London Notes
St Bart's & St Bart's
The church proved difficult to photograph with my little pocket camera and the result is that the church looks somewhat gloomier in these photos than it does in 'real life'.
The grounds are entered through the curious little passageway shown on the left. The view from outside does not prepare you for what you are about to find: a walkway beside a small lawn surrounding an old tree, a gravestone, and large stone tomb cover. Illegible mossy gravestones lean against the walls of the surrounding buildings. As you enter the church itself, heavy Romanesque pillars and rounded Romanesque/Norman arches take you back in time and have you imagining the sounds they must have echoed over the centuries.
The church has been used in several films (Four Weddings and a Funeral, Shakespeare in Love, The End of the Affair, Amazing Grace, Elizabeth: The Golden Age, and The Other Boleyn Girl) and television programs (Madame Bovary, The Real Sherlock Holmes, Spooks, and The League of Gentlemen Christmas Special) so you might want to have a look at those productions for an alternate view :-)
Looking toward the Apse.
The tomb of Prior Rahere, founder and first Canon of the church.
Crucifix with Memorial poppies at the side of the main gateway of the church.
St. Bart's, founded along with the Priory in 1143.
Some of the names associated with St. Bart's: William Harvey, discoverer of the circulation of blood, Elizabeth Blackwell, the first woman doctor in the British Isles studied here. And Mozart had his tonsils out in the 1770s!.
St. Bartholomew's Hospital was founded by Prior Rahere, a courtier of Henry I. He became sick on a pilgrimage to Rome, had a vision of St Bartholomew, and was inspired to found a priory and a hospital for the sick poor at Smithfield in London.
Henry VIII re-founded St Bartholomew's Hospital in 1546 after the Dissolution of the Monasteries had failed to close its doors and the City pleaded for help with all the 'myserable people lyeing in the streets, offendyng every clene person passing by the way with theyre fylthie and nastye savors'.