The Diary of Samuel Pepys

Daily entries from the 17th century London diary

St Olave, Hart Street

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The overlays that highlight 17th century London features are approximate and derived from:

8 Annotations

Nix   Link to this

St. Olave's Hart Street --

one of the medieval churches that survived the Great Fire; heavily damaged in the blitz, but subsequently restored.

http://www.cityoflondonchurches.com/stolave.htm

http://www.web.sadds.btinternet.co.uk/HartSt/ha...

Brian G McMullen   Link to this

The Rocque Map reference:

http://www.motco.com/Map/81002/SeriesSearchPlat...

Best guess is that the church is across Seething Lane from their home.

Glyn   Link to this

Brief information from about 60 years later, in 1722.

http://www.londonancestor.com/stow/stow-church-...

There are 220 houses in the parish, which is absolutely tiny, so the population density here must have returned to that which existed before the Great Fire of 1666.

Glyn   Link to this

About two centuries after the Diary, Charles Dickens wrote a whimsical account of St Olave's in "The Uncommercial Traveller" as follows:

"When I think I deserve particularly well of myself, and have earned the right to enjoy a little treat, I stroll from Covent-garden into the City of London, after business-hours there, on a Saturday, or - better yet - on a Sunday, and roam about its deserted nooks and corners. It is necessary to the full enjoyment of these journeys that they should be made in summer-time, for then the retired spots that I love to haunt, are at their idlest and dullest. A gentle fall of rain is not objectionable, and a warm mist sets off my favourite retreats to decided advantage.
Among these, City Churchyards hold a high place"

"One of my best beloved churchyards, I call the churchyard of Saint Ghastly Grim; touching what men in general call it, I have no information. It lies at the heart of the City, and the Blackwall Railway shrieks at it daily. It is a small small churchyard, with a ferocious, strong, spiked iron gate, like a jail. This gate is ornamented with skulls and cross-bones, larger than the life, wrought in stone; but it likewise came into the mind of Saint Ghastly Grim, that to stick iron spikes a-top of the stone skulls, as though they were impaled, would be a pleasant device. Therefore the skulls grin aloft horribly, thrust through and through with iron spears. Hence, there is attraction of repulsion for me in Saint Ghastly Grim, and, having often contemplated it in the daylight and the dark, I once felt drawn towards it in a thunderstorm at midnight. 'Why not?' I said, in self-excuse. 'I have been to see the Colosseum by the light of the moon; is it worse to go to see Saint Ghastly Grim by the light of the lightning?' I repaired to the Saint in a hackney cab, and found the skulls most effective, having the air of a public execution, and seeming, as the lightning flashed, to wink and grin with the pain of the spikes. Having no other person to whom to impart my satisfaction, I communicated it to the driver. So far from being responsive, he surveyed me - he was naturally a bottled-nosed, red-faced man - with a blanched countenance. And as he drove me back, he ever and again glanced in over his shoulder through the little front window of his carriage, as mistrusting that I was a fare originally from a grave in the churchyard of Saint Ghastly Grim, who might have flitted home again without paying."

Here's a recent photograph:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/57351475@N00/19684...

Homemade   Link to this

Panorama of inside St Olave Church...

http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=9138422...

Michael Robinson   Link to this

Detailed current description of architecture, monuments, furnishings, etc.

Buildings of England: London I, The City Yale UP, 1999. (rev ed.) pp 253-255

Mark McManus   Link to this

http://www.ourpasthistory.com/England/st-olaves...

My own essay on Sam's 'own church'

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References

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