St Bartholomew the Great

St Bartholomew the Great, founded in 1123 by Rahere, a courtier turned Augustinian canon, is London’s oldest surviving parish church and one of the finest examples of Norman architecture in England. Rahere established both the church and the adjacent St Bartholomew’s Hospital after a vision of St Bartholomew during a pilgrimage to Rome. The church survived the Great Fire of 1666, the Dissolution of the Monasteries (becoming a parish church in 1539), and the Blitz, though it served various secular purposes over the centuries including a stable, a blacksmith’s forge, and a printing press where Benjamin Franklin worked in 1725. Its proximity to Smithfield Market, site of countless medieval executions including Protestant martyrs burned during Mary I’s reign, charges the location with centuries of spiritual and violent energy.

The ghost of Rahere himself, wearing Augustinian robes, appears regularly in the church he founded, particularly near his ornate tomb in the sanctuary. Witnesses describe him as a solemn figure examining the building as if checking on his creation, walking through the Norman pillars before vanishing into stonework. The most documented sighting occurred in 1940 when a verger saw a robed figure near the tomb during an air raid; approaching to assist what he assumed was a living person, he watched the figure fade away. The church experiences phantom footsteps echoing through empty aisles and the sound of medieval chanting, particularly during the hours when Augustinian canons would have conducted the Divine Office.

The Lady Chapel, which served as a printing house and dwelling in the post-Dissolution period, sees the ghost of a monk in white robes, believed to be one of the Augustinian community. The cloister area experiences unexplained cold spots and the sensation of being watched by disapproving presences. The church’s proximity to Smithfield’s execution ground manifests in phenomena suggesting trauma: screams heard in the churchyard, the smell of burning during still days, and apparitions of distressed figures in Tudor dress. During restorations in the 19th and 20th centuries, workers reported tools moving on their own and the sensation of invisible hands pushing them away from certain areas. The church’s combination of Norman antiquity, monastic history, Reformation violence, and continuous worship creates a spiritually layered environment where nine centuries of London history remain actively present.