Museums

All Hallows-by-the-Tower Crypt Museum

The oldest church in the City, with a Saxon arch of Roman brick and a second-century Roman floor in the crypt beneath, free.

Also in Sacred London.

All Hallows was founded by the abbey at Barking in 675, by its own tradition, which makes it the oldest church in the City, and it stands close enough to the Tower that the bodies of the beheaded, Archbishop Laud among them, were brought here for burial. Pepys climbed its tower in 1666 to watch the Great Fire, which stopped short of it; the Blitz did not, and when the church was rebuilt an arch of reused Roman brick was found in the ruins, built by the Saxons and the oldest piece of any church in London. The crypt museum below keeps a tessellated Roman pavement of the second century where it was laid, in the floor of a house that stood here before the church, with Saxon crosses, the parish registers that record William Penn's baptism in 1644 and John Quincy Adams's wedding in 1797, and the relics of Tubby Clayton, the vicar who founded the Toc H movement here for the soldiers of the First World War. Entry to the church and the crypt is free.

Where

Byward Street, Leadenhall Market, EC3R 5BJ

Nearest station

Tower Hill · 2 min walk

Hours

NearbyMuseums

• Tower of London3 min walk
• Fusiliers Museum4 min walk
• HMS Belfast4 min walk

NearbyOther Categories

• Tower SubwayScience & Engineering1 min walk
• Tower Hill MemorialMonuments & Ruins2 min walk
• St Olave Hart StreetSacred London2 min walk

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