St Botolph

This is St Botolph-without-Bishopsgate in the City of London. it is just around the corner from Liverpool Street Station.

Christian worship has probably been offered on this site since Roman times. The original Saxon church, the foundations of which were discovered when the present church was erected, is first mentioned as 'Sancti Botolfi Extra Bishopesgate' in 1212. Sir William Allen, Lord Mayor (1571-2) who was born and buried in the parish marked his mayoralty by repairing the Church at his own expense. Although the church survived the Great Fire of London (1666) St. Botolph's had by the early eighteenth century fallen into disrepair and the decision was made to build a new church. The old church was demolished in 1725, and the present church, the fourth on this site, was completed in 1729 to the designs of James Gould, under the supervision of George Dance.

The parish registers are complete from 1558, and record the burials of many notable persons, including an infant son of the playwright Ben Jonson. Sir Paul Pindar (d 1650), James I's Ambassador to Turkey, was probably the most celebrated parishioner. His epitaph reads that he was 'faithful in negotiation, foreign and domestick, eminent for piety, charity, loyalty and prudence'. The great actor Edward Alleyn, Shakespeare's contemporary, and the founder of Dulwich College, was baptised here in 1566 and the poet John Keats in the present font in 1795.