At Bishopsgate, in the heart of the City, St Helen's is the largest surviving parish church in the City. It is nicknamed the 'Westminster Abbey of the City' for the exceptional density of its funerary monuments — a veritable pantheon of merchants, financiers and notables of the Tudor age.
The pantheon of the City's merchants
Formerly a double church, once shared between a parish and a convent of Benedictine nuns (hence its twin nave), St Helen's gathers a remarkable set of Tudor tombs. The most famous is that of Sir Thomas Gresham (died 1579), the great financier of Elizabeth I, founder of the Royal Exchange — London's first great bourse — and of the Gresham Lectures. His emblem, the grasshopper, which surmounted the Royal Exchange, also appears on his tomb. Around him rest other notables, such as Sir John Crosby (died 1476), a rich merchant, builder of Crosby Hall.
Shakespeare's parish
St Helen's also crossed the path of the greatest of playwrights: William Shakespeare lived in the Bishopsgate district in the 1590s, and the tax records of 1596 attach him to this parish. Before setting up his theatre south of the Thames, the poet was thus, for a time, a parishioner of St Helen's — the church where he may have prayed stands beside the tombs of the merchants who financed the London of his day. To see: the altar-tomb of Thomas Gresham (1579), the tomb of Sir John Crosby (1476), the double nave and the exceptional set of Tudor monuments.
Did you know?
The small grasshopper carved on Thomas Gresham's tomb is no idle ornament: it was his personal emblem, the very one that, as a gilded vane, topped the Royal Exchange he had founded. The symbol of the greatest Elizabethan financier still watches over his grave.
Notes
St Helen's Bishopsgate lies at Bishopsgate, City of London; a working parish church, restored after the bombings of 1992-1993. Access to check according to services.
Quiz
- Why is St Helen's nicknamed the 'Westminster of the City'?
- For its density of funerary monuments
- For its crowned kings
- For its cathedral size
- Which of Elizabeth's financiers is buried here (1579)?
- Sir Thomas Gresham
- Francis Drake
- Walter Raleigh
- Which playwright was a parishioner of St Helen's in the 1590s?
- William Shakespeare
- Christopher Marlowe
- Ben Jonson