England Guide
Bristol, Bath and Somerset
St Mary Redcliffe
Opening time: Mon– Sat 8.30/9am–4/5pm, Sun 8am–7.30pm
Price: Free
Described by Elizabeth I as "the goodliest, fairest, and most famous parish church in England", St Mary Redcliffe was largely paid for and used by merchants and mariners who prayed here for a safe voyage. The present building was begun at the end of the thirteenth century, though it was added to in subsequent centuries. Inside, memorials and tombs recall some of the figures associated with the building, including the arms and armour of Sir William Penn, admiral and father of the founder of Pennsylvania, on the north wall of the nave, and the Handel Window in the North Choir aisle, installed in 1859 on the centenary of the death of Handel, who composed on the organ here.
Above the church's north porch is the muniment room, where Thomas Chatterton claimed to have found a trove of medieval manuscripts; the poems, distributed as the work of a fifteenth-century monk named Thomas Rowley, were in fact dazzling fakes. The young poet committed suicide after his forgery was exposed, thereby supplying English literature with one of its most glamorous stories of self-destructive genius. The "Marvellous Boy" is remembered by a memorial stone in the south transept.