This 13th century church, the largest surviving parish church in the City of London, was William Shakespeare’s local church when he lived nearby in the 1590s.
Referred to as the ‘Westminster Abbey of the City’, due to its extensive collection of Tudor monuments, St Helen’s, Bishopsgate contains memorials to: Sir John Crosby (d. 1476) and his wife, Agnes; Sir Andrew Judd (d. 1558); Sir William Pickering (d. 1574); Sir Thomas Gresham (d. 1579); Sir John Spencer (d. 1610); and Sir Julius Caesar Adelmare (d.1636).
It is one of the very few churches in the City to survive both the Great Fire and the Blitz, although it was badly damaged by IRA bombs in 1992 and 1993 and has been substantially restored.
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