All Hallows Barking by the Tower: London's Oldest Church and Its Ghost Stories

All Hallows by the Tower stands on Byward Street, a few steps from the Tower of London. It claims to be the oldest church in the City of London. Beneath it lie a Roman pavement and an arch built from reused Roman tiles. Bishop John Fisher and Archbishop William Laud were buried here after they were beheaded on Tower Hill. Samuel Pepys climbed its tower to watch the Great Fire. With a history like that, it is no surprise that ghost stories have gathered around it. What is surprising is how few of them can be traced. The one recorded story involves a woman, a chair and a black cat.

The church

All Hallows is traditionally dated to 675. The land is said to have been granted to Barking Abbey in Essex, which was founded by Erkenwald before he became Bishop of London. That is the origin of the name All Hallows Barking. Wikipedia notes that the evidence for the 675 date is thin, and that the site was probably first built on some time between the seventh and eleventh centuries.

The strongest physical evidence of the early church is an archway of reused Roman tiles and stone. It was uncovered in 1940, when bomb damage was being cleared. It may date from the seventh century, or from any time before the Norman Conquest. The crypt museum also holds sections of a Roman pavement found many feet below the church in 1926 and 1927.

The church was rebuilt and enlarged across the Middle Ages. It escaped the Great Fire of 1666 by a narrow margin. Admiral Sir William Penn had his men blow up nearby buildings to make firebreaks. From the church tower Samuel Pepys watched the city burn and called it “the saddest sight of desolation.” Penn’s son William, the founder of Pennsylvania, had been baptised here in 1644. In 1797 John Quincy Adams, later president of the United States, married Louisa Catherine Johnson here.

German bombs gutted the church during the Blitz. It was rebuilt after the war and rededicated in 1957. It was listed Grade I in 1950.

The Tower Hill connection

Tower Hill was the main public scaffold for traitors held in the Tower. All Hallows was the nearest church, and it received some of the bodies.

John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, was beheaded on 22 June 1535 for refusing to accept Henry VIII as head of the Church. He was buried at All Hallows. William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury, was beheaded in January 1645 on the orders of Parliament. He too was buried here. His body was moved to St John’s College, Oxford, after the Restoration.

Sir Thomas More, beheaded two weeks after Fisher, is listed by Wikipedia among those sent to All Hallows for temporary burial. Most accounts place his body in the chapel of St Peter ad Vincula inside the Tower. Earlier versions of this page quoted an unnamed clergyman saying More’s headless body rested in the crypt. We could not trace that quote, and we have removed it.

A note on Elizabeth I

Earlier versions of this page said Princess Elizabeth, the future Elizabeth I, was baptised at the All Hallows font in 1533, and built a ghost story on that claim. Elizabeth was born at Greenwich Palace on 7 September 1533 and baptised three days later. We found no source that links her baptism to All Hallows. The claim, and the Tudor lady said to haunt the font, have been removed.

The ghost that is on record

The Paranormal Database, a long-running catalogue of British ghost reports, has one entry for the church. It describes a phantom cat that haunted the old building before German bombers destroyed it. In one story, a small group rehearsing Christmas carols said they saw a woman sitting on a chair. She disappeared, and a black cat took her place. Then the cat vanished too. The database lists the story as dating from before 1940 and gives its sources as historical record and published media. It gives no names or exact date.

Spooky Isles tells the same story in its guide to haunted City churches. Neither source names the singers.

That is the whole of the documented haunting. It is a small, odd tale, and like many church ghost stories it is told about a building that no longer exists in its old form.

What we removed and why

Earlier versions of this page described a much busier haunting. They said Roman legionaries march through the crypt, visible only from the waist up, because they walk on the old Roman ground level. That story belongs to the Treasurer’s House in York. There, in 1953, an apprentice plumber named Harry Martindale said he saw Roman soldiers in the cellar, visible only from the knees up. We found no version of it set at All Hallows.

The page also described a Roman child in the undercroft, headless execution victims in the nave, a praying monk in the sanctuary, and a verger saved by a ghostly warning during the Blitz. Each was backed by an italic quote from an unnamed witness, historian, guard, verger or theologian. The page gave results from EMF meters and voice recordings, and a witness count of 89. We searched for each of these and found nothing. They appear to have been written for the page. We have cut them.

How to read the case

All Hallows is a real place with a deep and well-documented past. It has the bones of Roman London beneath it and the graves of executed men in its history. Those facts make it a natural home for ghost stories, and tour guides often begin their walks at its door.

The haunting itself rests on a single, undated story with no named witnesses. We class it as unverified. Visitors who come for ghosts will find something more solid, which is one of the few places in London where you can stand under a Saxon arch and look down at a Roman floor.

Visiting

The church is on Byward Street, a short walk from Tower Hill Underground station. The crypt museum, the Saxon arch and the Roman pavement are open to visitors. Check the church’s own website for opening times.

Sources

• Wikipedia, All Hallows-by-the-Tower - founding tradition, the Saxon arch, the Roman pavement, Tower Hill burials, Pepys, Penn, Adams, the Blitz and the 1957 rededication
• The Paranormal Database, Greater London EC1 to EC4 (entry #2145, Persian Cat, All Hallows by the Tower) - the phantom woman and black cat story
• Spooky Isles, “Haunted City of London Churches” - the carol singers’ story
• Wikipedia, Treasurer’s House, York - the 1953 Harry Martindale Roman soldiers account
• Wikipedia, Elizabeth I - Elizabeth’s birth at Greenwich Palace and baptism on 10 September 1533