Bloomsbury (London, England) -- Description and travel; Holborn (London, England) -- Description and travel
The most interesting of the interior fittings is a porphyry altar,
placed by Sacheverell, who was Rector from 1713 to 1724, and who is
buried beneath it. A marble font, at which Disraeli was baptized at the
age of twelve, is also interesting, and the pulpit of richly-carved
wood, attributed to Grinling Gibbons, is very handsome. On the west wall
is a marble slab, in memory of William Marsden, M.D., founder of the
Royal Free and Cancer Hospitals. It was put up by the Cordwainers'
Company in 1901.
In the tower are many monuments of antiquity, but none to recall the
memory of anyone notable. The church stood in a very commanding
situation until the building of the Viaduct, which passes on a higher
level, giving the paved yard in front the appearance of having been
sunk.
On this side of the church there is a large bas-relief of the Last
Judgment, without date. This was a favourite subject in the seventeenth
century, and similar specimens, though not so fine, and differing in
treatment, still exist elsewhere (see p. 17).
Malcolm mentions a house next the White Hart, with land behind it, worth
5s. per annum, called "Church Acre," and in the reign of Henry VII. the
priest was fined 4d. for driving across the churchyard to the Rectory.
In the twenty-fifth year of Elizabeth's reign there was a great heap of
skulls and bones that lay "unseemly and offensive" at the east end of
the church. The register records the burial here, on August 28, 1770, of
"William Chatterton," presumably Thomas Chatterton, as the date accords.
A later hand has added the words "the poet."
Wriothesley, Henry VIII.'s Chancellor, was buried in St. Andrew's
churchyard. Timbs says that this church has been called the "Poets'
Church," for, besides the above, John Webster, dramatic poet, is said to
have been parish clerk here, though the register does not confirm it.
Robert Savage was christened here January 18, 1696.
There is also a monument to Emery, the comedian, and Neale, another
poet, was buried in the churchyard. But these records combined make but
poor claim to such a proud title. The ground on which Chatterton was
buried has now utterly vanished, having been covered first by the
Farringdon Market, and later by great warehouses.
When the Holborn Viaduct was built, a large piece of the churchyard was
cut off, and the human remains thus disinterred were reburied in the
City cemetery at Ilford, Essex.
The earliest mention of Shoe Lane is in a writ of Edward II., when it is
denominated "Scolane in the ward without Ludgate." In the seventeenth
century we read of a noted cockpit which was established here.
Gunpowder Alley, which ran out of this Lane, was the residence of
Lovelace, the poet, and of Lilly, the astrologer. The former died here
of absolute want in 1658. His well-known lines,
"I could not love thee, dear, so much,
Loved I not honour more,"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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