The lost church of St Olave Silver Street stood at the cross roads of four streets – Falcon Street, Monkwell Street, Silver Street and Noble Street in an area known as Falcon Square. The church, the square and three of the streets have now all gone, leaving only Noble Street which runs alongside the old Roman Wall near what is now the Barbican. But, as so often in the City of London, the site of the lost church and graveyard has been converted into a small public garden with a fine signboard saying “Welcome to St Olave Silver Street”. In the garden there is a blue plaque, telling visitors that in 1604 William Shakespeare lived opposite, at the house of Christopher and Mary Mountjoy on the corner of Falcon Square. You will also find a large stone basin that might have been a baptismal font and a few gravestones commemorating John Darcy (1593) and Griffeilde Windsore (1600).
St Olave Silver Street seems to have not been significant enough to appear on the Copperplate or Agas maps which show London in 1560. But it is shown as number 88 on the Faithorne & Newcourt of 1658 just above St Mary Staining ( 62) and St John Zachary (41), and to the left of St Alphage (10), St Alban Wood Street (1) and St Mary Aldermanbury (54). Sadly the church was destroyed in the Great Fire of 1666, shortly after this map was made and the parish was combined with the nearby church of St Alban Wood Street. The map below shows how these parishes were previously arranged,
The first mention of the church was as “St Olave de Mukewellestrate”in the 12th century and after that it appeared under a variety of names including “Sancti Olavi de Cripelesgate” in the 13th Century, “St Olave de Sylverstrete,” in 1368 and “St. Olave commonly called St. Towles parish in Silverstrete,”in 1534. Saint Olave was King Olaf II of Norway (995-1030AD) who was canonised by Pope Alexander III. He fought alongside the Anglo-Saxon King Ethelred the Unready against the Danes in the Battle of London Bridge in 1014. A large church near London Bridge – St Olave Southwark – was built to commemorate this battle. This church is also lost but Tooley Street, where London Bridge Station stands, is a corruption of St Olaf. This gives a hint of what medieval English sounded like… try saying “St Olaf” until it becomes “t’oolus or “Tooley” or “St. Towles” as in that name above recorded in 1534.
Maybe the reason why St Olave Silver Street does not appear in the Copperplate or Agas maps is that it had fallen into disrepair. We know than it was “‘newly built and enlarged” around 1600 and a gallery was added in 1632. John Stow, in his survey of London in 1603, clearly did not think much of this church calling it “a small thing, without any noteworthy monuments” so maybe when it was destroyed in the Great Fire it was not much missed.
If you visit the site today, near the entrance you will find two stone tablets. The first shows a skull and cross-bones and is believed to date from the late 17 century. It is certainly much eroded and it is now hard to read the inscription which says “This was the parish church of St. Olave Silver Street, destroyed by the dreadful fire in the year 1666”. The skull here is reminiscent of the skulls that top the entrance to another church dedicated to St Olave – and this one still exists – St Olave Hart Street. That gruesome gateway was described by Dickens as the “Ghastly Grim Gate”. The second stone tablet is more recent and reads :
Saint Olave’s Silver Street
This churchyard was thrown back and the road widened eight feet by the Commissioners of Sewers at the request of the Vestry – Anno Domino 1865
H.J. Cummings – Rector, F.A. Harris & C.E. Wilson – church wardens
I was intrigued by this mention of road widening and decided to trace the changes in this part of London by looking at old maps, a series of which you can see below. An even greater conflagration flattened this whole area in the Blitz of World War 2, as you can see in the bomb damage maps below and the photos of the devastation in Falcon Square and Nicholl Square. The whole area was redeveloped in the 1970s as the Barbican Estate.
The first map is the Ogilby and Morgan map from 1676, just after the Great Fire, which shows the site where the church stood. I have superimposed the route of the modern London Wall road in purple on top of it to help you orient yourself . The circle is the roundabout where the recently closed Museum of London stands. Next comes the Roque Map of 1746 – you can see Monkwell Street, Silver Street and Noble Street, but Falcon Square is yet to be properly developed. In the Horwood Map of 1799, you can now see Falcon square and also how constricted the roadway is outside the churchyard (in pale green). The detailed Goad Fire Insurance map from 1886 shows how the eight feet have been trimmed from the churchyard (as noted on the stone plaque) to widen the roadway. In the Bomb Damage maps made after WW2, the blue areas show the parts of the city that were destroyed beyond repair. This is where the Barbican stands now. The photos show the extent of the destruction.
The wikipedia page for St Olave Silver Street is here and for the Parish Clerks is here