Aldersgate
The old gate lasted until 1617, when it was replaced by one designed by Gerard Christmas.
This gate was damaged in the Great Fire of 1666 but still lasted until 1761, when it was finally removed. This was about the time when the remainder of the gates were taken down because they were obstructing the flow of traffic in and out of the City.
Just outside where the gate stood is the third of the churches dedicated to St Botolph. The earliest church here was built before 1066. It began life as a Cluniac priory, but later was seized by Henry V as a foreign possession and given to the parish of St Botolph. It later became a monastery and was thus adversely affected by the Dissolution of the monasteries in the 1530s.
The current building dates from 1789 and was designed by Nathaniel Wright. Its churchyard was combined with those of the now defunct St Leonard Foster Lane and Christchurch Newgate to form Postman’s Park – where the GF Watts memorial was set up in 1900.
Other religious sites worthy of note here are the spot where John Wesley felt his heart “strangely warmed” and began the Methodist movement, and the house of Sarah Sawyer, in Rose and Rainbow Court (roughly where the Museum of London now stands), where one of the earliest Quaker meetings in London was established (before 1655). It was a meeting mainly attended by Quaker women.
