St Nicholas Church — Evelyn's Parish Church
First constructed in the 13th century and rebuilt in brick in 1697, St Nicholas Church in Deptford, London, contains the unmarked 1593 grave of playwright Christopher Marlowe and memorial monuments to master shipwright Jonas Shish. The churchyard also holds the unmarked graves of diarist John Evelyn's three sons, linking the site directly to Deptford's maritime history and Tsar Peter the Great's 1698 shipbuilding study.
London · from the walk “The Tsar's Deptford” · Generated
St Nicholas Church, Deptford Green, SE8
- Elizabethan playwright Christopher Marlowe was buried in an unmarked grave at St Nicholas Church on June 1, 1593.
- Diarist John Evelyn buried three of his sons in unmarked graves at St Nicholas Church in Deptford.
- Master shipwright Jonas Shish, who died in 1680, was commemorated with a wall memorial inside St Nicholas Church.
- Russian Tsar Peter the Great spent three months in Deptford in 1698 studying shipbuilding techniques near St Nicholas Church.
Where was Elizabethan playwright Christopher Marlowe buried in Deptford?
Look around you. This is Saint Nicholas Church, Deptford — the original parish church for the settlement of Deptford in south-east London. And what a church this is. First built in the thirteenth century, the current brick structure dates to sixteen ninety-seven. But let me tell you... the stories buried here go far deeper than the bricks.
Saint Nicholas, by the way, is the patron saint of pawnbrokers and prostitutes. An unusual dedication for a parish church, wouldn't you say? Legend has it that Saint Nick put bags of gold into prostitutes' stockings hanging from a window to dry — enabling the girls to buy themselves out of the trade. And That... is said to be the origin of the Christmas stocking tradition.
Now. Two generations after its founding, a regular attender at this church was John Evelyn — landowner, man of letters, diarist, and courtier. Evelyn is the man whose house, Sayes Court, Peter the Great would later Destroy. But Evelyn's connection to this place is deeply personal. This cemetery includes the unmarked graves of three of his sons. Wealth and privilege could not protect against an all-too-common grief. Evelyn wrote in his diary of "our extreme sorrow," and that "this evening, after the service, was my baby buried near the tower with his brothers. All my dear children."
And Evelyn is not the only ghost here. Christopher Marlowe — Shakespeare's great rival — was buried in an unmarked grave in this very churchyard on the first of June, fifteen ninety-three, just twenty-nine years old. Stabbed above the right eye in a house in Deptford... officially over a tavern bill. But every man in that room was a Tudor spy. The real reason for his death remains one of Elizabethan England's darkest mysteries.
But our Russian thread runs through those monuments on the wall inside. There you'll find the memorial to Jonas Shish, who died in sixteen eighty, and his eldest son John Shish. The father was a master shipwright, and the son Master Shipwright of His Majesty's Yard at Deptford. The Shish family had been ship carpenters in this yard for above one hundred years. And here's the extraordinary detail — Evelyn himself was a pallbearer at old Jonas Shish's funeral, and wrote: "an honest and remarkable man, his death a public loss, for his excellent success in building ships, though altogether illiterate." It was the custom of this good man to rise in the night and pray, kneeling in his own coffin, which he had lying by him for many years.
Now consider this. John Shish, the son, was Master Shipwright at Deptford, overseeing construction of major warships like Hms Lenox and Hampton Court. He was the Only person privy to King Charles the Second's secret plan to rebuild the Tyger — a ship that officially no longer existed! These were Exactly the kind of craftsmen whose expertise Tsar Peter was desperate to absorb. He wanted to recruit specialists to travel home with him to help build a Russian navy. It was to Deptford that Tsar Peter the Great came for three months in sixteen ninety-eight to learn shipbuilding techniques.
So picture it. Peter, living in Evelyn's wrecked house next door, walking these very streets past the church where the Shish family worshipped and were buried — the masters of the craft he craved. The secrets of English shipbuilding, accumulated over generations... all concentrated in this one small corner of Deptford.