Great St. Bart's

Our goal for the day, thank you, Rachel, was the Museum of London. Getting to it entailed some walking in The City and particularly some of its older precincts. One of the joys of touring, for us, is serendipity, getting off course, detours that lead to great things.

The Golden Boy of Pye is about the Great London
Fire (1665) and blame for it; needless to say, the
Protestants blamed the Catholics, and vice versa,
and many blamed the foreigners, and most blamed
the bakers, on whose street the fire began: hence,
the Golden Boy of Pye...and the Sin of Gluttony; I
have my own theory about the origin of The Fire
("follow the money") to be revealed in due course

Himself

The Fire notwithstanding, much older stuff is still around

Smithfield Meat Market

Somewhat off course, we enter the courtyard where William
Wallace was tortured and then executed...and should have been
for allowing himself to be portrayed by Mel Gibson

And then, ahead, the entrance to an obviously very old church

More of which; turned out to be Great St. Bart's, aka, the Priory
Church of St. Bartholomew the Great (there's a Lesser church
nearby)

The usual (thank you!) helpful signage; mostly about Prior Rahere,
founder of the church (see below)

Inside remains of the priory

Helpful image of St. Bartholomew, who, you 
will recall, was martyred by flaying (ouch!)

Helpful map of what remains of the church; 12th century, Norman,
did survive The Fire, but not Cromwell; rebuilt more than once in parts

Much going on in this church; here, a tomb of a plague victim;
"torn from service of state in prime by a disease as malignant as
the time..." The plague occurred mostly in 1665-1666, not a very
good year in London

Our Ben Franklin, himself

The Mary chapel, in the 18th, a print shop, where Franklin worked

Here's where it gets really interesting...Prior Rahere

was (accounts vary) a jester at the court of Henry I;

he was aboard the White Ship when it went down, 

carrying the heir (Pillars of the Earth fans and readers 

will know all about this); later, on a pilgrimage to Rome, 

he had a vision from St. Bart; persuaded Henry to support 

the priory church...

Prior Rahere's tomb; 12th century

Moving on to the church itself, some interesting
glass

Quire and organ; Cromwell's people destroyed the
nave

Chancel and elevation; thoroughly Norman, no
pointy stuff

Among other notables buried at Great St. Bart's,
Sir Walter Mildmay, an official of note who served 
under Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary, and Elizabeth I;
must have been a man of greatest diplomacy; and
flexibility

Back out in the courtyard, note how the tombstones have been
integrated into the contemporary buildings