St. Bride's Crypt

St. Brides Crypt, also known as the "Museum of Fleet Street" with its "wedding cake" steeple to the depths of its crypt, St.Brides is steeped in history. The christening church of Samuel Pepys—and it was here too that novelist Samuel Richardson was buried.

Rebuilt following been badly bombed in World War II, Christopher Wren's church standing 226 feet / 69 meters, was restored to it's former glory—but not before excavations revealed the site's previously unknown Roman origins. Some of these and later archaeological finds from Roman, Saxon and Medieval times are displayed in the small museum in the crypt: clay pots and pipes, coins and fire-distorted fragments of the old church's bells.

St. Bride's was the site of the City's first printing press and, although the newspapers have left, it remains the parish church for the industry known collectively as "Fleet Street".