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Katharine Cree
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Location: St Katharine Cree, City of London, London, England, United Kingdom. (51°30′48.28″N 0°4′44.88″W).
Phone: +44 20 7488 4318
St Katharine Cree
St Katharine Cree is a Church of England church in the Aldgate ward of the City of London, on the north side of Leadenhall Street near Leadenhall Market. It was founded in 1280. The present building dates from 1628 –1630. Formerly a parish church, it is now a guild church.
History of St Katharine Cree:
The parish served by the church existed as early as 1108, when it was served by the Augustinian Holy Trinity Priory, Aldgate, also known as Christ Church, which was founded by Maud, queen at the time of King Henry I. The parishioners used the priory church but this proved unsatisfactory and disruptive to the priory's activities.
The prior partially resolved the problem in 1280 with the foundation of St Katharine Cree as a separate church for the use of the parishioners. The site of the present church was originally in the priory's churchyard and it is possible that the church had its origins in a cemetery chapel. It took its name from the priory, "Cree" being a corrupted abbreviation of "Christ Church". It was initially served by a canon appointed by the prior but this did not prove satisfactory either, in 1414 the church was established as a parish church in its own right.
Describing the building at the end of the 16th century, John Stow wrote"this church seemeth to be very old; since the building whereof the high street hath been so often raised by pavements that now men are fain to descend into the said church by divers steps, seven in number
