Place:St. Benet Gracechurch, London (City of), London, England

source: Family History Library Catalog

the text in this section is condensed from an article in Wikipedia St. Benet Gracechurch (#26) was a parish church in the City of London, located on the corner of Fenchurch Street and Gracechurch Street in Bridge Ward. First recorded in the 11th century, it was destroyed in the Great Fire of London of 1666 and rebuilt by the office of Sir Christopher Wren. The church was demolished in 1868. 'St Benet' is short for 'St Benedict' and St Benet Gracechurch was one of four churches in pre-Fire London dedicated to St Benedict of Nursia, the 6th century founder of Western monasticism. Gracechurch meant “Grass Church”, referring to the site of a hay market nearby. The earliest surviving reference to the church is in the 1053 Charter of Brihtmaer conveying a church in Gracechurch Street to Christ Church, Canterbury. The dedication to St Benedict is first recorded during the reign of King Henry III. The church was repaired and "beautified" in 1630 and 1633. Stow, the Tudor antiquarian, mentions various tombs there, including that of the Chamberlain of London John Sturgeon (d. 1571), and also a monument to Queen Elizabeth I. The church was destroyed in the Great Fire of 1666. The tower remained standing for a while, but this too was demolished to make way for the new church. The parish was combined with that of St Leonard Eastcheap (#56) in 1670 and rebuilding began in 1681.

A description of the church after it was rebuilt will be found in Wikipedia which also contains a woodcut image of the church in the 1820s.

In 1791, Dr. George Gaskin, the secretary of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (S.P.C.K.), became rector at St Benet's. His society work entailed co-ordinating the distribution of bibles and other religious works throughout the British Isles. In 1797, he took up the position of rector of the church of Stoke Newington, while maintaining the benefice of St Benet.

The 19th century saw a movement of population from the City of London to surrounding suburbs. This left many of the city churches with tiny congregations, while many of the newly built suburbs had no churches. The Union of Benefices Act 1860 was passed by Parliament, permitting the demolition of City churches and the sale of land to raise money to build churches in the suburbs. St. Benet Gracechurch was demolished in 1868 so that Gracechurch Street could be widened. The land was sold for £24,000 and the proceeds used to build the Church of St. Benet in Mile End Road in Stepney. The parish was combined with that of nearby All Hallows Lombard Street (#4) and the furnishings distributed among several churches. The interments were reburied in the City of London Cemetery, at Manor Park, near Wanstead.

The parish now forms part of the combined parish of St. Edmund the King and Martyr (#39), and St. Mary Woolnoth Lombard Street (#81) with St. Nicholas Acons (#92), All Hallows Lombard Street, St. Benet Gracechurch, St. Leonard Eastcheap, St. Dionis Backchurch (#36) and St. Mary Woolchurch Haw (#80). The name of the church is usually shortened to "St Edmund & St Mary Woolnoth". It is part of the Church of England's Diocese of London. The parishes listed here are located further west, beyond the bounds of the map above. They can be located in the maps attached to their own articles.

Research tips

• The FamilySearch Wiki article entitled St Benet Gracechurch with St Leonard Eastcheap, London Genealogy leads to many sources connected with the church and its parish. This page has a useful map (quite a ways down the page) for placing the parish in relation to its neighbours.

Greater London Research Tips

Researching ancestors in London will probably be more successful than researching ancestors in the rest of England, particularly for the period before 1837 and the advent of civil registration. Baptisms, marriages and burials are available online for County of London parishes, and possibly for parishes throughout Greater London as well.

• Anglican Parishes in London is a wiki here on WeRelate listing the places of worship of the established church throughout London. The churches are grouped within the post-1965 boroughs and for each is the street address, a link to the Booth Map (inner boroughs only), the time span for which the database AIM25 holds records, the FamilySearch Wiki link (see below), the Wikipedia link, and further notes. This is a work-in-progress and not all churches are listed as yet, but it is a guide to a great deal more information on those for which information has been gathered.
• The London Metropolitan Archives (40 Northampton Road, Clerkenwell, London EC1R 0HB) holds records relating to the whole of Greater London. Ancestry (subscription necessary) has produced transcriptions and provides images of lists of baptisms, marriages, and burials in churches across Greater London. Many of these lists start in 1813 and stretch into the 20th century; some start even earlier.

Maps

• A street-by-street map of London (both sides of the Thames, and stretching from Limehouse, Stepney and Greenwich in the east to Hyde Park and Kensington in the west) drawn by Edward Mogg in 1806. Blows up to a very readable level. Highly recommended viewing. Shows named areas on the edge of the County of London (1900-1965) as the small villages they were in 1800. Streets in the City are named, but churches are missing.
• The Phillimore Atlas and Index of Parish Registers edited by Cecil Humphery-Smith and published by Phillimore & Co Ltd (edition of 1995) provides a map of the City of London indicating all the parishes and includes dates of commencement of registers for parishes formed before 1832.
• Wikipedia has an expandable map of the area of devastation of the 1666 fire. The map includes the location of Pudding Lane where the fire started.
• A map of London in the 1890s provided by the National Library of Scotland. There are a few steps between the home page index and the individual maps which may be difficult to follow for those who don't know London, but the maps themselves are produced at the scale of 5 feet to the mile on the original and are very clear. Houses on streets are marked, but not numbered.
• Ordnance Survey map of London 1900 (provided online by A Vision of Britain through Time) showing London parishes just after the reorganization of 1899. The map was originally drawn over a street map at a scale of 1 inch to the mile and can be blown up to inspect a single borough. Only the major streets are marked and are only visible at maximum magnification. The City of London is an inset in the top right hand corner.
• Ordnance Survey map of Middlesex 1900 (provided online by A Vision of Britain through Time) showing the parishes remaining in Middlesex after the reorganization of 1899 when much of the former area of Middlesex had been transferred into London.
• Ordnance Survey map of Surrey 1900 (provided online by A Vision of Britain through Time) showing Surrey parishes (chiefly Southwark) just after the reorganization of 1899 when the most urban parts of Surrey were transferred into London.
• Ordnance Survey map of Kent 1900 (provided online by A Vision of Britain through Time) showing Kent parishes just after the reorganization of 1899 when the western part of Kent had been transferred into London.
• Ordnance Survey map of Essex 1900 (provided online by A Vision of Britain through Time) showing Essex parishes (West Ham, East Ham, Ilford) which were absorbed into Greater London in 1965.

Registration Districts

• Registration Districts in London, Registration Districts in Middlesex, Registration Districts in Surrey, Registration Districts in Kent, and Registration Districts in Essex are lists of the registration districts used for civil registration (births, marriages and deaths, as well as the censuses). There are linked supporting lists of the parishes which made up each registration district, the dates of formation and abolition of the districts, the General Register Office numbers, and the local archive-holding place. This work has been carried out by Brett Langston under the agency of GENUKI (Genealogy United Kingdom and Ireland) and UKBMD - Births, Marriages, Deaths & Censuses on the Internet, and has been updated into the 21st century. If the only information about an individual has been obtained from UKBMD, the name of the registration district is considered a "placename" within WeRelate and can be used to provide a broad estimate of the location.

Cemeteries

• Deceased Online includes four of the "Magnificent Seven" cemeteries (Brompton, Highgate, Kensal Green, and Nunhead) in its inventory of 65 London cemeteries. Transcripts for Abney Park are free with registration online at www.devsys.co.uk/ap/. Ancestry (international subscription necessary) has "London, England, City of London and Tower Hamlets Cemetery Registers, 1841-1966". That leaves West Norwood without comprehensive online access to burial records. (Deceased Online and Ancestry may have increased their provision since this was written in 2016.)
• As of October 2019 Ancestry has a file titled "England & Scotland, Select Cemetery Registers 1800-2016" which includes Abney Park Cemetery, Greenford Park Cemetery, Acton Cemetery, Ealing & Old Brentford Cemetery, Havelock Norwood Cemetery, Hortus Cemetery, South Ealing Cemetery, Queens Road Cemetery, and Chingford Mount Cemetery.
• The City of London Cemetery, at Manor Park, near Wanstead in the London Borough of Redbridge also contains remains transferred from former parishes in the City of London whose graveyards have been replaced by streets and commercial buildings.
• Brookwood Cemetery, beyond the Greater London borders in Surrey, was opened in 1854 for burials for Londoners. See the Wikpedia article.

Other online sources

• See the FamilySearch Wiki under "London" and also under "Middlesex", "Surrey", "Essex" and "Kent" for key information about Greater London's jurisdictions and records, plus links to indexes, reference aids and Family History Library holdings.
• GENUKI has a long list of websites and archive holders in addition to London Metropolitan Archives above. (The list from GENUKI is not maintained so well that there is never a dead link in it. However, it is often worth googling the title given on the page just in case the contributor has reorganized their website and GENUKI has not picked it up.)
• GENUKI also has a list of the Archives and Local Studies Libraries for each of the boroughs of Greater London.
• The London Encyclopaedia by Ben Weinreb and Christopher Hibbert. An e-book available online through Google, originally published by Pan Macmillan. There is a search box in the left-hand pane.
• London Lives. A very useful free website for anyone researching their London ancestors between the years 1690-1800. This is a fully searchable edition of 240,000 manuscripts from eight archives and fifteen datasets, giving access to 3.35 million names.
• London Ancestor, a website belonging to one of the London family history societies, has a list of transcriptions of directories from the 18th century, listing in one case "all the squares, streets, lanes, courts, yards, alleys, &C. in and about Five Miles of the Metropolis..." In other parts of the same website are maps of various parts of 19th century London and Middlesex.
• The proceedings of the Old Bailey, London's central criminal court, 1674-1913. A fully searchable edition of the largest body of texts detailing the lives of non-elite people ever published, containing 197,745 criminal trials held at London's central criminal court. This website is free to use.
• A History of the County of London: Volume 1, London Within the Bars, Westminster and Southwark is only a part-volume from the Victoria County History Series provided by British History Online. It does not offer articles on each of the ecclesiastical parishes in the City of London, but there may be some references to churches that were linked to monasteries.