MORE Macabre Objects in London Churches - A Guided Tour of Spooky Oddities in 9 Churches

I'm Jessica the Museum Guide, and today I'm taking you on a tour of one of my favourite topics, the spookiest things in London's churches, part two. From a bloody whipping post, to a coffin chain to deter body snatchers, a saint of the black death, to a beheaded archbishop's prayer book, a boiled martyr's body, to doomed effigies, I have so many things to share with you. It's that spooky time of year again, my personal favourite, and I wanted to come back to where things all really started for my channel. This is a sequel to the most macabre things in London's churches, released two years ago now. Immediately after completing that video, I began to find so many weird and wonderful things that I hadn't included, and I began writing this tour. So today, we will visit nine more churches in London, and find their darkest, creepiest, and downright strangest objects. If you're new to my channel, I want to say welcome, I'm so happy that you're here. And if you're a regular viewer, you might be interested in heading over to my Patreon. There you can support my channel by signing up as a monthly patron. You'll get all kinds of extra content there, including an extra video tour every month, and invitations to free in-person tours twice a year. This month, my patrons there have been treated to a video about the spookiest objects in the British Museum. We're talking cursed objects, bog bodies, terrifying goddesses, and so much more. If you're not able to subscribe on a monthly basis, you can actually still access that video as a one-off purchase. Head to the link and it explains how. Now let's start our tour today with a gruesomely dismembered and boiled saint on display at Westminster Cathedral. Not to be confused with nearby Westminster Abbey, which is Church of England. This is a Catholic church, in fact, the largest Roman Catholic church in England and Wales, and it's home to a very strange resident. Saint John Southworth rests in pieces, literally. While it's not uncommon for saints and martyrs and their relics to be on display in churches on the continent, it's actually quite uncommon in the UK. John Southworth was born in Lancashire in 1592 to a recusant Catholic family, which means they paid regular fines to practice Catholicism, which Henry VIII had tried to eradicate back in the 1530s. During the dissolution of the monasteries, more than 900 churches and other religious buildings were disbanded and some left to ruin. Monks, priests, and nuns were forced to convert to the Church of England. Laypeople could pay fines to practice, but they couldn't train to become priests. However, a few brave Catholics, like Southworth, refused to obey. He decided to become a priest despite the danger, attending seminary in France before returning to England to spread his faith. He faced imprisonment and persecution, but continued to practice. Eventually, in 1654, he was sentenced to death during the Puritan rule of Oliver Cromwell. But not just any death, one of the worst in English history. That's right, he was hanged, drawn, and quartered. On the day of his execution, Southworth was dragged through the streets and hanged at the Tyburn tree, which wasn't a tree at all but a massive scaffold, before being cut down and revived to prolong his agony. Next, his manhood was cut off, his intestines pulled out, and his heart removed. He was finally cut into four, with the intention that these pieces would be put on public display to warn others about the perils of practicing the Catholic faith. Soon, the Spanish ambassador, a practicing Catholic, decided to purchase the body of the man he believed to be a martyr. He paid 40 guineas, approximately 5,000 pounds, in today's currency. Now here's where things get really strange. Once in Spain, the body was sewn back together and then parboiled to preserve it. It was stored in a lead coffin at the English college in Douai, France, where Southworth had trained to become a priest. Eventually, the remains were lost, which actually kept them safe during the French Revolution. Somewhat miraculously, his remains were discovered in the garden of the English seminary in 1927. Though they were in bad condition, as you can see here, the parboiling and earlier methods of preservation seemed to have done their job. This was clearly St. John Southworth, with all of the injuries he had undergone during his execution on full display. This photograph here clearly shows the decapitation and then the quartering of the body. They sent Southworth back to London, here to the Catholic Cathedral at Westminster, a few steps from Victoria Station. St. John Southworth was beatified in 1929 and canonized in 1970 as one of the 40 martyrs of England and Wales, and he is a patron saint of priests. You can see here the ghoulish spectacle of John Southworth's dismembered body. He's wearing a priest's garment, gloves, shoes, and a mask, disguising his tortured skeleton underneath. And is it a bit sacrilegious if I say he looks like Elvis to me? We're here at St. Clement Dane's on Strand, and before we head inside and into the crypt, listen here for a moment. That's the sound of the church bells playing the famous nursery rhyme, Oranges and Lemons. Why? Well, this is the St. Clement's church referenced in the song, Oranges and Lemons, the bells Now let's make our way into the crypt of this, the Church of the Royal Air Force. More on that in a short while. After making my way down these winding steps, I came across what seemed like a fairly unremarkable old chain hanging on the wall. Probably just part of the building or a gate, right? Wrong. This is actually a coffin chain. Coffin chains were used as protection against a common 18th and 19th century graveyard scourge, body snatchers, or as they like to be known, resurrection men. In part one to this video, I included a few different objects related to body snatchers, an iron coffin at St. Bride's, and the watch house at St. Sepulchre. While I think of this coffin chain as a less expensive and less sophisticated version of the iron coffin, you could wrap this chain around your loved one's wooden coffin to secure the lid, and it would deter the body snatchers. They could absolutely still break in, but this was just an added obstacle that would hopefully encourage them to choose a different corpse. Remember, body snatchers could make one month's wage for digging up a corpse and selling it to medical students and anatomists for post-mortem examinations, especially after the rise of the modern medical school in the late 18th century. There's one other horrific sight I want to show you here at St. Clement Dane's before we move on. If we step outside and stand on the north side of the church, we can see this damage sprayed all up the side of the wall. My tour guests are often initially confused by this. Why would such a famous church have such prominent damage left unmended? Well, the damage itself acts as a memorial to World War II and the blitz bombings of 1940 and 1941. People walk by damage like this every day without even noticing it or realizing its significance. An incendiary bomb pierced the lead roof of the church on May 10, 1941, and burned out the interior, but there was one silver lining. When they rebuilt the church, they opened the crypt for the first time since the burial act of 1852, which had prohibited further city burials, and they discovered everything I've showed you here. In the years after the war, the Royal Air Force adopted St. Clement Dane's, and today it is its official church in London. I just want to pause for a second and thank the sponsor of today's video, Surfshark VPN. I find Surfshark extremely useful when I'm at home and when I'm traveling, and I think you will too. As many of you know, I was recently traveling in Belgium and Amsterdam, so get ready for some upcoming tours of the Rijksmuseum, the Cheese Museum, and some interesting oddities, of course. But even though I love traveling, I don't like worrying about security when I'm using public Wi-Fi. I spend a lot of time filming and editing, and the last thing I want to do is risk losing my footage or my banking details. Basically, Surfshark creates a virtual tunnel to keep all of your personal information safe and secure while you're out of the house or out of the country. Not to mention, you can use it to virtually change your IP address to get access to movies on streaming services in other countries. That let me watch Willem Dafoe play Vincent van Gogh, or Van Gogh, in At Eternity's Gate to really get me in the mood for Amsterdam and its museums. Head to www.surfshark.com slash themuseumguide for four extra months of Surfshark. It's a great opportunity to give it a try, because best of all, there's a 30-day money-back guarantee, so you can take some time to find out if it's right for you. Again, that's www.surfshark.com slash themuseumguide. Thanks Surfshark. Now let's get back to our creepy museum objects. Now, St. Martin's-in-the-Fields is one of the most famous churches in the capital. It stands at the northeast corner of Trafalgar Square, and I have an upcoming Patreon video just about the oddities of Trafalgar Square. There's a surprising amount. There's been a church on this site since at least 1222, but the current building dates from the 1720s. But while the Baroque interior is stunning and bedecked in lots of white and gold, we of course, want to head down into the crypt. This is a pretty unusual crypt in its own right, because it houses a bustling restaurant that attracts tourists from around the world. It's pretty decent, I eat here now and then, but remember to look down, because you might just be having lunch on top of a permanent resident. But remember, due to the Burial Act, interments were stopped in 1853. The burial vaults were cleared, famous surgeon John Hunter was moved from here to Westminster Abbey, right next to Ben Johnson, who was famously buried upright. This is also the home of Nell Gwynne, one of Charles II's mistresses, mother to two of his sons, and known as Pretty Witty Nell. However, I came here today to show you this whipping post, which dates from 1752. Public whipping, particularly in a busy site such as Trafalgar Square, was a common punishment for a host of crimes, including vagrancy and drunkenness, immorality, and the public dissent of the crown. Offenders were tied to whipping posts like this one, don't get it confused with a pillory, which has holes for securing the head and hands, no, with a whipping post, once the person was strapped onto it, a number of lashes, decided by the magistrate, was administered until the quote, body was bloody as a result of the whipping. The practice of flogging people in public, particularly on market days when the crowd would be at its largest, began in 1572 and was finally stopped in 1791 for women and 1837 for men. This whipping post seems extra brutal for all of its decorative details, which appears to be some sort of cherubic figure mocking the victim strapped to the post for their beating. Well, when it comes to famous churches, not just in London, not just the UK, but of the world, here's one of the big guns. We're down the street from Westminster Cathedral and we're in Westminster Abbey, and it never fails to take my breath away, and I couldn't resist including one of the spookiest and most macabre things in any London church. So we're here in St. Michael's Chapel, and this is the memorial monument to Elizabeth Nightingale. Poor Elizabeth Nightingale, no relation to Florence, died in 1731 after delivering a premature stillborn baby. Some say that she was shocked by a flash of lightning and that that hastened her death. Her husband was so bereft that he spent the next three decades planning this elaborate tomb, which was erected in 1761. We can see the beautiful Elizabeth dying and her husband trying to protect her from death, who has his deadly spear aimed right at her. Of course, we know that Mr. Nightingale would not succeed. The spear is meant to evoke the lightning that her family believed contributed to her death. In the years after she passed away, Elizabeth's brother-in-law had a terrifying nightmare in which a skeleton appeared at the end of his bed and skittered up under the covers, snuggling in between he and his wife. The idea was relayed to the artist, Louis-Francois Robilliac. He was a French sculptor living in England at the time. Death has somehow lost his lower jaw, but I think he is all the more frightening for it. His gnashing maw is even more exposed. The chapel is missing an unusual artifact. Apparently a thief broke into the abbey late one night, but the sculpture scared him so badly that he dropped his crowbar. Now let's head to another famous church, or should we say infamous? This church was built by the Knights Templar, the order of pious Christian knights embedded into most financial and cultural institutions in the 12th and 13th centuries. This was their English headquarters in the Temple Precinct, which is a fascinating area in its own right. The church is based on the Round Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem and was consecrated in February 1185 and later served as the treasury during the reign of King John. To try to tell the entire story of the Knights Templar and this church in a vignette would do disservice to this fascinating history, so I have a video just on Temple Church and the mysterious rise and fall of the Knights Templar planned in the future. There is just so much more to this storied place than what I have time for today, but in the meantime I wanted to include these iconic effigies in our tour. There are nine effigies in all and one grave cover that survived the Great Fire of 1666 and mostly survived the Blitz, though admittedly some are worse for wear than others. While there is nothing explicitly creepy or ghoulish about them, they are certainly mysterious and they have spawned a millennium of conspiracy theories and lore. I mean, Da Vinci Code, anyone? That famous scene took place here amongst the effigies. You might remember that scene in the book and movie where Sophie gets shivers down her spine as she gazed at the grotesques on the Temple's walls, although some of these are actually quite silly. But let's focus on this, the most famous effigy in the church. This one here of William Marshall, the first Earl of Pembroke. He was called the quote best knight that ever lived in his eulogy. He spent much of his life as a chivalric knight, not a Knights Templar, serving under five kings and famously liaising between King John and a bunch of angry barons just before the signing of the Magna Carta. Marshall was so trusted and highly regarded that he was even named regent when King John died and Henry III inherited the throne as a young child. Marshall is heavily associated with the Knights Templar because of his effigy here, but he actually only took his vows just before his death in 1219. He said he was fulfilling a promise he had made while on crusade in his youth, and after he took those vows, he was buried here in the Templar's church. The resulting effigy is magnificent, with the strangely pointed feet so common in Templar effigies meant to suggest movement and action. He's here with his drawn sword and with a dog at his feet to symbolize fidelity and loyalty. His sons William and Gilbert Marshall are also here, but I should note that there is some controversy about the identity of all three of these men. Some believe that these effigies don't represent the Marshalls at all, partially owing to the I'll delve into this mystery further in my video about the Temple Church in the future. But like St. Clement Dane's, Temple Church was also nearly destroyed in the Blitz on 10 May 1941, when German incendiary bombs set the roof of the Round Church on fire. It quickly spread to the nave and the chapel, and the effigies were badly damaged. But thankfully, the Victoria and Albert Museum had cast the effigies in bronze nearly a century earlier for display in the cast court, so we know exactly what they looked like. The casts are here, on loan from the V&A, so no matter who they actually depict, we can easily compare them side by side and see what they would have looked like in their heyday. Now let's head to St. Dunstan in the West. I don't know if this is necessarily spooky, but there's something extremely ominous about these weird statues hidden in a little alcove just off of Fleet Street. These are statues of the likely mythical King Lud and his two sons, Androgeus and Theomancius. Together, these three used to sit atop Ludgate, a gate in the Roman Wall just a few hundred meters from here. Ludgate was dismantled in the 18th century. It was impeding traffic in an ever-growing London. The stones from that wall, by the way, were reused in a lot of Georgian and Victorian masonry. Now, as you can see here, the sign from the church claims that the statues are from the 14th century, but they might actually even be older, from the 13th century, or they might be younger, from the 15th or 16th. See, no one is actually sure. But you can check out this print from 1795 for a feel of how they might have looked in their prime. Now, some people like to believe that the Roman name Londinium is somehow based on the name of this king, but let's be clear. King Lud here is entirely made up, and that etymology of the Ludgate was actually so named from the Old English Ludgate, which meant back gate or postern, or from the town of Ludgate in Kent, which had the same etymology. But the idea that Ludgate and even Londinium originate with this man here is a persistent myth. See, Lud, his sons, and all of this lore come from Geoffrey of Monmouth. He was a 12th century chronicler who blended a mix of oral tradition and products of his own imagination. He states that Lud named this city Caer Lud, Lud's Fortress, and that that name morphed over time. The only problem is that there is zero evidence that there was any kind of significant settlement here before the Romans, and there is no historical evidence for Lud, just these crumbling old statues. Not to mention, Lud and his sons, if they actually existed, would have been pre-Roman indigenous Britons, maybe Trinovantes. They wouldn't have been wearing Roman garb, but the medieval sculptor hasn't really thought of that or realized that there should be a difference, so they're dressed in tunics. Before we leave the churchyard, check out this statue of Elizabeth I. She was also reclaimed from Ludgate, and she is the oldest confirmed outdoor statue in London. She dates from 1586. By the way, the church also references another one of London's enduring pagan myths. Here on Fleet Street, we can see this prominent clock that features the giants Gog and Magog using their clubs to hit the hour bell. Gog and Magog are considered the traditional guardians of the city of London, and wicker effigies of them are carried every year in the Lord Mayor show. Why are they connected with London? Well, we have to thank, who else, Geoffrey of Monmouth. His largely fanciful and influential histories linked Celtic royalty to the heroic world of Greek myth by way of the old Welsh legend of King Arthur. If you'd be interested in a video about more remnants of these strange old legends and pagan symbolism in London, let me know. It all gets very wicker man at times. Let's head across the river for our next church. I'm now in the impressive Southwark Cathedral, previously known as St. Mary Overy, named for the dock, which is Overy the Thames, medieval English. It's home to one of my favourite residents in London, Hodge the Church Cat, named for Samuel Johnson's cat, who is honoured with his own statue on the other side of the river. There are actually a lot of famous cat monuments and memorials in London. I'll probably make a video about these kitties in the city. Let me know if you'd be interested. But Hodge isn't the reason why we're here today. Nor are these whimsical ceiling bosses that used to adorn the Gothic vaulted ceilings. Nor are we here to look at this layer cake of medieval and Roman artefacts that you can study in the hallway. No, instead I want to show you an unusual and deeply meaningful tomb effigy that depicts its inhabitant in a strange and macabre way. This is the Transea Tomb of Thomas Cure, though there is some debate over that, with some suggesting that the true inhabitant is unknown. We usually see effigies for kings, queens, bishops and nobles. Places like Westminster Abbey and Canterbury Cathedral are full of them. But here in Southwark Cathedral, we can see a very different type of effigy. This is an example of a transea tomb, otherwise known as a cadaver monument. Transeas, or transeis, are funerary effigies that feature a skeleton or an extremely emaciated or decomposing body, which were common in the late Middle Ages. Now why on earth would you honour a dead person with a likeness of their rotting flesh? Well this was designed to remind visitors of the transience and vanity of mortal life, which should be in contrast to the eternity of the Christian afterlife. Now let's not get transeas confused with gissants. These are also effigies, but they are in full dress, with open eyes and their hands clasped in prayer. We usually see effigies for kings, queens, bishops and nobles. I feature a wonderful gissant in my video of the off-the-beaten-track Louvre. Skip to the chapter on the tomb of Philippe Potte. I love Burgundian gissants so much that I'm planning a trip to Dijon in the next few years to see even more of them in situ. No, these cadaver monuments first appear around the 1380s, and they remained popular for the next few centuries. Over time, and as the poem The Three Living and The Three Dead became more popular, in which three handsome young men encounter three rotting corpses that represent their future, the depictions became more realistic and actually quite gruesome. Some even featured the deceased being eaten by worms and maggots. Thankfully, Mr. Cure here is a little tamer. He was an Elizabethan worthy, that is, he impressed the Queen when he acted as her saddler. He was also saddler to Elizabeth's siblings Edward VI and Queen Mary I, and he owned a fleet of ships and stood in Parliament. When he died in 1588, his family elected that he be remembered with a cadaver effigy. In this example, he looks more withered than rotting, but he's very much dead and supposed to remind us that we too will die. Now here at St. Catherine Cree, back in the city of London, we actually have another trancy sculpture here in the garden that Vicar Josh was kind enough to show me. We'll have more from Vicar Josh a bit later on. This is William Avedon, a goldsmith who died in 1631. However, that isn't what we're here to see today. Instead, I want to share something else with you. This bizarre, almost saint-like worship of the only king to be beheaded, Charles I, and a prayer book that belonged to an archbishop that he appointed. Now let me just tell you a little bit about the church. St. Catherine Cree is located in the heart of the financial district. It survived the Great Fire and managed to escape the bombs of the Blitz, and it's a rare example of Jacobian architecture in the city. The church was rebuilt in 1628-31, right on top of the original 13th century church, and I'll come back to that. And being inside this space is like being transported into the 17th century. Now if you want to learn more about this church, head over to my Patreon and you'll find a dedicated video tour, including much more from the vicar and a tour of the secret garden. But let's get back to this statue of Charles I. We can see this statue here, where he looks like a saint, with an axe at his feet, acting as a reminder of his beheading outside Whitehall Palace in 1649. It even calls him King Charles the Martyr. The connection between this church and King Charles I is a man called William Laud. He was the Bishop of London during the rebuilding of this church in the 1620s, and he was a staunch supporter of Charles I. Charles appointed him Archbishop of Canterbury in 1633. However, Laud eventually fell out of court, and during the long parliament of 1640, he was accused of treason. The Grand Remonstrance of 1641 called for his imprisonment, and he was kept in the Tower of London. In 1645, he was found guilty of treason and executed on Tower Hill. As Vicar Josh is going to tell you, part of the evidence against him was the consecration of this very church. His demeanour and actions during the ceremony were said to be too Catholic in nature. As I was here poking around, Vicar Josh was happy to answer some questions for me, and when he realised I was interested in the statue of Charles I, he showed me something extraordinary – the 1630 prayer book that belonged to William Laud, and that was used while he consecrated this building. Anyway, this is the prayer book that he used, 1630, and this was the prayer book that William Laud used in that service of consecration, but was then quoted or cited in his trial as evidence that led to his conviction. Before we leave St Catherine Cree, let me point out one other detail of the church that sends utter shivers up my spine. That's because this column here is all that is poking up out of the earth, from the original church. And that means that the original church is somewhere down there, and we don't know how deep or in what condition. Maybe I watched Poltergeist one too many times as a child, but an ancient subterranean church at some unspecified depth, at least partially intact below my feet? That really creeps me out. Here is yet another church that could be the subject of its own video – our final church on the tour, All Hallows by the Tower, which cites itself as the oldest church in the City of London, thought to have been founded in 675. It was saved from the Great Fire, more on that in a moment, but was badly bombed in the Blitz. Again, like so many other churches, the Blitz damage unearthed fascinating details about the past, including Roman tiles and Roman gravestones, like this one. This is thought to have originally been a husband and wife, but she is broken off. Like St. Bride's Church, which is featured in Part 1, All Hallows by the Tower also has a crypt museum, which is where I am right now, after walking through this Anglo-Saxon archway to come downstairs. The museum is filled with all kinds of archaeological finds and church history, including its connections to William Penn, of Pennsylvania. He was baptized here, and his father, Admiral William Penn, had his men from a nearby naval yard blow up the surrounding buildings to create firebreaks and save the church from the Great Fire of London. The museum is well worth a visit if you are visiting the Tower of London next door, and it is free. But I spotted something rather unsettling in the main body of the church. In addition to plenty of memorials and effigies that you would expect in a church of this age, there is also a wooden statue to St. Roch. If you watch my videos regularly, especially the ones about art history, you already know that I love a good hagiography, that is, the biography of a saint, the more lurid the better. St. Roch, also known as St. Rolox in Scotland, is the patron saint of bachelors, diseased cattle, dogs, falsely accused people, invalids, Istanbul, surgeons, tilemakers, gravediggers, second-hand dealers, pilgrims, and apothecaries. Leave some professions for the rest of them, Roch. He is evoked against a few particular diseases, including epidemics, knee problems, and the plague. We can see why here. He is lifting his robes to show us the plague buboes on his leg just above the knee. These are the characteristic sores of the bubonic plague. He was born in Montpellier in the early 14th century, and marked with a large red cross birthmark that grew as he did. Roch later worked to help the poor who were afflicted by the plague. Although the date of his death and the dates of the first major wave of the plague don't really match up, but let's ignore that inconvenient fact, shall we? His words of prayer and the sign of the cross and a touch of his hand were said to be enough to cure even the sickest patients. However, when he fell ill with the plague himself, he retreated into the forest and built a little shelter. A hunting dog belonging to a local nobleman supplied him with bread that he would bring to him into the woods and licked his wounds, healing them. The nobleman, following his hunting dog, discovered Roch and brought him home to recover. However, Roch was later arrested as a spy and languished in jail for five years before dying in 1327. After a huge surge in popularity during the Italian Black Death of 1477-79, he has been particularly venerated during outbreaks of the plague. After all, he survived the plague, and so he could offer hope to the hopelessly ill. There was a renewed interest in St. Roch even during the COVID pandemic. The statue is missing something, though, and that is the dog who helped him in the forest, who is always depicted carrying a loaf of bread in his mouth. As a massive dog lover, I really love this. By the way, I can't resist mentioning another French-born saint who was an actual dog. Guinevere was a greyhound in Lyon around 1250. His owner killed him when he discovered the dog covered in his baby's blood. However, it turns out that Guinevere had been defending the baby from a poisonous snake. Once the owners realized the true nature of their heroic dog, they buried Guinevere in their well and filled the well with rocks, stones, and plants. This became a site of pilgrimage, and Guinevere was venerated locally as a folk saint. Despite repeated prohibitions by the Catholic Church, the cult of the dog saint persisted for several centuries, and the last child brought to the shrine to be cured of an illness was in the 1940s. A strange and interesting way to end our tour today. Thank you so much for coming on this tour with me today. I hope you've enjoyed seeing all of these strange and wonderful objects, and some pretty macabre ones, as much as I've enjoyed showing them to you. And I'll see you the next time I'm at the spooky old church. Happy Halloween, everybody!