St Olave Hart Street

St Olave’s Church stands in the City of London on the corner of Hart Street and Seething Lane, close to Fenchurch Street station. It is one of the smallest churches in the city and one of the few medieval City churches that survived the Great Fire of 1666. The church is the Ward Church of the Tower Ward and has long served both parishioners and the local community. John Betjeman once called it a ‘country church in the world of Seething Lane’. The building is dedicated to King Olaf II of Norway, who fought at the Battle of London Bridge in 1014 and was later canonised. The church has strong ties to history and notable figures. It was rebuilt in the 13th and 15th centuries, with the present structure dating from around 1450. Samuel Pepys worshipped here regularly and had a gallery built so he could attend services without getting wet. After his wife Elizabeth died in 1669, he commissioned a marble bust of her and was later buried beside her in the nave. Charles Dickens also wrote about the churchyard’s macabre gateway, calling it ‘St Ghastly Grim’ in his sketches. Inside, the church is nearly square with three bays separated by Purbeck limestone columns. The oak roof is simple, with bosses, and the pulpit is said to be the work of Grinling Gibbons. A memorial to Elizabeth Pepys marks the spot where her bust once stood. The churchyard contains graves linked to the Boston Tea Party and the Great Plague. The tower holds a memorial to two Fenchurch Street grocers whose tea was thrown into Boston Harbour. The church’s nine bells, recast after wartime damage, are rung regularly by the University of London Society of Change Ringers.