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St George the Martyr, Southwark

18th-century Church of England church buildingsAnglican Diocese of SouthwarkChurch of England church buildings in the London Borough of SouthwarkChurches completed in 1736Grade II* listed buildings in the London Borough of Southwark
Grade II* listed churches in LondonRebuilt churches in the United Kingdom
Landscape View of St George the Martyr's Church, Southwark
Landscape View of St George the Martyr's Church, Southwark

St George the Martyr is a church in the historic Borough district of south London. It lies within the modern-day London Borough of Southwark, on Borough High Street at the junction with Long Lane, Marshalsea Road, and Tabard Street. St George the Martyr is named after Saint George. The church is a Grade II* listed building.The church has strong associations with Charles Dickens, whose father was imprisoned for debt in the Marshalsea prison. The surviving wall of the prison adjoins the north side of the churchyard. Dickens himself lived nearby, in Lant Street, lodging in a house that belonged to the Vestry Clerk of St George's. This was during the darkest period of his life when, as a teenager, with his father in prison, he had to work in the 'blacking factory', and his literary career must have seemed an impossible dream. Later, he was to set several scenes of the novel Little Dorrit in and around St George's Church. There is a small representation of Little Dorrit in the east window of the church.It is also a recognised church of the City of London Company of Parish Clerks and the guild church of the Guildable Manor. From 2008 the annual Southwark Quit Rents ceremony, before the Queen's Remembrancer has taken place there.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article St George the Martyr, Southwark (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

St George the Martyr, Southwark
Great Dover Street, London Borough (London Borough of Southwark)

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N 51.501263 ° E -0.092671 °
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St George the Martyr (St George the Martyr with St Alphege and St Jude, Southwark)

Great Dover Street
SE1 1AA London, Borough (London Borough of Southwark)
England, United Kingdom
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stgeorge-themartyr.co.uk

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Landscape View of St George the Martyr's Church, Southwark
Landscape View of St George the Martyr's Church, Southwark
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Suffolk Place
Suffolk Place

Suffolk Place (or Suffolk House) was a mansion house located on the west side of Borough High Street in Southwark, Surrey, on the south bank of the River Thames opposite the City of London. It was the London town house of the Dukes of Suffolk, and was located near Winchester Palace, London seat of the Bishop of Winchester. The position was highly prominent as Borough High Street (or Southwark Street) was the principal thoroughfare leading from London Bridge and the City of London, to Canterbury and Dover, a route used by monarchs and others, including the pilgrims in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. It was built in the fifteenth century and rebuilt in fine Renaissance style in 1522 by Charles Brandon, 1st Duke of Suffolk (c.1484-1545) a favourite of King Henry VIII. On 4 February 1536 it was taken over by King Henry VIII who exchanged it with Brandon for Norwich Place on the Strand, on the north side of the Thames, nearer to the Palace of Westminster. King Henry VIII granted it to his wife Jane Seymour in June 1537, but when she died the following October, it reverted to the King. In 1545 the house was converted into a mint. It was occupied by Queen Mary I (1553-1558) and her new husband Philip II of Spain on the night before their state entry into London in 1554. This was possibly the time when it was depicted by Anthony van den Wyngaerde in his Panorama of London, to the left of Borough High Street in the foreground of the picture. It was demolished in 1557 and the area was built over with small tenements, which became known as The Mint, a notorious rookery. A modern office block called Brandon House at 180 Borough High Street (opposite Borough tube station) now occupies the site of Suffolk Place. It is also memorialised by nearby Suffolk Street.

Marshalsea
Marshalsea

The Marshalsea (1373–1842) was a notorious prison in Southwark, just south of the River Thames. Although it housed a variety of prisoners, including men accused of crimes at sea and political figures charged with sedition, it became known, in particular, for its incarceration of the poorest of London's debtors. Over half the population of England's prisoners in the 18th century were in jail because of debt.Run privately for profit, as were all English prisons until the 19th century, the Marshalsea looked like an Oxbridge college and functioned as an extortion racket. Debtors in the 18th century who could afford the prison fees had access to a bar, shop and restaurant, and retained the crucial privilege of being allowed out during the day, which gave them a chance to earn money for their creditors. Everyone else was crammed into one of nine small rooms with dozens of others, possibly for years for the most modest of debts, which increased as unpaid prison fees accumulated. The poorest faced starvation and, if they crossed the jailers, torture with skullcaps and thumbscrews. A parliamentary committee reported in 1729 that 300 inmates had starved to death within a three-month period, and that eight to ten were dying every 24 hours in the warmer weather.The prison became known around the world in the 19th century through the writing of the English novelist Charles Dickens, whose father was sent there in 1824, when Dickens was 12, for a debt to a baker. Forced as a result to leave school to work in a factory, Dickens based several of his characters on his experience, most notably Amy Dorrit, whose father is in the Marshalsea for debts so complex no one can fathom how to get him out.Much of the prison was demolished in the 1870s, although parts of it were used as shops and rooms into the 20th century. A local library now stands on the site. All that is left of the Marshalsea is the long brick wall that marked its southern boundary, the existence of what Dickens called "the crowding ghosts of many miserable years" recalled only by a plaque from the local council. "[I]t is gone now," he wrote, "and the world is none the worse without it."