Christchurch Greyfriars
This ruined church with its pleasant garden is now little more than tall tower with a square pierced spire.
The tower and spire, adorned with urns is, according to Pevsner, “a square version of St Mary-le-Bow”. The gutted church, the third on this site, was never rebuilt after it was destroyed in the Second World War. Instead, its nave was made into a rose garden with paths where the aisles would have been and pergolas where columns once stood. The hedged areas mark where the congregation would have sat. The steeple was restored by Lord Mottistone in 1960 and the tower was converted into an exclusive private residence in 2001.
The religious use of this site began in 1225 when it was given to 4 Franciscan friars newly arrived from Italy. They were called the “Grey friars” after the colour of their robes. In those days the area may not have been terribly desirable, as the butchers’ market known as the Shambles stood between it and St Paul’s Cathedral. It was also close to the infamous Newgate prison
Still the Franciscans were successful, and by the 1240s their numbers had risen to about 80 friars. Their church was rebuilt in the early 1300s, completed by 1340s and was second in size only to St Paul’s Cathedral itself!
The luck of the friars changed in 1538, however, when the dissolution of the monasteries meant that their land was taken away. A parish church was built on the site of the chancel of the old friary, and this was rebuilt by Christopher Wren in 1677-91.
A well-known school was set up for poor and orphaned boys during the 1550s. This was Edward VI’s “Bluecoat School”.
Though the buildings were destroyed in the Great Fire of London in 1666, the church and the school were both rebuilt in the 1670s. Wren was the architect of both.
It is surprising then, given Wren’s standing in the City, that the school buildings were demolished in the early 20th century. to make way for the General Post Office, which has now itself been demolished. The school moved to Horsham in Sussex 1902
Old Blues include poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Saint Edmund Campion, and Barnes Wallis the inventor of the bouncing bomb in the Second World War.
During the Middle Ages, it was held that the churchyard was particularly ghost-free. Since this was considered a good thing, it attracted the rising merchants of the City and a number of nobles. It is said that some of these were buried in monks’ habits, to give them a spiritual leg-up on their journey in the afterlife.
Three queens are buried here: Margaret, the second wife of Edward I; Isabella, the wife of Edward II; and Eleanor, the wife of Henry III, though only Eleanor’s heart is buried at Christchurch, the remainder of her body being interred in Aylesbury. Along with these, lies another notable woman: Elizabeth Barton, the Holy Maid of Kent. She was hanged at Tyburn for preaching against Henry VIII’s marriage to Anne Boleyn.
It would seem that the much sought after safety from spiritual presences has been severely damaged by the burial of Isabella, however. She was, after all, along with her lover Mortimer, deeply involved in the death of her husband. She is said to have been buried along with the heart of the dead husband she betrayed. Unable to find rest eternal, her arms rise from the ground now, flailing and clutching at the air, accompanied by the sound of a gruesome and unholy rattling of chains.
