Southwark Cathedral: memorial to disreputable Bankside’s founders

Amongst the tombs and plaques in Southwark Cathedral remembering the great and good, are memorials to those who were instrumental in the development of Bankside’s notorious reputation. One holder of the post of the Bishop of Winchester, who built an adjoining palatial home and profited from local brothels, is buried here. William Shakespeare and others from the nearby Elizabethan playhouses, where so-called illicit entertainments were performed (more on this in future posts), are remembered too.                 

There are many reasons why you should visit wonderful Southwark Cathedral. Following in the footsteps of those who – rightly or wrongly – helped give the Wrong Side of the River its disreputable reputation was enough to persuade me to this week take a closer look at this fascinating institution. 

Priory church

Legend has it that in 606 a “fayre church called saint Mary over the Rie, or Overie, that is over the water” was, according to Tudor historian John Stow, “founded by a mayden named Mary” on the south bank of the Thames. The religious institution was said to have been left to a community of sisters before St Swithun, the Bishop of Winchester, established a college of priests of the order of St Augustine of Hippo in the 9^th century.

However, firm evidence for a church on this site doesn’t come until 1086 when a ‘monasterium’ was mentioned in the Domesday Book. This record stated that a religious institution had existed here during the reign of Edward the Confessor who ruled England until 1066.  

In 1106 two Norman Knights, William Pont de l’Arche and William Dauncy, built a stone church dedicated to St Mary. The Bishop of Winchester, William Giffard – who as I have charted in a previous blog began building his palatial residence next door in 1107 – founded a priory of Augustian ‘Black’ cannons to administer it. As part of their mission, the canons established what would become Thomas’s Hospital, dedicated to St Thomas Becket who was martyred at Canterbury in 1170.

Most of the original 12^th century priory church was destroyed in a fire in 1212 so only fragments of the original building survive today. Peter des Roches, the Bishop of Winchester at the time, supported the cannons in re-building the priory and the still-standing Retrochoir from the 13^th century, with its four adjoining chapels, is today the oldest complete part of the cathedral.

The tower, which rises above the central crossing, was completed in 1520 by a later Bishop of Winchester, Richard Foxe, a few years after he founded Oxford’s Corpus Christi College. He also provided the great altar screen which survives today, but has been considerably altered over the years.

There’s a fascinating scale model on display inside Southwark Cathedral revealing the extent of this religious complex around 1540. St Mary Overie sits at the centre of the walled compound. You can also see the chapter house, dormitories, a refectory and the stepped access down to the river Thames. While one half of the model is devoted to the church and its precincts, on the other side of St Mary Overie Dock (where the replica of the 15^th century Golden Hinde can be found today), there is Winchester Palace.

Parish church

As part of Henry VIII’s dissolution of the monasteries, in 1539 the priory was surrendered peacefully and the last prior and 12 cannons were pensioned off. The following year the building became the church of the new parish of St Saviour’s. In 1611 local parishioners bought the building from the Crown for £800.  

St Saviour’s parish was home to playhouses and so it’s no surprise that those associated with the likes of the Globe and the Rose appeared in the church’s registers. Half of the actors mentioned in Shakespeare’s First Folio of 1623 had connections and his actor brother’s funeral was also held here. Playhouse owners, including Philip Henslowe, were involved in the purchase of the church in 1614. But the acting community’s relationship with St Saviour’s was by no means always harmonious, with a chaplain criticising those who “dishonour God…..by penning and acting of plays” in a sermon in 1616.

Samuel Pepys visited St Saviour’s on a number of occasions, writing in his diary in July 1663: “I spent half an hour in St Mary’s Overy’s church, where are fine monuments of great antiquity.” But over the course of the 18^th century the building slowly deteriorated and proposals were put forward for most of it to be demolished. In the 1820s architect George Gwilt the Younger led the restoration of the tower and choir of the church. Some parts of the structure were still lost: the Bishop’s Chapel was pulled down to allow a passing road to be widened and the construction of a railway viaduct also caused disruption.

Cathedral

St Saviour’s church gained cathedral status in 1905 and Edward Talbot was appointed the first Bishop of Southwark. In the years running up to this, in 1897, a new nave was built in the Gothic Revival style. The Harvard Chapel was created in 1907 following the re-building of the earlier chapel dedicated to St John the Evangelist. This remembers John Harvard, who was baptised at St Saviour’s in 1607, and after emigrating to New England left a considerable amount of money which enabled the establishment of what is now Harvard University. 

Stain glass added from the late 19^th century nave celebrates famous figures associated with Southwark. On one side of the nave there’s a window remembering Geoffrey Chaucer and depicts the 14^th century Canterbury Tales pilgrims setting off from the Tabard Inn. On the other side of the cathedral a window, designed by Christopher Webb to replace an earlier one destroyed in the Second World War, shows characters from William Shakespeare’s plays. Below it is an alabaster figure carved by Henry McCarty in 1912 which depicts the playwright resting in a Bankside meadow, with St Saviour’s, the playhouses and Winchester Palace in the background.

Modern times

Southwark Cathedral underwent extensive refurbishment work from the 1990s. In 2001 Nelson Mandela opened a new wing with education space, meeting rooms and a refectory. During the construction work part of the 12^th century priory and a section of Roman road were unearthed and are now on display as an ‘archaeological chamber’.

Visitors to Southwark Cathedral today will see how it is lined with plaques and other memorials to the countless parishioners who served the church or were benefactors who helped establish schools or other institutions. But Southwark Cathedral also stands as a prominent memorial to all of those who contributed to the district’s notorious reputation.