Place:St. Botolph Without Aldersgate, London (City of), London, England

source: Family History Library Catalog

the text in this section is condensed from an article in Wikipedia St. Botolph Without Aldersgate (#30) (also known as London St. Botolph Aldersgate) is a Church of England church in the north of the City of London dedicated to St. Botolph. It is located on Aldersgate Street in the City of London. The "Without" signifies that it was situated beyond a gate in the City Wall (now demolished). Of medieval origin (founded before 1291), the church survived the Great Fire of London with only minor damage but subsequently fell into disrepair and was rebuilt in 1788–91. The church is renowned for its beautiful interior and historic organ. After the Great Fire of London the church became unsafe and was demolished and rebuilt in its present form in 1788-91. The new church was built of brick, with a low square bell tower at the west end constructed on the remains of its stone predecessor.

Currently, St. Botolph's Without Aldersgate is used by the London City Presbyterian Church, a congregation of the Free Church of Scotland.

St. Botolph

The church was one of four in medieval London dedicated to Saint Botolph or Botwulf, a 7th-century East Anglian saint, each of which stood by one of the gates to the City. The other three churches dedicated to St. Botolph were St. Botolph's, Billingsgate (destroyed by the Great Fire and not rebuilt), St. Botolph Without Aldgate, and St. Botolph Without Bishopsgate. Before the legend of Saint Christopher became popular, Botolph was venerated as the patron saint of travellers, which is thought to be why churches at the City gates have this dedication.

Churchyard

St. Botolph's churchyard was combined with those of St. Leonard Foster Lane, and Christchurch Newgate Street, into an open space named Postman's Park in 1880 (it was adjacent the former General Post Office), and this now contains the Watts Memorial to Historic Self-Sacrifice, commemorating civilian Londoners who died heroic deaths.

For more information, see the EN Wikipedia article St Botolph's, Aldersgate.

Aldersgate

The ward of Aldersgate straddles the (now former) line of London Wall and the old gate and historically was divided into "Within" and "Without" divisions. The old gate was taken down in 1617, and rebuilt in the same year. The gate was damaged in the Great Fire of London in 1666 but was repaired and remained until 1761.

Aldersgate Street forms a short section of the A1 major route towards Edinburgh. It is located on the west side of the Barbican Estate (a large housing complex) and Barbican Centre, near St. Bartholomew's Hospital and the Museum of London (which falls within the ward).

Northbound it continues into Goswell Road at the junction with Fann Street; southbound it continues into St. Martin's Le Grand.

John Wesley, founder of Methodism

28 Aldersgate Street is the approximate former location of a Moravian Church. On 24 May 1738, attending a meeting at the church, the clergyman John Wesley underwent a profound religious experience. The following year, he broke with the Moravians and founded the Methodist Society of England. The yearly anniversary of his experience is celebrated by Methodists as Aldersgate Day. Wesley's Chapel, in nearby City Road, remains a major focal point of the worldwide Methodist movement.

Research tips

• The FamilySearch Wiki article entitled St Botolph Aldersgate, London Genealogy leads to many sources connected with the church and its parish. This page has a useful map (quite a way 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.