page_title: St Bartholomew-the-Great
section_title: Later history
hierarchical_section_title: St Bartholomew-the-Great / History / Later history
caption_attribution_description: English: The view looking east along the south aisle of of St Bartholomew-the-Great Priory Church in London, England.
context_page_description: The Priory Church of St Bartholomew the Great, sometimes abbreviated to Great St Bart's, is a medieval church in the Church of England's Diocese of London located in Smithfield within the City of London. The building was founded as an Augustinian priory in 1123. It adjoins St Bartholomew's Hospital of the same foundation.
  St Bartholomew the Great is so named to distinguish it from its neighbouring smaller church of St Bartholomew the Less which was founded at the same time within the precincts of St Bartholomew's Hospital to serve as the hospital's parish church and occasional place of worship. The two parish churches were reunited in 2012 under one benefice.
context_section_description: In the early 1720s, convinced by Governor of Pennsylvania Sir William Keith, 4th Baronet, Benjamin Franklin worked as a typesetter in a printer's shop in what is now the Church of St Bartholomew-the-Great.
  The Lady chapel at the east end had been previously used for commercial purposes and it was there that Benjamin Franklin worked for a year as a journeyman printer. The north transept was also formerly used as a blacksmith's forge. 
  In 1889, a restoration programme began which saw the restoration of the Lady Chapel and south transept and a new north transept. The restored south transept was opened by Frederick Temple, the Bishop of London, on 14 March 1891; and the south transept in February 1893 in the presence of the Albert Edward, the Prince of Wales, Alexandra of Denmark (the Princess of Wales), Edward White Benson (the Archbishop of Canterbury) and other dignitaries. 
  The Priory Church was one of the few City churches to escape damage during the Blitz and, in 1941, was where the 11th Duke of Devonshire and the Hon Deborah Mitford were married.
  The poet and heritage campaigner Sir John Betjeman kept a flat opposite the churchyard on Cloth Fair. Betjeman considered the church to have the finest surviving Norman interior in London.
  In 2005 a memorial service was held for Sir William Wallace, on the 700th anniversary of the Scottish hero's execution, organised by the historian David R. Ross.
  Charitable distributions in the churchyard on Good Friday continue. A centuries-old tradition established when twenty-one sixpences were placed upon the gravestone of a woman stipulating that the bequest fund an annual distribution to twenty one widows in perpetuity, with freshly baked hot cross buns nowadays being given not only to widows but others.
  The church was designated a Grade I listed building on 4 January 1950. In April 2007 it became the first Anglican parish church to charge an entrance fee to tourists not attending worship.
  After a few years in which the rector of the church was simultaneously priest-in-charge of the nearby St Bartholomew the Less, which retained its own Parochial church council (PCC) and churchwardens, on 1 June 2015, the parishes of both churches were dissolved and replaced with the united benefice of Great St Bartholomew. The Rector of the former parish of St Bartholomew the Great became rector of the united benefice. The boundary of the new parish incorporates precisely both former parishes. There is now a single PCC and churchwardens responsible for both buildings. The parish church is St Bartholomew the Great, while St Bartholomew the Less is a chapel of ease within the parish.
caption: South aisle, looking east toward the sanctuary and Lady chapel
exif: {"Image ImageWidth": "5893", "Image ImageLength": "5140", "Image BitsPerSample": "[16, 16, 16]", "Image Compression": "Uncompressed", "Image PhotometricInterpretation": "2", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image SamplesPerPixel": "3", "Image XResolution": "240", "Image YResolution": "240", "Image PlanarConfiguration": "1", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CC (Windows)", "Image DateTime": "2014:04:06 20:20:53", "Image Artist": "David Iliff", "Image Copyright": "David Iliff", "Image ExifOffset": "304", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "454", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "7190", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0230", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "5893", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "5140"}