All Hallows-by-the-Tower

All Hallows is the parish where famous diarist Samuel Pepys recorded his observations of the nearby Great Fire of London in 1666. Above ground it’s a pleasant enough church, rebuilt after WWII. There’s a copper spire (added in 1957 to make the church stand out more), a pulpit from a Wren church in Cannon St that was destroyed in the WWII, a beautiful 17th-century font cover by the master woodcarver Grinling Gibbons, and some interesting modern banners. Free 20-minute church tours leave at 2pm each day. However, a church by the name All Hallows (meaning ‘All Saints’) has stood on this site since AD 675, and the best bit of the building today is undoubtedly its atmospheric Saxon undercroft (crypt). There you’ll find a pavement of reused Roman tiles and walls of the 7th-century Saxon church, as well as coins and bits of local history. William Penn, founder of Pennsylvania, was baptised here in 1644 and there’s a memorial to him in the undercroft. John Quincy Adams, sixth president of the USA, was also married at All Hallows in 1797.