Aldgate
Aldgate was the eastern gateway through the wall. It is now the name of a street where the gate stood and also the name of a ward, an administrative division, of the City of London. The gate led to the Roman road to Colchester, which was the Roman capital from 43AD to 61AD. It stood initially where Duke's Place now begins.
In the 11th century the gate was called Eastgate, for obvious reasons, but by the 12th century it was known as Alegate (Old Gate). The name Aldgate was first used in the 15th century.
Aldgate was actually rebuilt three times, in 1108, 1215 and 1607, before it was finally taken down in 1761.
The most famous inhabitant of the rooms above the gate must have been Geoffrey Chaucer, who lived there for 8 years when he was a customs officer.
In the late 1100s Jews began to settle in the area, and it became known as the Jewry – until their expulsion by Edward I in 1290. When Oliver Cromwell invited the Jews to return, this was the area of London they came back to.The area was also the site of the Augustinian Holy Trinity Priory, founded by Matilda, the wife of Henry, in 1108, which had the dubious honour of being the first to be dissolved under Henry VIII.
St Botolph's Without Aldgate
A church is recorded here as early as 1115, but the current building dates from the 1700s. It was designed by George Dance the Elder in 1741 and is made of brixk with stone quoins and window casings. The tower is square with an obelisk spire. The church suffered considerable damage during WWII. And again in 1965 when there was a fire, the causes of which have never been identified.
Thomas Bray, the founder of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (SPCK) was Rector from 1706 to 1730, and Daniel Defoe, the writer of Robinson Crusoe, was married here in 1683.
St Botolph’s, which has a long liberal tradition, was a centre of support for the homeless from 1958 to 2004. In 1976, the church became home to the Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement, which operated from it for 12 years.
St Botolph
St. Botolph was an abbot from Essex who died in about 680. Although he was a very popular saint in medieval England, not a lot of information about his life has survived. We know that, along with his brother Adulf, he became a monk and that he founded a monastery at Icanhoh (Ox Island), probably now Boston (Botulf's stone) in Lincolnshire in 654.
After he died he was first buried at the monastery he founded, but then his body was moved in 970 to a village called Grundisburgh. A popular saint, he was again moved to a more fitting tomb in the abbey at Bury St Edmunds. But it didn’t end there, of course. Some two hundred or more years after his death, as a result of the medieval passion for owning parts of the bodies of saints, his remains were split between Ely, Thorney Abbey, and King Edgar's private chapel in Westminster Abbey. Clearly even better travelled after his death than before, Botolph fittingly became the patron saint of travellers.
Since his relics are supposed to have entered London through four important gates, Aldgate, Billingsgate, Bishopsgate and Aldersgate, at each of these a church was dedicated to him, allowing travellers to pray for his help for a safe journey, or to thank him when they arrived at their destination.
Numerous cities bear Botolph’s name, including Boston in Massachusetts, which is named after his town of Boston in Lincolnshire, where many of the Pilgrim Fathers stood trial.
