The names of various places in this city speak of the peculiarities that once distinguished them, though the spots themselves have long since utterly changed their appearance and purpose. The “gates” of London are, with one exception, among the things that were, but the streets that stand on their sites still speak of them by their appellations. Immediately on the outside of the old city boundary that divided the district of Bishopsgate into its still retained distinction of “within” and “without,” and on the very brink of the city moat (as we are told by Stow), once stood the old church of St. Botolph. It was a fitting spot; for where could piety find a more proper station for making its way to the attention of men, than that which Solomon tells us was the chosen seat of wisdom, ” at the gate of the city, at the going in of the way”? The place was well chosen, if fitness of place could do all, but piety, like wisdom, has often, we fear, appealed to mankind in vain, and the moralist may say of one as of the other, ” it crieth aloud in the streets, and no man regardeth it.” Having no data on which to calculate the effect St. Botolph has had on the morals of the metropolis during the five or six centuries he has had a seat in this busy locality (no less busy that the site is gone), we will proceed to the history of the church, which is brief, and not very rich in historical associations.
St. Botolph was an East Saxon saint who died about 680. We have not alighted on any of the reasons for his canonization, but have no doubt that the renown was well deserved. We have a kind of fancy that his name, in latter times, was corrupted into Bardolph, and, if it could be proved, we apprehend that some of his namesakes degenerated sadly in their morals and principles, addicting themselves to sherry, sack, and canary, and haunting the taverns in the neighbourhood of Eastcheap; one of the name was met thereabout, if we recollect, by a certain William Shakspeare, who has drawn his character very vividly; and it is remarkable how well acquainted we are with the tastes, habits, person, and pursuits of the reprobate, and what perfect obscurity has overtaken the life of the saint.
We know more of Bardolph than Botolph, and the stock of knowledge as to both is likely to maintain the same proportion. But to return: the first church is supposed to have been of very ancient foundation, though the first authentic account of it appears under the date of 1323, when a John de Northampton resigned the rectorship or living, which was then, as it still remains, in the gift of the Bishop of London. The old church escaped the devastating fire of London, which swept away so many others, but it fell to a no less sure, though more slow destroyer-time. In the lapse of centuries it became so ruinous that it was pulled down in 1726, and the present edifice built, it being completed in 1729. It is massy and spacious, but not imposing in its appearance, being built of brick. The roof is hidden by a handsome balustrade. The steeple, though it has been objected to as heavy, is not without a certain air of magnificence. In the remainder of the building there is little to distinguish it, and nothing to particularise; the chief interest it possesses springs from what was its once peculiar site, and its extreme antiquity as a fabric dedicated to religion.
The Illustrated London News, London, England, Week Ending July 30, 1842
