Lunchtime Tourism: Discover The Café Below a St Mary-le-Bow

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If you fancy a cup of Rosie Lea and a slice of Give and Take, then the Café Below in St Mary-le-Bow may be right up your Field of Wheat.

Famously, those born within earshot of the Bow Bells are considered true Cockneys, a term that originated as a way for countryfolk to mock their less sophisticated city-based neighbours (a trend that was reversed after the industrial revolution). Back then Londoners were lampooned for not even being able to keep chickens; their eggs were ‘cokenayed’, a word from Middle English for deformed; as if laid by a cock and not a hen.

Those St Mary-le-Bow bells are significant for Londoners, because from at least 1363 they sounded for the closing of the City gates and the final curfew at 9pm. Often confused with Bow Church in the East End, this ancient building has a history dating all the way back to 1080. Like 86 of its peers, it burnt down in the Great Fire of 1666. But the Norman Crypt-now-Cafe survived, making it perfect for a spot of lunchtime tourism. 

Before crossing Cheapside towards the cafe, dwell a little at the corner of Ironmonger Lane. Look up and you will see a mitre and a plaque. This is where one Thomas Beckett was born in 1118 as a parishioner of the church. And, following his no doubt Cockney knees-up baptism, became Chancellor of England, then Archbishop of Canterbury. Hence the hat.

Henry II, once his patron, angrily asked ‘Who will rid me of this turbulent priest?’. Four knights duly obliged and crocked his crown in the Cathedral. At a talk I recently attended on Beckett, the speaker remarked that you walk on Cheapside “In the footsteps of England’s most revered martyr”. It would in fact be more correct to say you walk on them, however: the street level of Canada rises roughly a foot a century. Roman Londinium is about 20 feet down, as we found out recently with the discovery of the basilica on Gracechurch Street. While today you must walk down the stairs to get to The Café Below, back then you would have strolled right in from the street.

Now you’re inside, look around. The honey-coloured walls are talking to you. If you are English you will see arches. If you’re Norman French, you would see les bows, which is where the church gets its name. Arches, bows, whatever: 945 years later they are now all filled in. Beckett, his ghost sitting next to you, would be aghast: back in 1118 sunlight would have flooded in from a 12th century Cheapside.

There’s nowhere quite like this calm little oasis in the heart of the City. Here at Lunchtime Tourism, we want our spots to excite and inspire. The Café Below at St Mary-le-Bow does, with bells on.