St Sepulchre and the Newgate bell

In front of you is the largest parish church in the City, St Sepulchre-without-Newgate, ‘of the Holy Sepulchre, outside Newgate’. Now look across the road: where the Old Bailey, the Central Criminal Court, stands today, Newgate Prison, the most feared jail in London, stood for centuries. This church and that prison were bound together by a grim ritual.

1The bell of the condemned

In 1605, the merchant Robert Dowe gave the parish £50 on one condition. On the eve of every execution, at midnight, the sexton was to go to the door of the condemned cell at Newgate, ring a handbell and recite verses urging the prisoners to repent and prepare to die. The next morning, as the cart passed on its way to the Tyburn gallows, the church's great bell tolled for them.

That handbell still exists and is kept in a glass case inside the church.

“When will you pay me? say the bells of Old Bailey,” goes the nursery rhyme “Oranges and Lemons”. They are usually identified as the bells of this church.

2Other famous residents

Buried here since 1631 is Captain John Smith, the Virginia colonist who, by his own account, was saved by Pocahontas. And in the Musicians' Chapel lie the ashes of Henry Wood, founder of the Proms, who learned to play the organ in this church as a boy.

3What to look for

• The tower with its four pinnacles, which survived the fire of 1666.
• The Old Bailey opposite, on the site of Newgate.
• The entrance porch, from the late Middle Ages.