St Olave's Church, Hart Street, is a Church of England church in the City of London, located on the corner of Hart Street and Seething Lane near Fenchurch Street railway station.
View of the northern part of the church from Crutched Friars
The famous gateway to Saint Olave's churchyard, described by Dickens as "Saint Ghastly Grim". It is dated 11 April 1658 and the Latin text is from Saint Paul's Epistle to the Philippians, chapter 1 verse 21: "For to me to live is Christ and to die is gain".
Interior of St Olave's Church
Exterior of the tower, south and east faces
Samuel Pepys
Videos
Samuel Pepys was an English writer and Tory politician. He served as an official in the Navy Board and Member of Parliament, but is now most renowned for the diary he kept for almost a decade, first p
St Olave's Church, Hart Street
…the wind changed direction, saving the church and a number of other churches on the eastern side of the city. The church was a favourite of the diarist Samuel Pepys, whose house and Royal Navy office were both on Seething Lane. A regular worshipper, he referred to St. Olave's in his diary affectionately as "our own…
Portrait by John Hayls, 1666
Bookplate, c. 1680–1690, with arms of Samuel Pepys: Quarterly 1st & 4th: Sable, on a bend or between two nag's heads erased argent three fleurs-de-lis of the field (Pepys); 2nd & 3rd: Gules, a lion rampant within a bordure engrailed or (Talbot). Samuel Pepys was descended from John Pepys who married Elizabeth Talbot, the heiress of Cottenham in Cambridgeshire. The Pepys arms are borne by the Pepys family, Earls of Cottenham.
Elisabeth de St Michel, Pepys' wife. Stipple engraving by James Thomson, after a 1666 painting (now destroyed) by John Hayls.
Samuel Pepys' bookplate. The motto reads Mens cujusque is est Quisque – "Mind Makes the Man".