This
church is remarkable for the internment of John Stow, the sixteenth-century
author of The Survey of London, which book has never been out
of print for four hundred years (his monument in the church appears
below). The name 'Undershaft' comes from a 'Knape, or Undershaft', a
maypole, which in medieval times would be erected in the street before
the church's south door on May Day morning. In 1517 there was a calamitous
riot of apprentices
on May Day, and from that year on the maypole was never again erected
outside st Andrew's, although it hung on a range of hooks over the doors
of nearby houses (thus giving that alley the name Shaft Alley).
The
church pictured above was built between 1520 to 1532 (thus it has never
been graced by the maypole).
