From: A.& J. Bool
RA Collection: Art
Nos. 13 and 14 show the Churchyard occupying the site of the nave of the ancient Church. A passage of Stowe shows us this Churchyard in a light which seems singular indeed to us:- " I myself, " he writes, "in my youth have yearly seen, on the eve of St Bartholomew the Apostle, the scholars of divers grammar schools repair unto the Churchyard of St. Bartholomew, the Priory in Smithfield, where, upon a bank boarded about under a tree, some scholar hath stepped up, and there hath opposed and answered" (about the princples of grammar) "till he were by some better scholar overcome and put down; and then the overcomer taking the place, did like as the first; and in the end the best opposers and answerers had rewards, which I observed not, but it made both good schoolmasters, and also good scholars, diligently against such times to prepare themselves for the obtaining of this garland." (p.28)...
Accounts of St Bartholomew will be found in Wilkinson's Londina Illustrata; in a paper by Professor Lewis in Transactions of the London and Middlesex Archæological Society , vol.iii.; and of the Fair in Professor Morley's Memoirs of Bartholomew Fair.
The above description, by Alfred Marks, was taken from the letterpress which accompanies the photographs.
226 mm x 180 mm