CAROLS AND CHRISTMAS LUNCHEON
This year our Carol Service will be held at Saint Olave Hart Street
8 Hart Street, London, EC3R 7NB, England at 11:00 am on Tuesday 3rd December.
St Olave Hart Street is one of the few mediaeval churches to survive the Great Fire of London. It is best known as the burial place of Samuel Pepys and his wife Elizabeth; the famous diaries of Samuel Pepys provide the most vivid first-hand account of the fire of 1666 and subsequent life.
St Olave’s has strong links to several historic London livery companies and other historic associations, most notably The Clothworkers’ Company, The Trinity House, The Environmental Cleaners and The Pepys’ Club. The Victorian author Charles Dickens lived close by and called St Olave’s ‘St Ghastly Grim‘, referring to the gargoyles on the churchyard gate.
St Olave’s has been a place of Christian worship and sanctuary for almost 1000 years.
The church is named after Saint Olave. At the 1014 Battle of London Bridge between the Danish army and the English King Ethelred, known to history as ‘The Unready’; Olav supported the Christian king of England in an attempt to regain his throne from the pagan Danes. In Rouen, Olav encountered the faith of Jesus Christ and was baptised in Rouen, France.
The first church in Hart Street may have been erected around AD 1050, a simple timber structure and in the 13th century, it was rebuilt in stone, and then again in 1450 under the patronage of Richard Cely, a wealthy wool merchant who died in 1482.
Upon returning to Norway, Olaf is known for bringing Christianity there; he was canonised after his death in 1030 and became the patron saint of Norway became known as its “Perpetual King” Our church on Hart Street could well have been built on the site of the battle.