Holborn: St Andrew's Churchyard

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W. J. Loftie, adding to the incomplete work of Sir Walter Besant, in The Fascination of London, published in 1903, continues his survey of St Andrew's Church:

The most interesting of the interior fittings is a porphyry altar, placed by Sacheverell, who was Rector from 1713 to 1724, and who is buried beneath it.

A marble font, at which Disraeli was baptized at the age of twelve, is also interesting, and the pulpit of richly-carved wood, attributed to Grinling Gibbons, is very handsome.

On the west wall is a marble slab, in memory of William Marsden, M.D., founder of the Royal Free and Cancer Hospitals. It was put up by the Cordwainers' Company in 1901.

In the tower are many monuments of antiquity, but none to recall the memory of anyone notable.

The church stood in a very commanding situation until the building of the viaduct, which passes on a higher level, giving the paved yard in front the appearance of having been sunk.

On this side of the church there is a large bas-relief of the Last Judgment, without date. This was a favourite subject in the seventeenth century, and similar specimens, though not so fine, and differing in treatment, still exist elsewhere.

Malcolm mentions a house next the White Hart, with land behind it, worth 5s. per annum, called "Church Acre," and in the reign of Henry VII the priest was fined 4d. for driving across the churchyard to the Rectory.

In the twenty-fifth year of Elizabeth I's reign there was a great heap of skulls and bones that lay "unseemly and offensive" at the east end of the church.

The register records the burial here, on August 28, 1770, of "William Chatterton," presumably Thomas Chatterton, as the date accords. A later hand has added the words "the poet."

Wriothesley, Henry VIII.'s Chancellor, was buried in St. Andrew's churchyard.

Timbs says that this church has been called the "Poets' Church," for, besides the above, John Webster, dramatic poet, is said to have been parish clerk here, though the register does not confirm it. Robert Savage was christened here January 18, 1696.

There is also a monument to Emery, the comedian, and Neale, another poet, was buried in the churchyard.

But these records combined make but poor claim to such a proud title.

The ground on which Chatterton was buried has now utterly vanished, having been covered first by the Farringdon Market, and later by great warehouses.

When the Holborn Viaduct was built, a large piece of the churchyard was cut off, and the human remains thus disinterred were reburied in the City cemetery at Ilford, Essex.

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