All Hallows-by-the-Tower

All Hallows-by-the-Tower, at one time dedicated jointly to All Hallows (All Saints) and the Virgin Mary and sometimes known as All Hallows Barking, is an Early Medieval Anglican church on Byward Street in the City of London, England, overlooking the Tower of London. According to the church website and other sources it is "the oldest church in the City of London" and was founded in AD 675, although recent research has questioned these claims. The church survived the Great Fire of London in 1666, but was badly damaged during the Blitz in World War II. Following extensive reconstruction, it was rededicated in 1957. From 1922 until 1962 the vicar was Tubby Clayton, and the church is still the guild church of Toc H, the international Christian organisation that he founded.

The origin and early history of All Hallows-by-the-Tower church are obscure. At the time of the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1539 the church belonged to Barking Abbey, a Roman Catholic Benedictine nunnery in Barking, Essex, originally established in the 7th century. The association with Barking was a long one, and All Hallows church was already known as "Berkyncherche" in the 12th century. According to Domesday Book in 1086, Barking Abbey possessed "28 houses and half a church" in London: although the church is not named, it is usually identified with All Hallows.

The original Anglo-Saxon abbey of Barking was founded by Earconwald or Erkenwald, along with Chertsey Abbey, before he became Bishop of London in 675, and it has been claimed that the land on which All Hallows stands was granted to the abbey, under Abbess Æthelburh (Ethelburga), Erkenwald's sister, at that time. A charter dated to 687, listing properties belonging to Barking Abbey, includes two pieces of land in or near London. One of these was simply described as "iuxta Lundoniam", near/next to London, the other as "supra vicum Lundoniae", that is, in "Lundenwic", the Anglo-Saxon town that had grown up in the area of the Strand, a mile to the west of the old Roman city of Londinium; neither of these, though, accurately describes the location of All Hallows church, inside the wall of the Roman city on the eastern side. In 1940, during World War II, the clearance after destruction caused by bombing revealed an archway built of reused Roman tiles and stonework, set in a surviving wall of the medieval church. The reuse of Roman building materials, and comparison with arches in the early Anglo-Saxon church at Brixworth, Northamptonshire, suggested that the All Hallows arch was very early in date, and that an original church could have been built as early as the 7th century. This seemed to confirm the belief that the church had been founded as a daughter church of Barking Abbey at about the same time as the abbey itself was established, although it is doubtful that the first construction on the site would have been in stone. It is more likely that the stone church, of which the arch is a remnant, superseded an earlier wooden building. Recent research, and archaeological evidence that Roman tiles and stone were being used in the construction of other London churches as late as the 11th century, suggest that the arch could have been constructed at any time between the 7th century and the arrival of the Normans. Fragments of three 11th-century stone crosses also found during archeological work in the 1930s and clearance works after the bombing, now displayed in the crypt, also date from this first church. The church was expanded and rebuilt several times between the 11th and 15th centuries, with various elements of the Norman, 13th-century and 15th-century constructions still visible today. Its proximity to the Tower of London meant that it acquired royal connections, with Edward IV making one of its chapels

Church data from Wikidata (CC0). Summary from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA).