ Books in 1884; that for 1887-92 is missing.
25 Clarke, Henry, The City Churches (London, 1898), p. 129.Google Scholar
26 Ibid., p. 129.
27 London, Lambeth Palace Library, Fulham Papers, Creighton 1/28.
28 Press cutting in E. A. Webb’s scrapbook, London, Guildhall Library, MS 14,375/1.
29 They were largely the work of the silversmith Samuel Coles: Omar Ramsden 1873-1939, Catalogue of the Centenary Exhibition of Silver at the Birmingham City Museum and Art Gallery (Birmingham, 1973).
30 Report in The Churchman, published by the Protestent Truth Society, Dec. 1917.
31 Webb, 2, pp. 82-3.
32 Webb, 2, p. 85.