St Etheldreda’s chapel is the only surviving building from the vast medieval complex of Ely Palace in Holborn, the London palace of the Bishops of Ely when they came down from Cambridge to Parliament. Visitors going through the gates into Ely Place find themselves leaving London and entering an independent state under the jurisdiction of the See of Ely (even the police have to ask permission to enter there). The chapel takes its name from one of England’s most popular saints of the day.
The cult of St. Etheldreda (familiarly known as St. Audrey) was centred in East Anglia. Etheldreda was an Anglo-Saxon princess who died in Ely in 679 of plague, during an outbreak which carried off several members of the monastic community she established. A tumour in her neck was removed by a doctor shortly before her death. According to the Venerable Bede, when her body was examined seventeen years later, it was not only found to be uncorrupted, the wound from the surgery was found to have healed. Etheldreda herself had attributed the neck tumour to divine punishment for her youthful fondness for costly necklaces.
‘Come, you promised me a tawdry-lace and a pair of sweet gloves’, says the shepherdess Mopsa in Shakespeare’s Winter’s Tale, and this contains a direct reference to St. Etheldreda: ‘Tawdry’ was a corruption of ‘St. Audrey’ and a tawdry-lace was a lace necklace sold at St. Audrey’s fairs, usually held in late June. In medieval times the necklaces were believed to cure illnesses of the throat and neck. After the cultural revolution that was the Reformation, anything so tainted by the old faith was now ‘trish-trash’, and the word ‘tawdry’ was to take on a pejorative meaning.
John of Gaunt, the most powerful 14th century magnate, stayed in Ely palace until his death, and Shakespeare put these immortal lines into his mouth on his deathbed scene in Richard II:
This royal throne of kings, this sceptr’d isle,
This Earth of majesty; this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi-Paradise
This fortress built by Nature for herself
Against infection and the hand of war,
This blessed plot, this Earth, this realm, this England.
It is thought that John of Gaunt's body may have lain in state in the Crypt before burial.
Medieval chronicles talk about the cloister and the gardens of St Etheldreda's, saying how wonderful they were with their fields of saffron and strawberries. In 1666, the Great Fire of London destroyed everything in its path, but when it reached St Etheldreda's, the wind changed and the ancient church was saved.
By Dickens’ day the area had turned into the city’s most atrocious slum: Saffron Hill is where the Artful Dodger took Oliver Twist, and it was nearby that the writer sited the infamous Fagan’s Den and Thieves’ Kitchen.
St Etheldreda's Church is just a stone's throw from the noise and bustle of modern day London, a hidden gem in the middle of Hatton Garden, a place where the tradition of charitable works is carried on to this day by the Rosminian Order, and a place where people have found spiritual sanctuary since the Middle Ages.
This information has been taken from the church website, to find out more visit www.stetheldreda.com/history, where at the bottom of the webpage there is a link to Peter Bridgeman's fascinating essay on the many connections between Shakespeare and St Etheldreda's.
The cult of St. Etheldreda (familiarly known as St. Audrey) was centred in East Anglia. Etheldreda was an Anglo-Saxon princess who died in Ely in 679 of plague, during an outbreak which carried off several members of the monastic community she established. A tumour in her neck was removed by a doctor shortly before her death. According to the Venerable Bede, when her body was examined seventeen years later, it was not only found to be uncorrupted, the wound from the surgery was found to have healed. Etheldreda herself had attributed the neck tumour to divine punishment for her youthful fondness for costly necklaces.
‘Come, you promised me a tawdry-lace and a pair of sweet gloves’, says the shepherdess Mopsa in Shakespeare’s Winter’s Tale, and this contains a direct reference to St. Etheldreda: ‘Tawdry’ was a corruption of ‘St. Audrey’ and a tawdry-lace was a lace necklace sold at St. Audrey’s fairs, usually held in late June. In medieval times the necklaces were believed to cure illnesses of the throat and neck. After the cultural revolution that was the Reformation, anything so tainted by the old faith was now ‘trish-trash’, and the word ‘tawdry’ was to take on a pejorative meaning.
John of Gaunt, the most powerful 14th century magnate, stayed in Ely palace until his death, and Shakespeare put these immortal lines into his mouth on his deathbed scene in Richard II:
This royal throne of kings, this sceptr’d isle,
This Earth of majesty; this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi-Paradise
This fortress built by Nature for herself
Against infection and the hand of war,
This blessed plot, this Earth, this realm, this England.
It is thought that John of Gaunt's body may have lain in state in the Crypt before burial.
Medieval chronicles talk about the cloister and the gardens of St Etheldreda's, saying how wonderful they were with their fields of saffron and strawberries. In 1666, the Great Fire of London destroyed everything in its path, but when it reached St Etheldreda's, the wind changed and the ancient church was saved.
By Dickens’ day the area had turned into the city’s most atrocious slum: Saffron Hill is where the Artful Dodger took Oliver Twist, and it was nearby that the writer sited the infamous Fagan’s Den and Thieves’ Kitchen.
St Etheldreda's Church is just a stone's throw from the noise and bustle of modern day London, a hidden gem in the middle of Hatton Garden, a place where the tradition of charitable works is carried on to this day by the Rosminian Order, and a place where people have found spiritual sanctuary since the Middle Ages.
This information has been taken from the church website, to find out more visit www.stetheldreda.com/history, where at the bottom of the webpage there is a link to Peter Bridgeman's fascinating essay on the many connections between Shakespeare and St Etheldreda's.