A living fossil

This year, two connected institutions in the heart of London celebrate their 900th anniversary. In the first of two articles, John Goodall looks at their foundation story

- John Goodall

St Bartholomew-the-Great, Smithfield, London EC1

ARRIVING at St Bartholomew- the-Great always feels like an act of discovery. A single narrow archway separates the bustle of 21st-century Smithfield from a sequestered cemetery. Confronting the visitor across this green space is a spectacular medieval survival that has become fossilised in the fabric of the city: the patched-up remains of a great church begun exactly 900 years ago. It survived the vicissitudes of the Reformation and has served for the past five centuries as a parish church. Such a survival would be remarkable anywhere in the country. Here, in the heart of London, it is nothing short of miraculous.

The story of how this church came to be built is related in a manuscript written by a member of the religious community that formerly served it. The so-called Book of Foundation survives today in both Latin and English copies of about 1400, but seems to be based on a lost, late-12th-century text. This introduces the figure of Rahere, a man of humble birth who, after a carefree youth spent ingratiating himself into the households of the wealthy and powerful (tradition has consequently bestowed on him the character of a jester), underwent a spiritual reform and went on pilgrimage to Rome. There, he fell sick and pledged to found a hospital for the poor if he survived—which he did.