Southwark Cathedral or The Cathedral and Collegiate Church of St Saviour and St Mary Overie, Southwark, London, lies near the south bank of the River Thames close to London Bridge. It is the mother church of the Diocese of Southwark. It has been a place of Christian worship for more than 1,000 years, but the church was not raised to cathedral status until the creation of the diocese of Southwark in 1905.

John Harvard (1607–1638) was an English dissenting minister in colonial New England whose deathbed bequest to the "schoale or colledge" founded two years earlier by the Massachusetts Bay Colony was so gratefully received that it was consequently ordered "that the Colledge agreed upon formerly to be built at Cambridge shalbee called Harvard Colledge." John Harvard was born in Southwark, England. A graduate of Emmanuel College of the University of Cambridge, he emigrated to New England in 1637. Harvard University considers him the most honored of its founders—those whose efforts and contributions in its early days "ensure[d] its permanence"—and a statue in his honor is a prominent feature of Harvard Yard.