St Olave Hart Street
St Olave Hart Street is one of the oldest and most atmospheric parish churches in the City of London, a remarkable survivor of the Great Fire of 1666 that devastated much of medieval London. Tucked away on Hart Street in the shadow of the modern financial district, this small, intimate church dates largely from the fifteenth century, though its origins reach back even further into the medieval period. It is dedicated to Olaf II of Norway, the Viking king who converted to Christianity and was later canonised, and who is said to have aided the English king Ethelred the Unready in breaking down London Bridge during his battles against the Danish king Sweyn Forkbeard in the early eleventh century. The church's dedication to this Norse saint reflects the significant Scandinavian merchant community that once inhabited this part of London, and it remains one of only four churches in England dedicated to St Olave.
The church's recorded history stretches back to at least 1222, though a place of Christian worship may have stood on this site considerably earlier. The current fabric is predominantly from a rebuilding programme carried out between 1450 and 1500, making it a genuine piece of medieval London that visitors can touch, sit within, and breathe in. Unlike so many City churches that were rebuilt by Wren after the Great Fire, St Olave escaped the conflagration because the fire burned itself out nearby on Fenchurch Street, sparing this corner of the City. It did not escape the Blitz, however — German bombs struck the church in 1941, destroying the roof and causing severe internal damage. The post-war restoration, completed in the 1950s, was carried out with great care and sensitivity, reinstating much of the seventeenth-century woodwork and fittings while preserving the medieval bones of the building.
The church holds a particularly celebrated literary and historical connection through Samuel Pepys, the great diarist of the seventeenth century. Pepys lived nearby on Seething Lane and worshipped regularly at St Olave, where he had a private box pew installed with a curtained window overlooking the nave, through which he could observe the congregation — and through which, one suspects, the congregation could observe him. Pepys and his beloved wife Elizabeth are both buried in the church; Elizabeth in the body of the church following her death in 1669, and Samuel beneath the high altar after his own death in 1703. A marble bust of Elizabeth Pepys, installed by the diarist himself as a memorial to his wife, gazes down from the north wall of the chancel with quiet dignity. Visiting the church and standing near these memorials gives one a remarkable, almost uncanny sense of proximity to the world of the diary.
Charles Dickens, another great literary observer of London, was also fond of St Olave and referred to it affectionately — if somewhat darkly — as "St Ghastly Grim" in one of his Uncommercial Traveller essays. The nickname was inspired by the gateway that leads into the churchyard from Seething Lane, a striking and macabre stone arch surmounted by a row of skulls and crossed bones. This gate, erected in the seventeenth century, was intended as a memento mori, a reminder to all who passed beneath it of human mortality, and it remains one of the most visually arresting and talked-about pieces of street furniture in the City. The skulls stare outward with hollow eyes above a narrow passageway, and the contrast between this grim portal and the quiet green churchyard beyond it is genuinely startling.
Physically, St Olave is a small, low-slung building of ragstone rubble and ashlar, sitting slightly below the level of the modern street, which has risen over the centuries. Its nave is compact and intimate, with clear-glazed windows that allow good natural light to fall across the old stone floors and the dark, polished woodwork of the furnishings. The medieval nave arcades of low arches on sturdy pillars give the interior a solid, grounded quality, and the overall atmosphere is one of great calm and great age. The scent of old wood, stone, and candle wax pervades the interior. The churchyard behind the Seething Lane gateway is a small, walled garden of considerable charm, planted with roses and shrubs, and remarkably quiet given its central City location. On a weekday lunchtime, office workers from the surrounding towers of glass and steel sometimes eat their lunch here, perhaps not fully aware that they are sitting metres from the graves of Samuel and Elizabeth Pepys.
The surrounding area is the eastern fringe of the City of London, a landscape of extraordinary contrasts. Just steps away on Byward Street is All Hallows by the Tower, another ancient church with Roman remains in its crypt. The Tower of London itself is a short walk to the south, and Trinity Square Gardens, with its memorial to merchant mariners, is close by. The financial towers of Fenchurch Street and Leadenhall are visible above the rooftops to the northwest, and the Walkie-Talkie building on Fenchurch Street is a short walk away. Despite being surrounded by one of the world's great financial centres, Hart Street itself retains a narrow, slightly secretive character, and the church sits within it with a quiet authority that commands attention.
For visitors, St Olave is freely accessible during the daytime on most weekdays, and the church is staffed by volunteers who can offer guidance and information. Sunday services continue the church's centuries-long tradition of active worship, and the church also hosts occasional concerts and lectures. The nearest Underground stations are Tower Hill on the District and Circle lines, and Monument on the Central and District lines, both within comfortable walking distance. Fenchurch Street mainline railway station is also very close. The church is open to visitors without charge, and the experience — stepping from the noise of the City into this medieval survival — is one of the more quietly profound things one can do in central London. The best time to visit is on a weekday morning or early afternoon when the church is staffed and the surrounding streets are busy with workers but the interior remains peaceful.
One fascinating and little-known detail concerns the church's registers, which record the burial of over a thousand victims of the Great Plague of 1665, at a rate that shocked even contemporaries. Samuel Pepys himself recorded in his diary the grim spectacle of peering into the churchyard and counting the fresh graves. The parish of St Olave was hard hit, and the registers from this period are a sobering primary document of one of London's worst catastrophes. The church also contains a fragment of ancient Roman tile visible in one of the exterior walls, a reminder that human settlement on this ground stretches back not just centuries but millennia. Few places in London compress so much of the city's history into such a small and unassuming space.