St Peter Cheap (also known as St Peter West Cheap)⁹⁰⁹²

Brief Description

Three gravestones survive set into remnants of the wall, including a stone tablet of 1687, and the railings on the boundary with Wood Street date from 1712, with an inset plaque of St Peter. The churchyard was laid out as a public garden in the C19th and has a large plane tree that William Wordsworth referred to in his poem, 'The Reverie of Poor Susan'. Overlooked on three sides, the sheltered garden is largely paved, and has seats and a number of low raised beds, each now planted with a tree fern in recent years.

History

The garden is on the site of the medieval church of St Peter Cheap, also called West Cheap, which burnt down in the Great Fire in 1666 and was not rebuilt, the parish joining that of St Matthew Friday Street. There was a market in this area from early times, 'cheap' being the Anglo-Saxon word for market.

Visitor Facilities