London - St. Olave Church, Hart Street, City - Elizabeth Pepys Memorial - RP

Postcard
• Picture / Image:  Elizbabeth Pepys Memorial - Parish Church of St Olave, Hart Street, City of London - sculptor John Bushness - the only contemprary likeness of Elizbeth Pepys in existence
• Publisher:  none given but photo by National Monuments Record
• Postally used:  no
• Stamp:  n/a
• Postmark(s): n/a
• Sent to:  n/a
• Notes / condition: 

Please ask if you need any other information and I will do the best I can to answer.

Image may be low res for illustrative purposes - if you need a higher definition image then please contact me and I may be able to send one. No cards have been trimmed (unless stated).

------------------------------------------------

Postage & Packing:

Postage and packing charge should be showing for your location (contact if not sure).

No additional charges for more than one postcard. You can buy as many postcards from me as you like and you will just pay the fee above once. Please wait for combined invoice. (If buying postcards with other things such as books, please contact or wait for invoice before paying).

Payment Methods:

UK - PayPal, Cheque (from UK bank) or postal order

Outside UK: PayPal ONLY (unless otherwise stated) please.   NO non-UK currency checks or money orders (sorry).

NOTE: All postcards are sent in brand new stiffened envelopes which I have bought for the task. These are specially made to protect postcards and you may be able to re-use them. In addition there are other costs to sending so the above charge is not just for the stamp!

I will give a full refund if you are not fully satisfied with the postcard.

----------------------------------------------

Text from the free encyclopedia WIKIPEDIA may appear below to give a little background information (internal links may not  work) :

*************

St Olave Hart Street is a Church of England church in the City of London, located on the corner of Hart Street and Seething Lane near Fenchurch Street railway station.

John Betjeman described St Olave’s as “a country church in the world of Seething Lane.""^[1] The church is one of the smallest in the City and is one of only a handful of medieval City churches that escaped the Great Fire of London in 1666.^[2] In addition to being a local parish church, St Olave’s is the Ward Church of the Tower Ward of the City of London.^[3]

The church is first recorded in the 13th century as St Olave-towards-the-Tower, a stone building replacing the earlier (presumably wooden) construction.^[4] It is dedicated to the patron saint of Norway, King Olaf II of Norway, who fought alongside the Anglo-Saxon King Ethelred the Unready against the Danes in the Battle of London Bridge in 1014. He was canonised after his death and the church of St Olave's was built apparently on the site of the battle.^[2] The Norwegian connection was reinforced during the Second World War when King Haakon VII of Norway worshipped there while in exile.

Saint Olave's was rebuilt in the 13th century and then again in the 15th century. The present building dates from around 1450. 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, Cely bequeathed money for making the steeple and an altar in the church. The merchant mark of the Cely family was carved in two of the corbels in the nave ( and were extant until the bombing of World War II ). No memorial to the Celys now remains in the church.^[5]

Saint Olave's survived the Great Fire of London with the help of Sir William Penn, the father of the more famous William Penn who founded Pennsylvania, and his men from the nearby Naval yards. He had ordered the men to blow up the houses surrounding the church to create a fire break.^[6][7] The flames came within 100 yards or so of the building, but then the wind changed direction, saving the church and a number of other churches on the eastern side of the City.^[3]

The church was a favourite of the diarist Samuel Pepys, whose house and Royal Navy office were both on Seething Lane. A regular worshipper, he referred to St. Olave's in his diary affectionately as ""our own church""^[8] In 1660, he had a gallery built on the south wall of the church and added an outside stairway from the Royal Navy Offices so that he could go to church without getting soaked by the rain. The gallery is now gone but a memorial to Pepys marks the location of the stairway's door. In 1669, when his beloved wife Elizabeth died from fever,^[9] Pepys had a marble bust of her made by John Bushnell and installed on the north wall of the sanctuary so that he would be able to see her from his pew at the services. In 1703, he was buried next to his wife in the nave.^[2][10]

However, it was gutted by German bombs in 1941 during the London Blitz.^[11] and was restored in 1954, with King Haakon VII of Norway returning to preside over the rededication ceremony, during which he laid a stone from Trondheim Cathedral in front of the sanctuary.

Between 1948 and 1954, when the restored St Olave's was reopened, a prefabricated church stood on the site of All Hallows Staining. This was known as St Olave Mark Lane. The tower of All Hallows Staining was used as the chancel of the temporary church.

The church was designated a Grade I listed building on 4 January 1950.^[12] St Olave's has retained long and historic links with Trinity House and the Clothworkers' Company.

St Olave's has a modest exterior in the Perpendicular Gothic style.^[13] with a somewhat squat square tower of stone and brick, the latter added in 1732. It is deservedly famous for the macabre 1658 entrance arch to the churchyard, which is decorated with grinning skulls.^[14] The novelist Charles Dickens was so taken with this that he included the church in his Uncommercial Traveller, renaming it ""St Ghastly Grim"".^[15]

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^[16] and the pulpit, said to be the work of Grinling Gibbons. Following the destruction of the organ in the blitz, the John Compton Organ Company built a new instrument in the West Gallery, fronted by a large wooden grille; this organ, and the Rectory behind, is ingeniously structured between church and tower.

In the tower, there is a memorial with an American connection. It honors Monkhouse Davison and Abraham Newman, the grocers of Fenchurch Street who shipped crates of tea to Boston in late 1773. These crates were seized and thrown into the waters during the Boston Tea Party, one of the causes of the American War of Independence.^[10]

Perhaps the oddest ""person"" said to be buried here is the ""Pantomime character"" Mother Goose. Her burial was recorded by the parish registers on 14 September 1586.^[17] A plaque on the outside commemorates this event. The churchyard is also said to contain the grave of one Mary Ramsay, popularly believed to be the woman who brought the Black Death to London in 1665.^[18] The parish registers have the record of her burial, which was done on 24 July 1665. Thereafter, in the same year, the victims of the Great Plague were marked with a 'p' after their names in the registers.^[2][19]

On the east side of St Olave's, there is a stained glass window depicting Queen Elizabeth I standing with two tall bells at her feet. She held a thanksgiving service at St Olave's on Trinity Sunday, 15 May 1554, while she was still Princess Elizabeth, to celebrate her release from the Tower of London.^[20] She had originally given bell-ropes of silk to the All Hallows Staining Church because its bells had rung the loudest of all London bells on the day of her freedom, but, when All Hallows Staining was merged with St. Olave's in 1870, the bell-ropes went with it.^[21]

On 11 May 1941, an incendiary bomb was dropped by the Luftwaffe on the tower of the church. The tower, along with the baptistry and other buildings, was ""burned out"" and the furnishings and monuments destroyed. The heat was so great that even the peal of the eight bells were melted ""back into bell metal"". In the early 1950s, the bell metal was recast into new bells by the same foundry that created the original bells – the Whitechapel Bell Foundry, in 1662 and 1694.^[22] The new bells were then hung in the rebuilt tower.

There are currently nine bells at St Olave's Hart Street consisting of one sanctus bell and eight bells hung for full circle ringing, with the tenor of the eight weighing 11-3-23.^[23] The bells are usually rung for practices, which take place on Thursday evenings between 7:00pm and 8:30pm during term time, and for Sunday service between 10:15am and 11:00am on the 1st and 3rd Sundays in the month.^[24] The bells are currently rung by the University of London Society of Change Ringers ( ULSCR ) who have a healthy band consisting of past and present members of London Universities.

Elisabeth Pepys (Élisabeth de St. Michel) (1640–1669) was the wife of Samuel Pepys, whom she married in 1655, shortly before her fifteenth birthday.

Her father, Alexandre de St. Michel, was born a French Catholic but converted to the Protestant faith. He married Dorothea, the daughter of Sir Francis Kingsmill, in Ireland. Elisabeth was born at or around Bideford on 23 October 1640. She died of typhoid on 10 November 1669.

Elisabeth was second cousin once removed to the writer Anne Kingsmill Finch.

Much of the information on Elisabeth comes from her husband's diary. Samuel remembered their wedding day in great detail, even recalling that Elisabeth had worn a petticoat trimmed with gold lace. Although the couple had a civil ceremony on 1 December 1655, they always celebrated their wedding anniversary on 10 October as this was when a religious ceremony had been held.

It is well known that Samuel himself was unfaithful to Elisabeth, often with their own maids, however it is clear that he held strong feelings for his wife throughout their relationship. When they were away from each other, Samuel greatly missed Elisabeth and, although they separated for several months shortly after marrying, this may have been due to Samuel's strong feelings of jealousy. They reunited shortly before the Diary was begun and lived in Axe Yard.

Samuel's changeable feelings for Elisabeth can be seen throughout his diary. A resentful sentence from 25 April 1663 suggests jealous feelings surrounding Elisabeth and her dancing teacher, or perhaps a simple familiarity with Elisabeth and her self-confidence: ""...merrily practising to dance, which my wife hath begun to learn this day of Mr. Pembleton, but I fear will hardly do any great good at it, because she is conceited that she do well already, though I think no such thing.""^[2]

Samuel's affection towards Elisabeth can be seen prominently in letters during her severe typhoid fever and after her death, as he apologises to fellow politicians and naval captains for not attending board meetings for 4 weeks following her death and not keeping up to date with letters during her illness: ""CAPTAIN ELLIOT, I beg you earnestly to believe that nothing but the sorrow and distraction I have been in by the death of my wife, increased by the suddenness with which it pleased God to surprise me with therewith, after a voyage so full of health and content, could have forced me to so long a neglect of my private concernments.""^[3]

After the death of Elisabeth, Samuel commissioned the erection of a bust to be placed in St Olave Hart Street. When he himself died in 1703, regardless of the fact that he had had another long-term relationship after Elisabeth, he was placed to rest next to his wife on his own orders.

In 1991 Dale Spender published a fictional literary spoof, The Diary of Elizabeth Pepys (1991 Grafton Books, London). Purportedly written by Elisabeth, the book is a feminist critique of women's lives in 17th century London.

type=real photographic (rp)

london borough=city of london

period=post-war (1945-present)

postage condition=unposted

number of items=single

size=standard (140x89 mm)