The Priors held the land of the Portsoken, outside the wall, and are thought to have built and dedicated the church, St Botolph without Aldgate, that served it.

By the end of the 11th century, Botolph was regarded as the patron saint of boundaries, and by extension of trade and travel.

[11] It escaped the Great Fire of London, and was described at the beginning of the 18th century as "an old church, built of Brick, Rubble and Stone, rendered over, and ... of the Gothick order".

[14] The interior of the building is divided into nave and aisles by four widely spaced piers[15] supporting a flat ceiling.

[17] The church is sited on an island surrounded by roadways and it was usual in these times to be suspicious of women standing on street corners.

They were easy targets for the police, and to escape arrest the prostitutes would parade around the island, now occupied by the church and Aldgate tube station.

St Botolph's inherited from that church a preserved head, reputed to be that of Henry Grey, 1st Duke of Suffolk, who had been executed for treason by Queen Mary I in 1554.

[19] During an archaeological investigation of the crypt in 1990, a preserved head, reputed to be Grey's, was rediscovered and buried in the churchyard.

[3] In the early 1970s, the crypt of the church served as a homeless shelter at night and by day a youth club for Asian boys.

[15] It has undergone a historical restoration by the organ builders Goetze and Gwynn, and been returned to its 1744 specification using many of the original components.

The restoration, which took nine months, was carried out under the consultancy of Ian Bell and the workshops of Goetze and Gwynn in Welbeck, Nottinghamshire.