BY J. TAVENOR-PERRY

Anyone now visiting the Church of St. Bartholomew the Great, after a lapse of fifty years, would scarcely recognize in the present stately building the woe-begone and neglected place of his recollections. In the apse and the transepts, in the lofty screen to the west of the stalls, suggesting a hidden nave beyond, and in the glimpses of the Lady Chapel across the eastern ambulatory, he would see the completed choir of some collegiate church, of which the principal architectural features suggested an ancient foundation. It is true that, in the church of fifty years ago, the Norman details were still very distinct, though the round arches of the arcades had been parodied by the Georgian windows of the east end, and by the plastered romanesque reredos; but gloom and darkness overspread the whole place, encroachments of the most incongruous kinds had invaded the most sacred portions, and to the casual observer it seemed impossible that the church could ever be rescued from the ruin with which it was threatened, or reclaimed from the squalor by which it was surrounded.

To understand the difficulties which lay before the restorers, who, in 1863, commenced the task of saving the building from annihilation, and to properly appreciate what they have achieved, as well as what they only aimed at accomplishing, it is necessary to give some account of the state of the fabric in that year, and, without repeating at undue length the oft-told tale of its foundation, to give a history of the church during the eight hundred years of its existence.

The founder, both of the priory and of the hospital, was one Rahere, of whom but little is certainly known. Some assume that he was that same Rahere who assisted Hereward in his stand against the Norman invaders of the Cambridgeshire fens, but if so, this did not prevent him, later on, from attaching himself to the court of the Conqueror’s son. He is generally described as having been jester to Henry I., and it has been assumed that the nature of his engagement involved a course of life calling for repentance and a pilgrimage. But whatever the reason may have been, he apparently went to Rome in 1120, though the journey at that particular juncture was a very unsafe proceeding. He may, perhaps, have joined himself to the train of Pope Calixtus II., who had just been elected at Cluny, in succession to the fugitive Gelasius II., and who made his journey to Rome in the spring of that year. If so, he arrived in Rome at the very worst season, and like many others who visit the city in the summer, he contracted the usual fever. During his illness, or after his recovery, St. Bartholomew appeared to him in a vision, and directed him, on his return to London, to found a church in his honour, outside the walls, at a place called Smithfield. Although visions and their causes are not always explicable, the association of St. Bartholomew with this dream of Rahere’s may, perhaps, be accounted for. The church of S. Bartolommeo all’Isola had been built, a century before Rahere’s visit, within the ruined walls of the Temple of AEsculapius, on the island of the Tiber, and Saint had succeeded, in some measure, to the traditional healing-power of the God. In classic times, those who flocked to the shrine generally stayed there for one or two nights, when the healer appeared to them in a vision, and gave them directions for their cure. So, in mediaeval times, his successor and supplanter followed the same course, but provided cures for the soul rather than for the body.

Rahere can have lost but little time in hastening home and obtaining from the King a grant of the prescribed land, for we find that within three years of his visit to Rome the church of his new convent was sufficiently advanced for consecration, and presumably the convent itself was ready for occupation. The new priory was designed for the reception of Canons Regular of the Order of St. Augustine, and the reason for the founder’s adoption of this Order, apart from the fact that it was somewhat fashionable at this period, may have been partly because his former occupation had particularly fitted him for public speaking, and partly because two, at least, of the men with whom he had been closely associated at Henry’s court were themselves members of this order. And it is necessary to bear these facts in mind in considering the never-to-be-determined question of whether the apse of St. Bartholomew’s was ever completed by Rahere.

These two friends of the founder’s were Richard de Belmeis, Bishop of London, and William de Corbeil, or Corboyle, Archbishop of Canterbury, and they were not only themselves Austin Canons, but were actively engaged in spreading the influence of that order. The Bishop had then recently built the Priory of St. Osyth, in Essex, of which the Archbishop, who had previously been connected with the Priory of Merton, had been the first prior. Moreover, Corbeil, soon after he had received the pallium, obtained permission to suppress the monastery of St. Martin-lé-Grand for monasteries were suppressed in the reign of the first Henry, as well as in the reign of the last and devote its revenues to building a new priory for Austin Canons, outside the walls of Dover. This priory, known as St. Martin New-work, of which considerable portions remain to this day, presents what may be regarded as a model plan of a church of this order, and consisted of a small square-ended choir, shallow transepts, and a large nave with aisles. From this it is evident that Rahere’s building differed most essentially from the recognized type, and the question is, did his friends point out to him his deviation from the almost invariable rule of the Austin Canons to give their churches a square east end in time to enable him to modify his design, or were they able to induce him, after he had completed his apse, to remove the two easternmost piers, and to insert in place of them a square-ended chapel? But to this question no answer has ever been discovered.

At the death of Rahere, in 1143, but a small part of his great scheme had been achieved, of the existing church perhaps no more than the choir to the top of the triforium and the choir aisles; but judging from fragments discovered from time to time, such as the capital to a nook shaft, which clearly belong to this period, he had completed other works which have now been destroyed. Perhaps during his life-time the conventual buildings, as was the case at Merton, were mainly of wood, and of a merely temporary character; but it may be assumed that these, together with the cloisters, had been built when the great arch, which formed the entrance to the priory, was completed about the middle of the thirteenth century. The work to the choir and transepts went on gradually, no doubt, without any alteration of design, or only such modifications in the details as resulted from the changes in progress in the style, until their completion, and it is likely that the end of the twelfth century saw the conclusion of that section of the work. The fragment is a fair example of this transitional style. In the building of the nave, which was a very important part of the church with the Austin Canons, who sought by their preaching to attract large congregations, some fresh departure in the design was made. Evidence of this can be seen in the east bay of the south side, where an Early English clustered-shaft, with the springing of some groining, standing clear of the older Norman pier, gives an idea of the character of the work of the now destroyed nave. With this building, which was apparently achieved before the close of the thirteenth century, we may regard the priory as finished, having taken over a hundred and fifty years to accomplish.

After a lapse of two hundred years, it is not unlikely that the building had fallen somewhat into a state of dilapidation and for that reason, as well, perhaps, from a desire for improvement and display, large works of alteration and rebuilding were undertaken at the beginning of the fifteenth century. Prior John Walford, of whom little is known, except that he was summoned to a convocation at Oxford in 1407, is credited with the work, which embraced the new east wall to the choir, and perhaps a reredos, the Lady Chapel and chapels, on the north side of the north ambulatory, and the rebuilding of the east walk of the cloisters with rooms above. But although Prior John may have been the agent for carrying out all these works, the initiative was probably due to Roger de Walden, afterwards Bishop of London. This man, who had a most remarkable career, was in some way closely associated with St. Bartholomew’s, for his stepmother resided in its vicinity, and he had a brother John, a man of considerable wealth, who is described as an esquire of St. Bartholomew, Smithfield. During the reign of Richard II., Roger de Walden held high and lucrative ecclesiastical appointments, and in 1395 became Dean of York and Treasurer of England, and when Archbishop Arundel was banished from the realm in 1397 for his share in the conspiracy of his brother, Roger was advanced to the See of Canterbury. After the downfall of Richard, Arundel returned to England, and Roger was ousted from his seat; but strange though it may appear, the Archbishop bore him so little ill-will for his usurpation that he induced Henry IV., though with some difficulty, to agree to his nomination to the Bishopric of London at the next voidance of the See. As Bishop of London, he died in 1406, and though he lay in state in his chantry chapel at St. Bartholomew’s, it is believed that he was actually buried in St. Paul’s Cathedral.

It was during his years of prosperity, and before he had anticipated the honours to which he afterwards succeeded, that he built his chantry chapel in the church with which his early youth was doubtless associated, and tradition, to some extent supported by both architectural and heraldic evidence, has identified the screen in which Rahere’s monument is encased as a portion of that chapel. The beautiful canopies and tracery, the character of the carving of the effigy and its attendant figures, and the arms of England emblazoned on one of the shields, all point to a date supporting the tradition, whilst the arms, which seem undoubtedly to be Walden’s, displayed on the fourth shield make it improbable that the work can be assigned to any other person.

Of the building carried out at this time, except the screen of the chantry chapel and some portions of the restored cloister, but little remains, and all the evidences which might have enabled us to determine how far the east wall was a restoration, or an entirely new work, were swept away when the apse was rebuilt. That this east wall was not merely a reredos is shown by the fact that the upper part rose clear of the aisles, and was pierced by two large traceried windows in the same position as the Georgian windows which lighted the church in the last century, and it is quite possible that it was only a restoration of an earlier wall, which had been built across the apse so as to make it conform to the Austin Canon rule. The screen of the chantry chapel, the two eastern bays of which have been destroyed, may have been continued across the east wall, and formed the reredos itself, but all traces of this were effaced in subsequent alterations.

One alteration was made in the choir which very much affected the proportions of the building between the date of its first building and the erection of Rahere’s monument. Perhaps because the ground outside the church had become raised by the building operations, which had gone on around it, and the drainage of the interior had become defective, or for some other reason, the floor over all the eastern part was filled in for a depth of nearly three feet, dwarfing considerably the Norman arcades, and burying the bases of the columns; and it was upon this altered level the screen of Bishop Roger de Walden’s chantry was built.

Having undergone such extensive repairs the priory received no further alterations until, after another hundred years, William Bolton became prior in 1506. It has been asserted, on what seem very insufficient grounds, that Bolton was the architect of Henry VII.’s Chapel at Westminster; but although this is very improbable, he was associated with those who were engaged on the work, and seems himself to have been disposed to architectural display. He has been credited with very large alterations to the conventual buildings, and the erection of a tower over the crossing; but nearly all traces of his work have disappeared, except a doorway in the south aisle, and the beautiful window in the triforium, overlooking the choir, which is always, known as “Prior Bolton’s window,” and is distinguished by his rebus, a bolt in a tun, in the centre lower panel, as is shown in the illustration.

Bolton’s successor, Robert Fuller, was the last of the priors, and with him is ushered in the era of dissolution and decay, when

“The ire of a despotic King
Rides forth upon destruction’s wing.”

The priory was suppressed, and the great nave was deliberately pulled down. But, except that so much of the cloister as adjoined the nave was destroyed with it, no further demolitions took place at that time, and it was only gradually that the conventual buildings, some of which lasted to our own day, were removed. The choir and transepts were preserved to form a parish church, and the area of the destroyed nave became the churchyard. The rest of the buildings were sold by the King to Sir Richard Rich, for the sum of L1,064 11d., not a large sum considering the area of the site and the extent of the buildings, which included, among others, the prior’s lodgings, styled “the Mansion,” which had housed so great a man as Prior Bolton.

In Queen Mary’s reign the Church resumed possession of the conventual buildings, and they were occupied by the Black Friars, who, it is said, made some attempt to rebuild the nave; but beyond some slight works to be seen in the east cloister, they left no traces of their occupation behind, the sole relic remaining of them being the seal of their head, Father Perryn, the matrix of which has already come into the possession of the church authorities.

With the death of Mary the friars retired, and the choir became, once more, the parish church, and for the next century neglect and decay continued the ruin of the fabric. But with the advent of Laud to the See of London, some attempts were made at reparation. It is said that the steeple had become so ruinous that it had to be taken down, and in 1628 the present brick tower, which stands over what was the easternmost bay of the south aisle of the nave, was erected. Where the ruined steeple stood is not clear, but most probably over the crossing, and as towers were unimportant features in the churches of the Austin Canons, it is likely that it rose but little above the roofs. Another and remarkable erection of this period was the charnel-house at the east end, known as “Purgatory,” which was constructed with some attempt to give it a Gothic appearance, and was attached to the reredos wall.

During the great Georgian period considerable work was done to the church, not without some attempt at architectural improvements, unappreciated, however, at a later date. The choir appears to have been re-roofed, the old timbers being partly re-used, but shortened by cutting off the rotten ends, with the result that the pitch of the roof was considerably lowered. To this or to their own decay may be due the destruction of the two great traceried windows at the east end, which were replaced by two wide semi-circular headed windows, which their designers, perhaps, fondly imagined to accord better with the Norman arcades below. Whether the reredos screen had already been destroyed or defaced is uncertain, or whether, as at Southwark, they were content with hacking off the projecting canopies cannot now be determined, but in place of it was erected a vast wooden structure, picturesque from its very ugliness, more suited to the classic taste of the Georgian era. At this time, no doubt, the church was re-pewed, and the great pulpit, with its sounding-board, set up on the north side of the choir.

Among the conventual buildings which had survived to this time, and remained in occupation, was the chapter house, which, with nearly all traces of its antiquity destroyed, and with a gallery erected across its west end, had been converted into a meeting-house for dissenters, the old slype having been made into a vestry. The access to it appears to have been the ancient one through the east cloister, which was also standing perfect at that time. It does not appear to have belonged to any particular sect, but was always known as St. Bartholomew’s Chapel, and among those who preached in it was John Wesley, who also occasionally preached and celebrated weddings in the church itself.

In 1830 occurred a great fire, which destroyed this chapel, together with all the upper part of the east cloister, and the greater part of the south transept. Whether the great dormitory, which extended southwards from the transepts, or any part of it, had been left standing seems uncertain, but if so, this fire must have destroyed it. The fine undercroft of the dormitory, which consisted of two vaulted aisles of the Transitional period, remained perfect, and was standing as recently as 1870, when it was ruthlessly, and, apparently, unnecessarily, destroyed to make room for some parochial offices.

Shortly before this fire happened, some small, and not very fortunate, attempt at a restoration was made within the church, which resulted in more loss than gain, as it entailed the complete destruction of any remains of the ancient altar-screen which might have survived the previous alterations. The Georgian reredos which had taken its place was removed, and the east wall was plastered over and ornamented with a blank arcade in cement, which its architect doubtless thought agreed with the Norman features of the church. The Georgian pulpit was removed, and a symmetrical arrangement of two was substituted, recalling the Gospel and Epistle ambones of an ancient Italian church, but lacking their beauty.

The task which the restorers then set themselves to accomplish, and in which they have been eminently successful, seemed at the time well-nigh hopeless. All the conventual buildings, and everything outside the actual walls of the church had been alienated, and, to a great extent, destroyed, and of the church itself but a battered torso remained. The nave had been destroyed at the Dissolution, and its site had become the parish churchyard; the south transept had perished in the fire of 1830, and its unroofed area had also become a burying-ground; whilst the north transept had been gradually encroached upon, no one knew how, and a large part of it was then used as a forge. The desecration of the east end was almost worse. The great Lady Chapel, which had been rebuilt in the fourteenth century, and which had formed part of the assignment to Sir Richard Rich, had been for long employed for trade purposes, being at one time the printing shop in which Benjamin Franklin had worked, and was, in 1863, a factory for fringe. This factory had gradually extended, on the upper floor, over the eastern ambulatory, up to the back of the reredos wall and over the south aisle, so that it was lighted, in part, through Prior Bolton’s window from the church itself. The north triforium was the parish school, which, with its noises, interfered with the services of the church, and, with the roughness of its occupants, endangered the safety of the groining below, and of the north wall which then leaned dangerously from the upright. The whole area of the church, which had been raised in the fifteenth century, was filled with graves, many of which were dug below the very foundations of the piers; moisture oozed over the grave-stones and darkness overspread the walls, so that it struck a chill into all who entered it. It was a by-word and a desolation.

In draining the area of the church, in rebuilding the decayed piers, and in bringing up the north wall to the perpendicular, the restorers effected great and substantial improvements, but in lowering the floor to its original Norman level, and in rebuilding the apse as they believed it was first planned, they embarked on extensive operations which were by some regarded not only as unessential, but as going beyond legitimate restoration; in fact, as was pointed out by more than one, it was not unlike an attempt to restore the nave of Winchester Cathedral by clearing out first all the work of William of Wykeham. There was much to be said in favour of lowering the floor, but the building of the apse was open to considerable question, and there is but little doubt that had the restorers commenced the destruction of the east wall at the top, instead of at the bottom, and so discovered the ruins of the great traceried windows, they would have paused in their scheme; but the position of the fringe factory prevented this, and it was only many years after the ambulatory arcade of the apse had been completed that this discovery was made. The question of whether there ought to have been an apse according to Austin Canon rule was not properly considered, but when it was found, after the walls of Purgatory had been removed, that there were no traces of any foundations to the missing central piers, some doubt as to the correctness of the course they were following was necessarily suggested. It was then, however, thought to be too late to alter the plans, the most important part of the east wall having then been destroyed, and the result is that we now have a Norman apse of uncertain authority, crowned with a lofty traceried clerestory, which, though a clever architectural composition, is only a modern makeshift. In place of this, had the fifteenth century east wall been preserved, we should have had in the upper part the two great windows, much of the tracery of which still remains, and beneath them the reredos might have been renewed. In this case the eastern portion of Roger de Walden’s screen, with its doorway, would have been saved, and Sir Walter Mildmay’s picturesque monument been left intact, making altogether a more beautiful sacrarium, and a much more truthful representation of what had once been, than the doubtful restoration of the rude Norman apse.

In succeeding years the work of restoration went on slowly, but much was achieved. The great schemes of the earlier restorers were wisely reviewed, and reasonable limitations acknowledged. All idea of rebuilding the nave was abandoned, and the rude brick wall which had been built to the west end of the choir was refaced in a seemly but permanent manner. The south transept was rebuilt over a portion only of its former area, and, with the north transept, finished in an appropriate manner which does not pretend to be a literal restoration. In the Lady Chapel, when it was rescued from the fringe factory, much of the old work in the windows was found intact, and a complete restoration had been possible. The continuous work of the last forty years has been crowned with success, and, although portions are evidently modern in design and execution, the choir of St. Bartholomew’s Priory Church has been preserved for future generations as an example of the earliest and most important ecclesiastical buildings of London.