St Bartholomew the Great

St Bartholomew the Great is identifiable by a small, half-timbered Tudor gatehouse that sits perched atop a much older thirteenth-century stone archway. This priory church in Smithfield was founded in eleven twenty-three by Rahere, a man who served in the court of King Henry the First. Historical accounts describe Rahere as a jester and minstrel who, after a harrowing pilgrimage to Rome where he contracted a severe fever, claimed to have received a vision of the Apostle Bartholomew. The saint allegedly instructed him to establish a hospital and a church in the marshy fields of London.