In a city like Gloucester, with its huge and magnificent cathedral, it could be easy to overlook some of its other churches; I only wandered into St Mary de Crypt because I heard lively music through its open door.
Inside I found a local group playing familiar and unfamiliar tunes with enthusiasm.
As I looked around the church, I was taken with the scale and magnificence of parts of it, seemingly almost too large to fit inside the fairly small structure. Here and there about its main floor were signs of very modern life and community activities, along with the formal structures of the church.
A little reading of signs and plaques, and some later research, told me more. Built in the 12th century and repeatedly renovated and expanded. Of Gloucester’s 12 medieval parish churches, it was the only one with a crypt—giving it its name. It also had a schoolroom, endowed in 1539 that has evolved into the Crypt School, a private school still in operation.
St Mary is where George Whitefield, one of the founders of Methodism went to school and later preached his first sermons. There’s a memorial plaque for him, but also an exhibit examining his role in promoting and justifying slavery.
In 1643, during the Civil War Siege of Gloucester, it served as an ammunition factory. Robert Raikes, who led the movement in England for Sunday Schools was a parishioner and is buried there. At various points, part of the building even served as an inn! The church underwent significant repair and renovation in 2019.
But perhaps the most colorful of St Mary’s stories is that of the Gloucester banker, James (Jemmy) Wood who is buried in the crypt. He was a banker, contractor and landowner and widely believed to be the richest commoner in England. He was known to walk everywhere rather than pay for a carriage, and scoured the Gloucester docks for scraps of coal which he took home in his coat pockets. He was called the Miser of Gloucester, and is believed to be the inspiration for Dickens’ Ebenezer Scrooge.
When he died, leaving a fortune of about £900,000, about £150 million today, in equal shares to his three executors. He also left a number of disputed and damaged codicils to his will including one leaving money to the city. The legal wrangling over the estate outlived two of the beneficiaries and may have been the inspiration for the lawsuit Jarndyce v Jarndyce in Dickens’ Bleak House.
