The South London Cathedral That Gave Harvard University Its Name

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Most visitors to Borough Market walk straight past it without a second glance. But the ancient cathedral standing just metres away holds one of the most unexpected stories in London — a connection that reaches all the way to Cambridge, Massachusetts, and changed the course of higher education forever.

Southwark Cathedral is one of the oldest buildings in London. It sits quietly on the South Bank, wedged between the noise of Borough Market and the rush of London Bridge station. Most tourists don’t give it a second look. That is a significant mistake.

A Church That Has Stood Since Before the Normans Arrived

The history of this site stretches back to AD 606, when a minster church was first recorded here. For centuries it was known as the Priory of St Mary Overie — meaning “St Mary over the water” — a reference to its position on the south bank of the Thames.

After the Reformation, it became a parish church called St Saviour’s. Hundreds of years of worship, fire, plague, and rebuilding followed. The Victorians brought the railways right through the churchyard, carving away medieval graves to lay the tracks that now run into London Bridge station.

It only became a cathedral in 1905, when the Diocese of Southwark was created. By that point the building had already quietly shaped world history — though few people passing through Borough Market had any idea.

The Baptism That Crossed the Atlantic

In November 1607, a boy named John Harvard was baptised at St Saviour’s Church. His father, Robert Harvard, ran a butcher’s business and an inn in Southwark. The family were well-established local people — churchgoing, prosperous, respectable.

John grew up and studied at Emmanuel College, Cambridge. He became a Puritan clergyman. In 1637, he and his wife Anne set sail for the Massachusetts Bay Colony, joining the wave of English Puritans who were building a new world in North America.

He arrived in Charlestown, Massachusetts. He was thirty years old, educated, energetic, and full of plans. Then, within a year of arriving, he contracted tuberculosis. He died in September 1638, before he had barely settled in.

In his will, he left half his estate — around £779 — and his entire personal library of around 400 books to a small new college that had been founded two years earlier in nearby Cambridge. It was, by the standards of the colony, an enormous gift.

The following year, the Massachusetts Great and General Court voted to rename the college in his honour. The boy baptised at St Saviour’s, Southwark, became the name on one of the world’s most celebrated universities. The baptismal font where he was christened is still inside the cathedral today.

Harvard University has since dedicated a chapel inside Southwark Cathedral to his memory. A stained glass window in the Harvard Chapel depicts scenes from his life. American visitors sometimes make the pilgrimage specifically to see it — though they are often surprised to find the place tucked between railway arches and a cheese stall.

Where Shakespeare’s Brother Still Rests

John Harvard was not the only remarkable person connected to this place. In December 1607 — the same year as Harvard’s baptism — another entry appeared in the burial register at St Saviour’s.

Edmund Shakespeare, younger brother of William and a working actor himself, was buried here. He was just twenty-seven years old.

William Shakespeare paid for the great bell of the church to toll at Edmund’s funeral. It was an expensive gesture — a public, formal farewell. The Globe Theatre, where William’s plays were performed, was less than ten minutes’ walk away across the Bankside. This corner of Southwark was the heart of London’s theatre world, and St Saviour’s was its parish church.

If you have visited the Bankside area where Shakespeare worked and lived, you have been within a few hundred metres of Edmund’s grave without knowing it.

Six Centuries of Literature in One Building

Walk through the cathedral and you will find another unexpected figure watching over the nave. John Gower, the medieval poet and close friend of Geoffrey Chaucer, is buried here beneath a brightly painted effigy dating to around 1408.

Gower rests with his head on three of his own books — a detail that says everything about the man. He was one of the first major English writers to use the vernacular language alongside Latin and French. He wrote about London when London was still a walled medieval city of under 100,000 people.

Between Gower, the Shakespeare brothers, and the Harvard connection, Southwark Cathedral contains more literary and cultural history than most dedicated museums. And yet it remains, for most visitors, simply the building they walked past on the way to the cheese stall.

What to See When You Visit

The cathedral is free to enter. It sits right beside London Bridge station, at the edge of Borough Market, the ancient food market that has traded in this corner of Southwark for over a thousand years. The two make a natural pairing for a morning visit.

Look for the Harvard Chapel on the north side of the nave. The stained glass window is worth standing in front of for a few minutes. The font where John Harvard was baptised is displayed nearby.

John Gower’s tomb is in the North Aisle. The colours are surprisingly vivid for something carved more than six hundred years ago. Edmund Shakespeare’s burial place is marked inside the cathedral, though there is no grand monument — he was, after all, the lesser-known brother.

Allow at least thirty minutes to walk through properly. If you are planning your first trip to London, combining Southwark Cathedral with Borough Market makes for one of the richest free mornings the city has to offer.

Most great cities have places like this — corners that carry centuries of meaning but draw no queues, no entrance fee, no tourist coaches. Southwark Cathedral is London at its most honest: ancient, a little overlooked, and quietly extraordinary.

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