A medieval arch, a Tudor house and moving memorials to fallen sons
The entrance to the churchyard of St Bartholomew the Great from Smithfield consists of a 13th century stone arch beneath a Tudor gatehouse.
The stone arch was once part of the doorway into the south aisle of the Priory Church, which was founded in 1123 alongside St Bartholomew's Hospital (see my 2023 post: St Bartholomew's: happy 900th to church and hospital!).
After the dissolution of the monasteries in the 1530s, the church underwent a significant reduction in size.
Walks available for booking
For a schedule of forthcoming London On The Ground guided walks, please click here.
In 1595, during the reign of Elizabeth I, a local man called William Scudamore built the gatehouse above what remained of the doorway.
In the Georgian era, someone decided to cover the half timbered façade with bricks. For a long time the Tudor origins of gatehouse, which was occupied by a shop, were forgotten.
However, during World War I in 1917, a German Zeppelin dropped a bomb nearby. The explosion blew the bricks away to reveal the late 16th century appearance of the gatehouse.
In February 1930 the church's Rector, Canon Edwin Sidney Savage, wrote that the “deeply interesting” gatehouse was in need of “a complete overhauling and reparation”. He felt that it “ought to be made decently habitable”, noting that, while “outside it is fair: within it smells of rats and rottenness, and is quite unstable”.
Canon Savage, Rector from 1929 to 1944, oversaw the restoration of the Tudor gatehouse for his use as a flat and offices. He also continued the renovation of the church itself, a programme that had started in the 1880s.
From 1948 to 1979 the gatehouse was used as a school, run by the Rector’s wife at the time, Phyllis Wallbank. I understand that it is let to tenants as residential accommodation today.
On the right just after you walk through the gate - and very easy to miss - is a panel erected in 1932 in memory of brothers Sir Aston and Edward Alfred Webb and of Frederick Dove. The three men had collaborated on the restoration of the church from the 1880s until all three died within three years of each other in 1929-1932.
Frederick Dove was the head of Islington-based builders Dove Brothers, who carried out the construction work.
Edward Alfred Webb was a painter and engraver, who was also churchwarden at St Bartholomew the Great.
His position at the church probably helped his brother, Sir Aston, to get the job as the project’s architect in the early 1880s (although Sir Aston proved to be more than capable as an architect, going on to design the Victoria and Albert Museum in 1891 and the main façade of Buckingham Palace in 1913).
Canon Savage paid this tribute to E. A. Webb and his work for and on the church: “That London’s masterpiece in stone - this glorious architectural epic - stands as you see it today, is due in no small measure to Mr. E. A. Webb. Every stone he knew and loved with a lowly reverence… this Church itself is his memorial.”
To the left of the plaque is Sir Aston’s coat of arms, which plays on his surname with its depiction of a spider on a web and the motto 'Weave Well'. On the right is a bird that looks to me like an eagle, but I am not sure what it represents (unless it is meant to be a dove, to represent Dove Brothers).
In 1917 Sir Aston Webb installed a memorial below the front of the gatehouse to the memory of men of the parish killed in World War I, with an inscribed stone plaque and crucifix by sculptor William Silver Frith.
The war memorial is also easy to miss, as the eye is distracted by the Tudor beams above and the glimpse of the church beyond.
Among the 37 names listed is that of PE Webb, 2nd Lieutenant in the Royal Engineers, killed on 25 September 1916 at the age of 30.
Philip Webb was Sir Aston’s son. A student at the Royal Academy Schools from 1908 to 1913, he had assisted his father in his architectural practice before the war.
A 38th name was added to the memorial some years after the war. There was no space left on the front of the stone tablet, so the additional name - that of Lieutenant Cuthbert Farrar Savage - is inscribed on its left hand edge. It is very easily missed as you walk past.
Cuthbert was the son of Canon Savage and his second wife Sibyl. At the time of Cuthbert’s death in 1917, the Savages had put up a plaque to him in Hexham in Northumberland, where the Canon was Rector.
After they moved to London in 1929, the war memorial that greeted them at the gate every time they went in and out of the churchyard must have made them feel the loss of their son all the more keenly.
They were far away from Cuthbert's plaque in Hexham and from his grave in Belgium, so they added his name on the side of the memorial outside St Bartholomew the Great.
Cuthbert was typical of so many young men robbed of a bright future by the Great War.
After his death, a friend described him as “a gallant lad - handsome as a Greek god, courteous, charming, gifted.”
He was born at St Mark’s Vicarage in Barrow-in-Furness on 27 July 1890 and educated at Rugby School. At the age of 14 he won the Public Schools Skiing Competition.
The same friend later recalled “memories of him skiing down steep slopes with grace and skill, and dancing and laughing and jesting with his friends or discussing serious matters with earnestness and intelligence.”
After Rugby and reading law at New College, Oxford, in 1913 he went to a new life in Vancouver, Canada, to train as a barrister. He never completed his training.
Soon after the outbreak of World War I in 1914, Cuthbert volunteered for one of the first Canadian units to transfer to England and then to France. He enlisted as a private, but took a commission in the Northumberland Fusiliers on 20 January 1915 with the rank of Temporary 2nd Lieutenant.
In April 1916 he was wounded at Bully Grenay, France, in the back of his head and in his right arm by a grenade. After recuperating in England, he took part in the Battle of the Somme and then carried out staff duties in the winter of 1916-17.
After promotion to Temporary Lieutenant in the spring of 1917, he was wounded by a shell that burst at his feet outside Battalion HQ at Dickebusch, close to Ypres in Belgium.
He died from shrapnel wounds on 20 June 1917, aged 26, and was buried at the nearby Lijssenthoek Military Cemetery.
A fellow officer in Cuthbert’s Battalion wrote that he “never grumbled at having extra and unexpected work thrust upon him, which is a rare and valuable quality.”
His Major thought him the best platoon commander in the Battalion and wrote, “We shall miss him dreadfully… He was very popular with us all, as he was always so cheery, and only thought of others and not of himself at all.”
Thanks to the North East War Memorials Project for biographical details of Cuthbert Farrar Savage's life.
St Bartholomew the Great is featured on my walk Monasteries, Martyrs, Murder and Meat, which will have its next outing on Sunday 30 March at 11am.
Walks available for booking
For a schedule of forthcoming London On The Ground guided walks, please click here.
Fascinating. And a reminder of the terrible losses in the Great War. I’ll be sure to look out for Cuthbert’s name on the memorial next time I pass by. And I’ll also look out for the wonderful spider-themed coat of arms!