Why You Should Visit St Botolph-without-Aldgate in London

The church of St Botolph without Aldgate had a curious show piece, a head in a glass case. The provenience of the head is a great mystery. Different theories as to its history have been proposed, but there are no clues as to whom the head was once attached to. And it looks like the mystery will remain unsolved. 

St Botolph without Aldgate is a staid church, better known for a faithful congregation than as a tourist hot spot in London. For years, though, it was home to one of the more curious exhibits of the capital. It was proud owner of a head in a glass casket. Walter George Bell gave a detailed description of the story surrounding the head. But Alison Weir stated in 1996 that the head had disintegrated by then.

The story of St Botolph doesn’t hold many clues. The first mention of a rector for the Saxon built church is recorded in 1108. The church was extended in 1418; it was rebuilt a hundred years later. By 1739, it had fallen into disrepair and was torn down. A new church was built in 1744 and then widely destroyed by the Victorians (I think they called it embellishment). In 1899, the parish of Holy Trinity, Minories, was merged into St Botolph. And that is where the head came from.

Minories, by the way, is what remained of the word Minoresses, an order of nuns that had owned the area outside the gate of Aldgate. The Minoress monastery had been invested by Edmund, Earl of Leicester and Lancaster in 1293. His second wife, Blanche of Artois, was Queen Regent of Navarra at the time of their marriage and brought nuns of that order with her to England. The monastery was known as St Clare after the church they built there in honor of the founder of the order. Like all monasteries, it was sacked and plundered by Henry VIII and the lands were given to Henry Grey, Duke of Suffolk. St Clare became the church for the parish of Holy Trinity, Minories, and is sometimes also called by that name.

The church fell into disrepair and was rebuilt in 1706. In 1851, a preserved head was found in St Clare under a large pile of sawdust. It is assumed that the tannin preserved it from decay. It was put into a glass casket and displayed in the church. When it was moved to St Botolph it was no longer displayed on order from the vicar who disapproved of the practice.

The vicar of St Clare, the Rev Samuel Kinns, published a book about famous people associated to his church in 1898. In it he suggests that the head is that of Henry Grey, 1st Duke of Suffolk. Henry was the father of Lady Jane Grey, Queen for nine days. He was beheaded for treason on Tower Hill in 1554. Kinns reasons that the Grey family was anxious to spirit away the head before it could be displayed on London Bridge. St Clare lay on their lands and it would be logical for them to bring the head there. His reasoning has as many holes as Emmenthal cheese, though.

Why didn’t they bury the head, but only stuck it into a pile of sawdust? And what about the (equally unproven) story of the Duke’s head being interred in St Peter ad Vincula in all secrecy? The church of St Clare was rebuilt in 1706, but the sawdust remained undisturbed all the time.

The Legge family laid claim to the head, too. The Barons and later Earls of Dartmouth received the land after the Restoration. We may surmise that they had enough scoundrels in the family to account for numerous beheadings. As the head is no longer available, it can’t even be established if the head was severed from a living person or post mortem.

This brings the third story into play. In the late 18th century, a beadle was caught supplementing his income by saving on wood for his heating. He dug out the recently interred, chucked them out of their coffins and used those for fire wood. The head might have been a left-over from that activity, if the story is not a later invention to account for body parts and wood chips being found together.

If you are just a bit curious about St Botolph, I do recommend the blog to you. I have linked it at the end of this article under Tales from the Parish Clerk’s Memoranda. The blog deals mainly in technicalities but has 13 entries under that same title with interesting and amusing stories worth the reading.

St Clare’s, by the by, is reputed to be the burial ground for the ancestors of George Washington. And St Botolph is still worth a visit; at least two more traitors from Tower Hill are buried there, and quite a few celebrities used to be part of the flock, like Chaucer.

Further reading
Bruce Castle or Lordship House
How a House Became a Home in Georgian London
Walking From Somerset to India