The Most Macabre Objects in London's Churches - An In-Depth Guided Tour

hi I'm Jessica the museum guide and today I'm not inside the museum instead I'm going to take you on a tour of some of the strangest spookiest and most Macabre items in London churches just in time for Halloween we'll start our tour at the hearty tree surrounded by stacked up tombstones then we'll go see the death bell rung before public executions at Newgate Prison we'll head outside to see a watchtower built to catch Body Snatchers and then an iron coffin at Saint Brides we'll see a horrific statue of Saint Bartholomew holding his own skin before visiting a Memento morai at Charles Dickens favorite church then it's off to St James garlic hide to visit Jimmy garlic a mummy before we end our tour at the oldest Catholic Church in England to see a reliquary containing an uncorrupted hand remember to like And subscribe and please leave me a comment and let me know if you've ever seen anything spooky strange or Macabre in a church I'm always looking for new museums and Heritage sites to visit so leave me a comment and let me know where you think I should go next we're starting our tour today at St Pinecrest old church not only one of the oldest churches in London but said to be one of the oldest sites in English Christendom it's just a stone's throw from King's cross and St Pancras stations but it's truly a different world let's start our tour at this unbelievable site this is an ash tree surrounded by hundreds of old gravestones which some say were placed here by novelist Thomas Hardy when he was working as an architectural assistant so how did these weathered gravestones most of them from the late 18th century and early 19th century get into this strange pattern layered around the tree will it all dates back to the railway Mania that exploded across the country in the 1840s 50s and 60s London soon began outgrowing its earliest railway lines and in order to accommodate new commuters it was decided to expand St pancreas station there was only one problem this ancient church and its massive graveyard were in the way Architecture Firm Arthur blomfield of Covent Garden were hired to exhume The Remains and then re-berry them elsewhere and the task of organizing this Grim relocation was left to their youngest employee who in the following decades would publish many classic novels such as far from the Madden crowd and Tess of the dubravels after he finished having the bones and corpses removed he was saddened by the remaining headstones though some suggested that the headstones should just be destroyed or maybe displaced in a stack the ever romantic hearty wanted to preserve them he placed them in a circular pattern around this ash tree which would not be disturbed by the railway the site has since become an icon of the grotesque a pinnacle of Victorian Gothic aesthetic here in London but after all of that lore there's actually no evidence that Hardy had really anything to do with the hearty tree we know he did work on the project but some people doubt the fact that it was his idea to put the stones here some people even say the tree grew later through the center of the Stacked stones sadly I've heard rumors that the hearty tree might have some kind of disease and that's why it's currently blocked off you used to be able to go right up to it but I still recommend coming here to visit you can really spend a long time in this graveyard visiting the famous monuments and soaking in the very autumnal atmosphere now let's head inside the church for a few moments it is said to have existed since 314 though the evidence for this date is quite scant when the church was rebuilt in 1847 replacing a Tudor Church Builders did discover Norman columns an inscribed altar Stone dating to 625 and Roman tiles so it really could be from the 4th Century here's an icon of Saint Pancras same pancreas was a Roman boy who converted to Christianity and was beheaded for his faith around the year 304 when he was just 14 years old the hearty treat isn't the only interesting thing here at the churchyard of Saint Pancras old church there's also the memorial to Sir John Stone who is famous for Sir John sones Museum let me know if you'd like to see a video about that strange and wonderful place you can see the famous sewn Mausoleum here which sir Johnstone designed for his wife Elizabeth it's actually said to have inspired the iconic London red phone box designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott this graveyard was also the site of the courtship between Mary Shelley and Percy Bish Shelley of course Mary Shelley would go on to write Frankenstein and Percy Shelley was a famous English romantic poet it's here though near her mother Mary wollstonecraft's grave that they planned their elopement some even say they consummated their relationship here although of course I would never say that we are now at Saint Sepulcher without Newgate which is modeled after the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem and this area also has an Infamous association with imprisonment and execution which used to occur across the street right where I'm standing now that's because Newgate Prison was once here it was destroyed extended and rebuilt many times between 11 18 and 1902. today this more modern building the central Criminal Court nicknamed the old bayley occupies much of the old prison site prior to 1783 public hangings which were big attractions were moved to this site from The tyburn Gallows which had previously been a tree to clear up space for the Redevelopment of Hyde Park it turns out that a tree full of dead men not the most relaxing attraction in your pleasure Garden at least if you're Queen Charlotte between 1783 and 1868 the hangings took place here where I'm standing this time period overlaps with the London Underground yes that's correct you could take the underground to witness a public hanging puts it into perspective now that we know what was taking place across the street from the church let's head inside to look at the Bell rung Outside The Condemned man's cell the night before his Grim fate this Bell was purchased for 50 pounds by a London Merchant named John Dao in 1605 and he stated that it should only be used for one purpose on the evening before a condemned man's execution the Bellman of saint sepulcher's church would ring this Bell 12 times outside their cell The Only Exception was for murderers Dow didn't want them included they had other Fates in store which we'll talk about very soon after the Bellman would ring the bell he would read out examine well yourselves in time repent that you not to Eternal Flames be sent and when Saint sepulcher's Bell tomorrow tolls the Lord above have mercy on your souls there's actually a reference to the spell in William Shakespeare's Macbeth and you can see it inside this church which is usually open once per week for the next item on our tour we're actually staying right here at Saint Sepulcher but we're heading outside the church see the story of a hanged man doesn't end with the Bell tolling and his death now for many years his body was even more vulnerable after his death that's why this church installed a watch house which is essentially a security guard's post here in 1791. it was considered such a delightful Oddity that it was rebuilt after it was destroyed in the blitz even though it was no longer needed now why would you need a security guard to look at a graveyard at night well I should also tell you that we are directly across the street from Bart's Hospital we're going to talk about that a little bit later on but at this point in history in 1791 is exactly the same time that Bart's hospital opened its first medical school yes if you were buried here in this graveyard there was a very good chance that your body would be dug up by Body Snatchers but just wait Body Snatchers actually prefer to be called the resurrection men Resurrection men would dig up bodies buried in London's churchyard take them to Local pubs where the bodies would be put on display and they would be bid on like quite a literal meat market by medical students any churchyard near a medical school or hospital was fair game and these were the ones targeted most often by the resurrection men that's why you can find watch houses like this one all across the country medical students at this point in history were just beginning the practice of autopsy see before the 1770s 80s and 90s autopsy was considered ghoulish and macabre see physicians at that time in history very rarely cut into a living person's body so there was no real need for autopsy to learn about internal medicine they might prescribe you to go have your bloodlet or give you specific prayers to say but with an increase in medical knowledge and heading towards modern medicine autopsy becomes more and more popular no longer just for artists studying Anatomy now we did have a way for medical students to acquire corpses in fact the murder Act of 1751 stipulated that the corpses of executed murderers could be used for dissection but by the early 19th century the rise of Medical Science and a lower number of executions meant that demand was outstripping Supply in 1832 the anatomy act went through Parliament to give license to doctors and Anatomy students to dissect donated bodies this didn't completely stop body snatching but it did slow the trade down now why would Body Snatchers do this job they could earn a lot of money up to 10 pounds which could be at months wages for a typical laborer and that's just for one corpse the most famous case of Resurrection men of course is Burke and Hare this occurred in Edinburgh Scotland over a period of about 10 months in 1828. William Burke and William Hare murdered 16 people and sold their bodies until they were eventually caught eventually hair snitched on Burke Burke was hanged at a public hanging and of course he was autopsied by the way if you'd like to go and visit Burke you certainly can his skin was used to bind a book which is currently on display at the surgeons Hall Museum in Edinburgh let me know if you'd like me to visit in the future now of course the resurrection men were greedy opportunists they were just out to make money but some of them did think of themselves as being men of Science and that due to their work if you can call it that modern science and medical advancements were possible however if it was you or your loved one who was having their body Disturbed from their final resting place you might think differently I'm now approaching Saint bride's Church on Fleet Street this church has a special surprise there's a museum in the Crypt so we've been talking about Body Snatchers and here at Saint Brides We are going to continue this theme but first let me tell you about this wonderful church it was built by Sir Christopher Wren in the decade following the Great Fire of London in 1666. this was the tallest and most expensive Church Wren ever built second only to Saint Paul's Cathedral however this is the eighth Church to sit on this site since likely being built in the 6th Century by Irish missionaries and you can hear that in the name Saint Bridget or Saint bride is the second most popular Irish saint but just think about that for a second that means that this sits on the remnants of seven previous churches and crypts as well as two medieval Charnel houses which are vaults for storing human bones once they're disinterred out of a full graveyard Ren combined as many elements from the previous buildings as he could but the site held some secrets that weren't uncovered until German bombs fell in 1940. the ancient Crypt beneath the church had been used right up until the cholera epidemic of 1854 when Parliament ordered the closing of London Crypts to stop the spread at this point the Crypt beneath sent Brides was sealed shut and subsequently forgotten but the fires of the blitz revealed 227 individually identified people interred since the 17th century and a further 7 000 plus medieval human remains in the communal Charnel house and beneath all that a Roman pavement which you can see here now all of this is on display in the Crypt Museum beneath the church which is open Monday to Saturday and it's free to visit while it's worth a visit to take in the entire experience I want to draw your attention to an object directly related to the Body Snatchers people came up with ingenious ways to protect themselves and their loved ones the desire to provide quote safety for the dead led many inventors to create increasingly ingenious inventions to stymie the resurrection men one of them you'll see here called a mort safe now this particular Mort safe is in the churchyard of greyfriars Kirk in Edinburgh Kirk is the Scots word for church however I often see this very image in like Halloween BuzzFeed articles about how quote victorians kept themselves safe from vampires that couldn't be further from the truth we didn't need to keep the living safe from the dead we needed to keep the dead safe from the living another such invention was the iron coffin patented in 1818 by one Edward Bridgeman of goswell Street Road this iron coffin has a flange which when engaged with spring clips in the lid was designed to prevent the resurrectionists from getting inside however not every Church would accept them for instance the church wardens at Saint Andrews Church nearby refused to allow iron coffins in the graveyards because they wouldn't break down as quickly in this case the body was taken out and buried in a more traditional wooden coffin however the disgruntled relatives brought a lawsuit against the church and the judge ruled in their favor he also said that since such coffins took so much longer to disintegrate the churches could charge a lot more for these burials due to the added cost few people used iron coffins and the practice soon petered out anyway with the Advent of more modern medicine we're really lucky that this one survived and as I mentioned you can come visit it for free in the Crypt Museum now we're heading towards Saint Bartholomew the great which is just a stone's throw from the Museum of London which I'll cover soon have a look here this entryway is a 13th century Stone Arch with a half-timbered gate house above so you can see that an opportunistic Tudor era businessman partially covered the arch with his new house this church is located in Smithfield an area Untouched by The Great Fire of London and therefore home to some of the oldest buildings in all of the city including this church it's one of the few remaining Norman churches in the capital first opened in 1123 under the reign of Henry the first it was founded by a monk called rahair or raherias who had been Henry the First's Court Jester or some say just a nobleman he was so distraught by the death of Queen Matilda and the drowning of Prince William that he went on a pilgrimage to the shrine of Saint Bartholomew in Rome and had a vision some say he got malaria and he came back here to build this church and found the hospital next door we'll talk more about rahair in a few minutes now after the dissolution of the monasteries under Henry VII the building was turned into a stable Factory and later a printing press before reverting to a church in the 19th century now let's talk about Saint Bartholomew for a moment he was one of Christ's disciples and he's said to have brought Christianity to Armenia in the first century his high geography that means biography of a saint states that Bartholomew was executed in albanopoulos in Armenia and was flayed alive beheaded and crucified upside down I mean just look at this statue this is scarier than anything you'll see in a horror movie when contemporary and controversial British Artist Damien Hurst was first asked to create a piece of art for the church he created this statue Exquisite pain Hearst pays homage to the traditional image of Saint Bartholomew as flayed and holding his own skin as a shawl but he added a unique twist instead of a knife which the saint would normally be holding this statue is holding a scalpel just like the medical students across the street would have used during their surgeries and autopsies in his other hand is a pair of shears which I will explain when we go outside before we leave though let's have a look at a few other things here in the church here is right here's Effigy which is extremely colorful and unusual of course it wouldn't be an ancient London church if some didn't say it was haunted people claim to have seen rahair leading sermons or wandering the hospital next door to provide Comfort to patients there's also the lady Chapel here the site of the only recorded appearance of the Virgin Mary in London all the way back in the 12th century a monk called Huber witnessed her and she complained to him that he and his fellow monks were just not doing a good enough job singing her praises the lady Chapel is also where Benjamin Franklin worked for a short time when it was a printing press now of course if you're only going to visit one Church in London most people choose Westminster Abbey or Saint Paul's Cathedral but if you're into the dark and the Macabre it should be same Bartholomew the Great Damien hurst's Exquisite pain statue has a scalpel in one hand and a pair of shears in the other and that's because this street is called cloth Fair there's also a pub just a few steps away called the hand and shears and they claim to be the last place where it condemned prisoner would be given a pint of beer before their execution you can see behind me that there looks almost like there's a moat around this church it's not a moat that's street level from a thousand years ago and it was a church very much beloved by none other than Charles Dickens he writes it is a small churchyard with a ferocious strong spiked Iron Gate like a jail this gate is ornamented with skulls and crossbones Larger than Life rot in stone but it likewise came into the mind of Saint ghastly Grimm that justic iron spikes Atop The Stone skulls as though they were impaled would be a pleasant device therefore the skull's green Aloft horribly thrust through and through with iron Spears I mean yeah that's an excellent description of what's going on here the five skulls act as Guardians to this repository for the dead underneath the trio of skulls reads the inscription cristus viveir Morse mihim lucrum which means in Latin Christ lives death is my reward but why on Earth would Death be a reward well ideally you're going to heaven right but even more than that skulls like these are called momentum Mori and they serve a very specific purpose they were extremely popular in the 15th 16th and 17th centuries as a way to remind us to be Pious and cherish what we have here on Earth for soon our time here will be over while the records of this rather small church only stretch back to the 13th century some Legends say that it was built on the site of the battle of London Bridge as early as 10 14. if you descend into the Crypt a well can be found where it is thought the king Olaf of Norway later Saint Olaf rallied his troops around to assist Ethel read the unready in driving the Vikings out of London with the cry forward Crossman the rhyme might sound familiar London Bridge is broken down gold is one and bright renowned Shields resounding warhorn sounding hild is shouting in the din arrows singing male coats ringing Odin makes our Olaf win it really does remind a lot of people of London bridges falling down whenever I come to this church with Norwegians by the way they're always really confused that one of their early medieval kings is a saint here in England the church is also known for some strange burials the strangest person said to be buried here is quote pantomime character Mother Goose or at least the woman who inspired her this tortured also contains the grave of Mary Ramsey a woman thought to have brought the Black Death to London in 1665 although this seems quite unfounded there are however 300 more plague victims here in a small plague pit just like grave robbing back at Saint Sepulcher without new gate there's also a small Hut here for guards to keep watch many people associate Saint Olaf's with a different writer although he would be absolutely mortified if he knew we were reading his Diaries of course I'm talking about Samuel peeps his wife's Memorial here as is his own body now Dickens was known to have caught a handsome cab here on rainy foggy nights and gaze at the skulls not quite the same on this crisp and sunny fall day but still really remarkable nonetheless now I'm here at Saint James garlic Hive named for a ugastic garlic Market that used to be on the site I've never actually been to this church and I do know that it's called Sir Christopher wrens Lantern because of all of the beautiful windows inside which we're going to go and have a look at but while we're here we are going to pay our respects to Jimmy garlic The Mummy you might notice the scallop shells which are both inside and outside the church that's because this is technically a stop on the Pilgrim's route ending at the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in Spain this church was destroyed by the great fire of 1666 and was rebuilt by who other than Christopher Wren it was heavily damaged again during the Blitz and it's since been restored after a 500 pound German high explosive bomb crashed through the roof and buried itself into the floor in the South aisle it was later Taken to Hackney marshes to be detonated the church is often called Ren's Lantern owing to the number of large windows inside but while it's a stunning building with a storied history we're here to talk about one of its residents I'm talking about Jimmy garlic he was a well-preserved mummy of a man discovered in the vaults in 1855. for 150 years his body was actually on display here in the church in a glass cabinet in 2004 Jimmy garlic was featured on the Discovery Channel documentary series mummy autopsy which used modern techniques to establish that he likely died between 1641 and 1801. he had osteoarthritis and tooth decay which conflicts with previous British museum analysis that he had been a young man the most likely theory is that he was a sailor who died on board a ship docked close by and he was buried in the church in the late 1700s or early 1800s now Jimmy garlic wasn't just on display he was a huge draw people came here just to see him the church actually charged visitors a few Pence to have a look at his remains and sometimes the choir boys carried the mummy around the church for a laugh now I'm not talking about an ancient tradition that was happening until the early 2000s of course it wasn't long before his stories began to circulate that Jimmy was now haunting the church in ghostly ire at being made a figure of public display there's also a story that up until the second world war parishioners regularly spotted a shrouded man walking through the church before Air Raids apparently a fireman even risked his life during the raid to rescue a pale robed man who refused to leave the church but who then faded from sight before his eyes now I'll let you decide the veracity of that story I'm just sad that today Jimmy garlic who kind of sounds like an old mobster name but Jimmy garlic has been peacefully interred in the Crypt he's no longer on display still worth a visit though now we're heading to Saint ethyl dreida's Catholic Church in hoburn it's located in a really strange location at the end of a gated Street Ely Place is actually the only private Street left in all of London and it's still managed by a collection of beetles and Commissioners it's sandwiched between modern buildings and it's really easy to miss Church really is well hidden in fact I never knew that it was here the only way that I discovered it was I saw a sign on the main road with an arrow pointing to Saint Ethel dreida's church and I thought to myself that sounds like a Saxon name I bet you that church is very old I was right now that's quite strange considering just how important this church once was it's actually it's the oldest Catholic Church left in England and it's one of only two buildings in London that date to the reign of Edward the first now he's the one with the delightful nickname Edward Longshanks and the less delightful nickname The Hammer of the Scots now before I tell you more about the church let me tell you about Ethel Trader herself Ethel drata known in Modern English as Audrey was an East anglian princess who lived sometime between 636 and 23rd June 679. she was born to King Anna and Queen sehwara at an early age it was clear that she was a Pious girl and she made the decision to dedicate herself to the church that is until her family's Duty called she was persuaded by her father and other parties to enter into a political marriage twice at 14 she married ton Burke Prince of South yarwa the region bordering East Anglia but she somehow managed to convince him to let her remain a virgin and stay dedicated to her dreams of becoming a nun not only did he agree but he gave her the Isle of Ely located in the swampy Inland cambrusher fence as a wedding gift she was widowed three years later and happily retired to her own private island looking forward to a life of prayer and virginity which is not what happened within a year she was persuaded by the northumbrian king to enter into another political marriage this time to egg frith of northumbria but this Prince was not so understanding even though by this point Ethel dreida had officially become a nun after 12 years of marriage he wanted what was his and he even tried to carry her from her Cloister by force she fled to Ely with two maids and the tide is said to have risen miraculously allowing her to make her escape from this brute and let's also remember that the Isle of Ely was not actually an actual Island so that may have helped once safely back at Ely she founded a large double Monastery and ruled his abbess until her death in 679 Ethel draina died after Contracting a large unsightly tumor on her neck this is sometimes referred to as the Black Plague but it was most likely Quincy a peritonsular abscess and was thought to be punishment for wearing jewels on her throat when she was Queen and this Affliction gave rise to her association with the neck and the throat the 12th century Latin text the Lieber eleensis a history of Ely claims that in 695 Ethel dreida's sister saber had her bones disinterred and discovered that her corpse was not only uncorrupted but that she was more beautiful in death than she had been in life incorruptibility is the Roman Catholic belief that the bodies of some saintly people will resist the natural process of decomposition and this was seen as further proof that ethyl drata should be canonized in 1106 she was reinterred yet again to the monastery in Ely and her body was still uncorrupted and said to be as fresh as the day she died her uncorrupted hand was gifted to this church in the late 19th century there's the reliquary there just to the right of the altar this box doesn't have a monstrance that's the name for a window into a reliquary so we have to trust that Ethel drata's uncorrupted hand really is inside The Relic had been removed from Ely in Norman times and kept hidden safely on the Duke of norfolk's estate during the Catholic persecution now this church is actually known for a few other things as is Saint ethyl dreida remember the beginning of this stop I told you that her Modern English name is Audrey and in fact her name is the origin of the word tawdry see Pious and virginal Ethel dreida was beloved by locals on the Isle of Ely and when she died they began to honor her memory with an annual funfair people celebrated by selling and wearing inexpensive lace necklaces and scarves owing to Ethel drata's association with the neck these were eventually known as Saint Audrey's lace and by the 16th and 17th century people would sneer at the poor quality of these items and Saint Audrey morphed into tawdry a word synonymous with showy cheap and tacky items you certainly don't have to be Catholic to come and visit this unusual and beautiful church and pay your respects to Saint ethyl dreida I don't think there's anything to Audrey about it thank you so much for joining me today on this weird and wonderful walk through some of the strangest and most Macabre items in London's churches if you enjoyed this video please remember to like and follow and let me know below which one was your favorite and what other museums and sites in London you'd like to see I'll see you next time I'm at the Museum or

Channel: The Museum Guide

Views: 245,305

Keywords: hardy tree, st Bartholomew, st bride's, st olave hart street

Id: cVkfRqN4Qs0

Length: 33min 15sec (1995 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 29 2022