Plaque: St Olave's Church
St Olave's Church
Forward! Christ - Men. Cross - Men.
"Our own church" - Samuel Pepys, who came through this gate from the Navy Office and his home in Seething Lane to worship here.
"My best beloved churchyard, the churchyard of St Ghastly Grim" - Charles Dickens, 'The Uncommercial Traveller'.
From the burial register:
1586 Sept. 14th Mother Goose
1665 (the Great Plague) 365 names
1703 June 4th Samuel Pepys Esq. buried in a vault under ye communion table.
'The Uncommerical Traveller' was the name of articles that Dickens wrote for his own journal 'All the Year Round'.
Site: St Olave's Church (1 memorial)
EC3, Hart Street
The ghoulish entrance to the graveyard is well-known, with the three skulls and the quote from St Paul about happiness in death. The inscription includes a date, 11 April 1658, Easter Day and, we guess, the day the gateway was inaugurated.
