Braunch, and a tenement of the Prior and Convent of the Blessed Mary Overy in Southwark, and a tenement of the Hospital of St. Thomas the Martyr of Southwark, towards the west; a tenement of the same Prior and Convent of the Blessed Mary Overy, the King's highway leading from London Bridge towards the parish church of St. Olave the King in Southwark aforesaid and a tenement of Thomas Thatcher towards the north; and of the same tenements to enfeoff the said Elector, to hold to him and his successors for ever: as well to inter and bury in part thereof Christian bodies or corpses, as to apply the profits and revenues of the residue thereof for the ornaments and repairs of the said church. And the King granted licence to the said Rector and his successors to hold the said tenements, and to cause such part thereof as he should think fit to be consecrated, and converted into a burial ground.
The Letters Patent or Charter of Confirmation are dated 4th July, 1st Edward VI.
The conveyance from Richard Panell and the other persons named in the Letters Patent is not extant; but the books of the parish of St. Olave, which are existing from 1546, show that the parish was in possession of the premises from that time at least; and about the same time a part of the ground comprised in the licence to convey was consecrated, and converted into a churchyard or burial ground, since called the Flemish churchyard or burial ground; most probably from having been devoted to the burial of the Flemings, who settled in this parish in great numbers about the year 1568.[1]
The messuage comprised in the Letters Patent was used by the parish for a Vestry or Church hall; and on the 22nd July, 1561, it was ordered by the Vestry, "that the churchwardens should prepare and make ready the church hall with benches and seats, and all things necessary for the free school (then about to be established by the parishioners), which was to be ready against Michaelmas then next;" from which time the Free Grammar School of St. Olave's was held in the vestry or church hall, until the building was pulled down, for the purpose of forming one of the approaches to New London Bridge, in the year 1831.
In Manning and Bray's History of Surrey,[2] it is said that St. Olave's Free Gram-
- ↑ This churchyard was made previously to the 36th Hen. VIII., as appears by the particulars of a grant to Robert Curzen in that year of a tenement called the Whyte Lyon, in the parish of St. Mary Magdalen, in Southwark, abutting east upon the new cemetery of St. Olave's and the garden belonging to the late monastery of Lewes, west on the King's highway, north on the sign of the Ball, late of the hospital of St. Thomas a Beckett, and south on a tenement belonging to Master Robert Tirrell, in the tenure of Henry Mynce.
- ↑ Vol. iii. p. 599.
