St Bartholomew's Hospital was founded in 1123 as a hospital and a priory for Augustinian canons. After the Reformation, the Hospital was given to the City of London and the parish of St Bartholomew constituted from the precincts of the Hospital. Various chapels were demolished save for the chapel of the Holy Cross that became the parish church of St Bartholomew-the-Less, called thus to distinguish it from the nearby St Bartholomew-the-Great which was created from the buildings of the Priory.

According to N. Moore (1918, pp.378, 380) Dance was elected Surveyor of St Bartholomew's Hospital on 17 December 1778 and resigned on 7 April 1796; the sum of £1,200 for building work on the Church was agreed on 11 February 1789. After a survey made in February 1789 from which he found the chancel defective, Dance remodelled the nave on a plan that was an octagon fitted inside a square with triangular corners open to the centre with a small recess for the altar on the eastern side. He achieved this by constructing an octagonal timber skeleton of eight massive uprights that supported the pyramidal roof on a series of raised tie-beam trusses. Internally, the octagon was modelled in plaster with eight arches, the timber uprights masked by clustered shafts from whose capitals sprang a ribbed plaster vault. Arched lunettes at clerestory level lit the octagon.

An engraving of the east end of the Church (1802) is in the Guildhall Library (Prints & Maps Department, Record: 982). Another, more accurate view from the same standpoint, published in 1834 but showing the Church as it was before the alterations of 1823-5, is in the Archives of St Bartholomew's Hospital (X6/15, published in Yeo, 1992, p.20) with another copy in the Guildhall Library (Prints and Maps Department, Record: 986). These are the only known records of the interior of Dance's church as executed and some details vary from those on drawings [SM D4/9/6], [SM D4/9/13], [D4/9/12] and [SM D4/9/14]. An engraving, made in 1839, of the east end after Thomas Hardwick's work of 1823-5 is in the Guildhall Library (Prints and Maps Department, Record: 983).

G.Godwin (1839, pp.1-8) gives a description of St Bartholomew-the-Less and an interior view towards the east end. 'Mr Dance's arrangement was exceedingly ingenious, and the general effect produced was very good, notwithstanding that the details were badly designed, and the whole was executed in wood. ... Within a comparatively short space of time, the interior became affected with dry-rot ... and in 1823, a general rebuilding was commenced under the direction of the late Thomas Hardwick, Esq., who caused the whole of the timber construction to be removed, and reinstated it with stone or iron, leaving the plan strictly the same but entirely altering the details.' The 'badly designed' details were presumably structural and related to the problem with dry-rot, which could have been due to a number of causes including poor maintenance. Dance tended to design minimal eaves and perhaps water penetration combined with the use of soft- rather than hardwood were to blame.

Comparison of the engraved views of the east end before and after 1823-5 mentioned above shows that Harkwick recast some of Dance's details into a more 'correct' Early English style. Thus Dance's feathery leaved capitals were replaced by bell capitals, the pattern of the vaulting slightly changed, the vaulting ribs made more elaborate and bosses added, the altar recess glazed and new seating put in. The lightness and refinement of Dance's unserious Gothic was somewhat lost and the obtrusive ceiling makes the Church seem smaller.

P.C. Hardwick did some further work in about 1842 that included enlarging the altar niche into a projecting sanctuary as well as the geometrical tracery of the lunettes. The Church was badly damaged in World War II, was restored by Seely and Paget and re-opened in 1951. What largely survives now from Dance's time is the 15th-century southwest tower (with the west vestry the oldest part of the Church) shown on Dance's survey plans and the form and some of the characteristic moulded details of his vaulted, octagonal nave within a square with triangular areas opening to the centre, lit by arched lunette clerestory windows.

LITERATURE. G. Godwin, The Churches of London, vol.II, 1839; N. Moore The History of St. Bartholomew's Hospital, vol.II, 1918; Stroud pp.158-9; Kalman pp.134-54, analysis of Dance's church designs; G.Yeo, Images of Barts, 1992; S. Bradlely & N. Pevsner, London I: City of London, 2nd ed., 1997, pp 203-04; guidebook to St Bartholomew-the-Less [2000].

OTHER SOURCES. Guildhall Library: Prints and Maps Department; Archives of St Bartholomew's Hospital