St Olave Hart Street

The church is first recorded in the 13th century as St Olave-towards-the-Tower, a stone building replacing the earlier (presumably wooden) construction. It is dedicated to the patron saint of Norway, King Olaf II, who fought alongside the Anglo-Saxon King Æthelred the Unready against the Danes in the Battle of London Bridge in 1014. He was canonised after his 1028 death and the church of St Olave's was built apparently on the site of the battle. According to John Stow's Survey of London (1603), a major benefactor of the church in the late 15th century was wool merchant Richard Cely Sr. (d. 1482), who held the advowson on the church (inherited by his son, Richard Cely Jr.). On his death,…

St Olave's has a modest exterior in the Perpendicular Gothic style. The novelist Charles Dickens was so taken with this that he included the church in his book of sketches The Uncommercial Traveller, renaming it "St Ghastly Grim". The interior of St Olave's only partially survived the wartime bombing; much of it dates from the restoration of the 1950s. It is nearly square, with three bays separated by columns of Purbeck limestone supporting pointed arches. The roof is a simple oak structure with bosses. Most of the church fittings are modern, but there are some significant survivals, such as the monument to Elizabeth Pepys and the pulpit, said to be the work of Grinling Gibbons. Following…