May 20, 2025 • 36 mins
In this eerie season finale of The Grim, we're opening the gate and descending into one of the most iconic and haunted sites located in London England - the crypt beneath St. Paul’s Cathedral. Spanning 30,000 square feet, it is the largest cathedral crypt in Europe and a resting place for Britain’s greatest legends—and, some say, its most restless spirits.
We uncover the story of Admiral Lord Nelson, whose body lies in a black marble tomb originally carved for Cardinal Wolsey, the disgraced advisor to Henry VIII. Wolsey dreamed of sainthood, but died in exile. His tomb lay unused for centuries—until Nelson’s shattered body was brought home from Trafalgar and laid to rest where ambition had failed.
We revisit Winston Churchill’s state funeral, where Queen Elizabeth II broke royal tradition to attend and bowed her head—just once—as his coffin passed beneath the dome. And we walk the stone corridors where visitors report phantom footsteps, sudden chills, and an overwhelming sense of being watched.
And then… just a few steps from these centuries-old tombs… a café. Reopened in 2025, the Crypt Café serves lattes and pastries atop the bones of an empire.
This episode blends dark British history, true ghost stories, St. Paul’s Cathedral trivia, and haunted London travel all in one unforgettable journey below the city.
Support The Grim by buying a cup of our next Grave Grind!
https://buymeacoffee.com/kristinlopes
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Kristin (00:15):
Grim Mourning and welcome to The Grim.
I'm your host, Kristin.
On today's episode we'll beopening the gate and entering
the crypt of St Paul's Cathedrallocated in London, England.
So pour yourself a midnightmargarita, settle in and prepare
for the season finale of theGrim.
One last dig into history.
Honestly, I've been lookingforward to this episode ever
(00:39):
since I thought of the idea ofSt Paul's Crypt first crossed my
mind.
It's one of London's mosticonic sites, layered in
centuries of history, mysteryand reverence.
But before we descend into thedepths, I want to take a moment
to thank you for joining me thisseason on the Grim.
This is my first foray intopodcasting.
(00:59):
I came in with no formalbackground, just a passion for
graveyards and ghostly history.
It hasn't always been polished,but if you've been with me
since episode one, I trulyappreciate every listen, every
message and every quiet momentyou've spent wandering through
graveyards with me.
I honestly never expected theGrimm to grow the way it has.
I didn't think even a quarterof the listeners or subscribers
(01:23):
we would have today would bepossible.
It's humbling and as the seasonwraps I'll be taking a short
break to write record andquietly revamp.
But before I go I do have onesmall favor to ask Please take a
moment to rate the Grimm.
Our reviews have been a bitghostly.
If you've enjoyed hitting playeach and every week, I'd be so
(01:44):
grateful for your honestfeedback.
I'm not asking for five stars,just a sign from the veil that
this journey is one worthcontinuing.
Should we keep walking thishaunted path together?
Let me know.
And don't forget.
The Grimm is creeping along onInstagram, tiktok and Itsy shop,
the Grimm Co and even Pinterest.
Yes, that's the whole thing.
(02:04):
I'll be sharing updates thereover the summer, including hits
about what's to come.
But back to the crypt.
I had the pleasure of living inLondon for several years and to
this day I believe it's one ofthe most captivating cities of
the world.
Tourists often flock to theusual sites the London Eye,
buckingham Palace, the postcardlandmarks.
(02:26):
But here at the Grimm we don'tdeal with the ordinary.
We're hatted beneath thesurface, beneath the gilded
splendor of St Paul's Cathedral,into its crypt where time hangs
heavy in the air, taste ofhistory and dust.
The first time I stepped intoSt Paul's I was a student.
It was one of the few days ayear admission was free.
(02:46):
I had skipped class to venturewithin, nervously wondering if I
was wasting one of my fiveallowed absences on a whim.
But the moment I crossed intothe threshold I was gobsmacked.
The grandeur, the echoes ofhistory.
It was absolutely worth it, andever since I've now returned
paying for entry.
But St Paul's doesn't just getyou from what's within.
It was absolutely worth it andever since I've now returned
paying for entry.
But St Paul's doesn't just getyou from what's within, it grabs
(03:09):
you from the outside too,through London's fog, a dome
rises of pale stone and hauntinggrandeur.
It stands today, just not as amarble of architecture but as a
survivor, a monument stitchedfrom fire, war and whispered
prayers, where death walksquietly beneath polished marble
and the grandeur hides a cryptof bones.
(03:30):
Long before Sir Christopher Wrenetched his vision into the ash
of a city, there was another StPaul's.
In fact there were many.
The first church on LudgateHill was believed to be founded
in 604 AD, a wooden structureraised in the name of
Christianity's rising flame.
It was rebuilt in stone, thenreduced to ruin by fire, rebuilt
(03:51):
again, then struck by lightningand again by fire.
The medieval cathedral thatpreceded the current one, known
as Old St Paul's, stood tall forcenturies before it too was
devoured by the Great Fire ofLondon in 1666, a fire so
ferocious it reduced nearly theentire city to cinder.
Out of those ashes rose the StPaul we know today, a phoenix in
(04:16):
Portland, stone designed by SirChristopher Wren, with its
iconic dome reaching skywardlike a challenge to the heavens
themselves.
Completed in 1710, it wouldbecome one of London's most
sacred spaces.
During the long firelight nightsof the Blitz, as London was
pounded wave after wave ofGerman bombs, the city trembled
(04:37):
beneath smoke and ruin.
Entire streets were flattened,neighborhoods vanished beneath
rubble, and firestorms ragedlike a biblical wrath.
And yet, through it all, stPaul's Cathedral remained,
standing defiant against thedarkness.
In those terrible months of1940 and 1941, london was bombed
for 57 consecutive nights.
(04:59):
The city's heart was scorched,but at Toplipgate Hill, amid the
shattered glass and sirens, stPaul's glowed eerily in the
flames, battered, scorched andyet unbroken, it became a beacon
of hope, its dome piercing thesmoke like a silent sentinel
over the ruins.
This was no accident.
(05:20):
A team known as the St Paul'sWatch Composive Clergy,
architects, firemen andVolunteers risked their lives,
night after night, to protectthe cathedral Appointed by
Winston Churchill himself.
They patrolled the rooftop withbuckets of sand and stirrup
pumps dousing incendiary bombsbefore they could even ignite
the timber scaffolding andlead-lined dome.
(05:42):
Their mission was to make sureSt Paul stood standing.
Sometimes bombs crashedstraight through the roof Buried
beneath within the structure.
One of them lodged itself nearthe high altar but somehow
failed to detonate.
Had it exploded, st Paul wouldhave been reduced to memory and
rubble.
Royal engineers managed todefuse it miraculously because
(06:05):
the process was so dangerousthat, it's whispered, they never
spoke a word the entire time.
On December 29, 1940, one of theworst nights of the Blitz,
flames devoured much of the cityof London.
That night alone, over 24,000high-explosive and incendiary
bombs were dropped.
The glow could be seen formiles, and yet in the early
(06:27):
hours of the morning, throughthe ash and smoke, a photograph
was taken that would becomeimmortal St Paul's Cathedral,
shrouded in smoke, standingalone above the devastation.
That image became propagandafor the British, yes, but also a
symbol, a cathedral thatrefused to fall, representing
(06:47):
not just a building but thenation's will to endure.
Beneath it, in the crypt, thedead kept a silent vigil Nelson,
wellington, wren, the forgottentombs and whispered names.
The blitz shook the earth abovethem, but the dead did not stir
.
They remained, as always,watching from the depths.
(07:07):
To many, st Paul's is just achurch, but for those who lived
through the Blitz it becamesomething else A monument of
stone and spirit, a guardianover the fallen and a survivor
of fire.
Today the tour is shuffledbeneath its bolted ceilings,
unaware of the sentries watchingthem from below.
But if you listen closely, inthe hush, between footsteps and
(07:30):
flashbulbs, you might feel ittoo, that thin veil between
reverence and ruin, betweenmemories and ghosts.
But the Grimm isn't here justfor the dome and the sermons.
We're here for what liesbeneath.
Below the great cathedral,entombed in shadow and stillness
, lies the crypt, a vast andvaulted underworld and the
(07:50):
largest of its kind in all ofEurope, spanning over 30,000
square feet.
It's not simply a place of rest, but of remembrance, of
reverence of ghosts.
The crypt is divided intosolemn chambers the Chapel of
the Order of St Michael and StGeorge and the Chapel of St
Dunstan and the Chapel of theRoyal British Legion, each
(08:12):
filled with the echoes ofdevotion and duty.
The walls are lined withmemorials, from modest stone
plaques to towering marble-cladmonuments, each one a name, a
memory, a life once lived, nowsealed in stone.
Among the dead lie giants One,the very man who dreamed and
built this cathedral into beingthe architect, the scientist,
(08:36):
the mind behind the marble, sirChristopher Wren.
His tomb rests in quiethumility beneath the cathedral
he raised from the ashes.
The Latin inscription above himreads Sir monumentum rigorous
circumspice.
If you seek his monument, lookaround you.
A line so simple and yet soheavy.
Because what Wren left behindwas not just stone and symmetry.
(09:01):
He left behind a vision Born in1632, in a time when plague
still haunted the streets andEngland teetered between
monarchs and war.
Christopher Wren was a man ofstaggering intellect.
Before he ever laid acornerstone, he was a scholar,
mathematician and astronomer.
A founding member of the RoyalSociety.
Wren wasn't just building walls.
(09:23):
He was reshaping the very waythe world understood space,
proportion and light.
It was a great fire of Londonin 1666 that changed his course.
When the flames reduced themedieval city to smoldering ruin
, wren saw opportunity in theashes.
Appointed surveyor of theKing's works, he was tasked with
rebuilding not just homes buthope.
(09:44):
He would go on to design morethan 50 churches across London,
but St Paul's was his crown.
Construction began in 1675, andit would take 35 years to
complete.
Ren would never see it fullyfinished, but he watched it rise
, stone by stone, scaffold byscaffold, until its great dome
(10:05):
pierced the sky.
Inspired by the Pantheon inRome, it became the second
largest cathedral dome in theworld.
To this day, it dominatesLondon's skyline like a monument
not just to faith but to itsresilience.
Yet Wren was not a man whosought glory.
His burial on the crypt ismodest no grand effigy, no
(10:26):
ornate tomb, just the quiet echoof his work all around a man
who rebuilt the city of Londonwe know today.
Every column, every curve,every whisper of candlelight
flickering across stone is hislegacy.
And perhaps that's the mosthaunting part when a man creates
something so vast, so enduring,that even centuries after his
(10:49):
death it still pierces London'sskyline as a symbol of the past.
Yet that lives on in the future.
No matter how one chooses tospend their time in London,
linger long enough and you'lleventually pass through
Turfogger Square.
Tours pause there, buses crawlthrough it, the underground
rumbles beneath it, museumsspill their visitors into it.
(11:11):
It is in every sense the city'srestless crossroads.
And yet high above the noiseand motion stands a solitary
figure.
Most never truly see A manperched on a column of stone,
watching silently from above,unless you're on a guided tour
if you bother to ask who he isor find out.
But his story casts a longshadow.
(11:32):
Few names echo through Britishnaval history, like that of
Horatio Nelson, a man who gavehis eye, his arm and eventually
his life in service to the crown.
But Lord Nelson wasn't just awar hero.
He was a symbol, a myth in themaking long before he drew his
final breath.
And, fittingly, his storydoesn't end at the sea.
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It ends in stone, far beneaththe grandeur of St Paul's
Cathedral, anda crepe ormausoleum than resting place
where he remains in tune like arelic of a vanished empire.
Born in 1758 in Norfolk, nelsonentered the Royal Navy at just
12 years old.
By the age of 20, he wascommanding ships.
By 39, he had already lost thesight of one eye and the use of
(12:18):
one arm.
Scars of service were not hiswounds but his symbols.
He fought with a ruthlessprecision in battles across the
Caribbean and the Mediterranean,but it was at Trafalgar in 1805
that his legacy was sealed inblood and salt.
There, off the coast of Spain,nelson led the British fleet
against Napoleon's combinedFrench and Spanish navies.
(12:39):
He devised an unorthodox battleplan, cutting directly through
enemy lines, and it worked withbrutal success.
The British secured a decisivevictory, but Nelson would not
live to see it celebrated.
A French sniper's bulletpierced his shoulder and spine.
He died hours later below deckwhispering Thank God, I have
(12:59):
done my duty.
His body was preserved in a caskof brandy some say it was
actually rum and it was shippedback to England.
When the cask was opened, thespirit was gone.
Legend has it that the sailorsdrank it to honor him, but
others say the brandy leaked.
Either way, the tale was passedinto myth, known as Nelson's
(13:19):
Blood.
His deep funeral was one of themost elaborate in British
history.
His state funeral was one ofthe most elaborate in British
history.
Tens of thousands lined thestreets, and beneath the soaring
dome of St Paul's Cathedral andthe dark heart of its crypt,
nelson was laid to rest,entombed in a black marble
sarcophagus originally carvedfor Cardinal Wolsey, a man who
(13:39):
never made it to his grave.
Fitting perhaps that Nelsontook his place.
He had risen through service,not privilege, and now he rests
among kings.
If you're wondering whyCardinal Wolsey never found rest
within the crypt of St Paul's,it's because history had other
plans Once the most secondpowerful man in England, wolsey
(14:00):
rose high as Lord Chancellor toHenry VIII.
He dreamed of grandeur in bothlife and death, commissioning an
elaborate black marblesarcophagus for his own burial
in St Paul's Cathedral, a tombfit for kings, carved for a
cardinal who fancies himselfeternal.
But when he failed to deliverHenry's divorce from Catherine
(14:20):
of Aragon, wolsey losteverything.
Stripped of titles, chargedwith treason and dead in
disgrace before trial, he wasburied in a rush ceremony in
Leicester Abbey, his grand tombleft behind waning and empty.
Centuries later, that verysarcophagus, cold and unused,
was given to a man who hadearned not favor but immortality
(14:41):
.
Admiral Lord Nelson, the heroof Trafalgar, now rests in
Wolsey's tomb deep within thecrypt of St Paul's Cathedral.
Where ambition failed, thecardinal valor raised the
admiral Wolsey's name was buriedin shame.
Nelson's carved into legend.
But Nelson never quite stayedburied.
Sailors whisper of him, pacingphantom decks, visitors to the
(15:04):
crypt report sudden chills,disembodied footsteps and the
feeling of being watched by eyeslong gone.
Nelson gave everything to theEmpire His eye, his arm, his
life.
In return, it made him eternal,not in peace but in presence.
If Admiral Nelson was Britain'sghost at sea, arthur Wellesley,
(15:25):
the Duke of Wellington, was itsarmored shadow on land, the man
who crushed Napoleon atWaterloo, this soldier turned
statesman who wielded both saberand silence with equal
lethality.
And now, centuries later, helies entombed beneath the weight
of London in the dark crypt ofSt Paul's Cathedral, where stone
(15:45):
kings sleep and echoes outlivememory.
Born in 1769 in Ireland,wellesley's rise was not
expected.
He was a second son,unremarkable in youth, even
labeled a dull boy by his ownmother.
But war has a way of sculptinglegends from silence.
By his early 30s he was carvinga path through India with
(16:06):
ruthless military precision,defeating powerful empires and
returning home-draping colonialvictory.
But it wasn't Europe duringNapoleonic Wars that
Wellington's name became carvedinto history's bones.
At Waterloo in 1815, wellingtonfaced the unseemly, unstoppable
force of Napoleon Bonaparte.
(16:26):
The fields were soaked in rainand the air choked with
gunpowder.
Wellington held the line, calmand impenetrable, while
thousands fell around him.
When it was done, napoleon wasdefeated, finally fatally, and
Wellington was crowned Britain'sgreat land-iron hero, the Iron
(16:47):
Duke.
But his victories were not warm.
He was known for his discipline,his cold efficiency and his
absolute intolerance for failure.
Troops revered him, civiliansfeared him.
His personal life was a ruin ofsilence and duty.
His marriage was loveless.
His letters clipped like orders.
He later became prime minister,not once but twice, and through
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his policies where, cautiousand often cold, his power never
truly waned.
The Iron Duke did not bendeasily.
Even in age, when his hearingfailed and his world became
quiet, he walked the halls withinfluence, like a ghost in full
uniform.
When he died in 1852, at theage of 83, the nation mourned.
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His funeral was colossal.
Over a million people lined thestreets of London to watch the
passing of his coffin.
Cannons, thundered, bellstolled across the city and
beneath the dome of St Paul'sthey lowered him into the crypt,
into colossal granitesarcophagus, shadowed and cold,
beside the empire he had helpedforge in blood and steel.
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Even now, in death, he feelsimmovable.
A monument of a man-turned-myth.
Some say his tomb causes theair around it to thicken, that
visitors feel a pressure, apresence not entirely resting.
Arthur Wellesley was no warmlegend.
He was iron, he was silence, hewas a victory bought at the
(18:14):
price too steep to be measuredin men alone.
And he still lies, waiting deepbeneath the cathedral dome,
wrapped out in glory but instone.
On January 30, 1965, the air inLondon hung heavy, not with fog
but with finality.
The lion had died and Britain,that aging empire of ash and
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iron, gathered to bury its lastgreat war.
Winston Leonard SpencerChurchill, prime Minister,
wartime leader, noble lauderate,was granted the rarest of
honors, a state funeral heldbeneath the shadowed dome of St
Paul's Cathedral.
It was the first for anon-royal since the Duke of
Wellington more than a centuryearlier, and it would be the
(18:59):
last for a civilian in the 20thcentury.
Churchill had died exactly 70years the day after his father,
lord Randolph Churchill.
He passed away at the age of 90after suffering a final stroke.
The world paused, bells tolledacross London and Parliament
fell silent.
The Queen then declared a fullstate funeral and for three days
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Churchill laid in state inWestminster Hall, his coffin
draped with a Union Jack.
Over 30,000 people filed pastin hushed reverence, some
weeping, some saluting, allbearing witness.
They came not just to mourn theman but to say goodbye to an
era.
On the morning of the funeral,six days after he had passed,
(19:42):
big Ben was silenced, its greatbell muted out of respect, a
rare and solemn act.
Churchill's coffin was carriedon a Royal Navy gun carriage
pulled by naval ratings, nothorses.
Behind it marched a processionof soldiers, statesmen and the
weight of history itself.
The cordage passed through thesilent streets lined with
(20:04):
mourners and memories.
The queen herself watched froma window, and the Ministry of
Defense out of respect, notprecedence.
Among the dignitaries whogathered at St Paul's Cathedral
were six sovereigns, sixpresidents and sixteen prime
ministers, including Charles deGaulle, dwight D Eisenhower and
a young Prince Charles.
(20:25):
Inside the Great StoneCathedral, 3,000 guests waited
beneath the Ren's monumentaldome, bathed in the cold light
of that January morning.
The cathedral itself stoodthrough war and flame During the
Blitz.
Churchill had insisted it to beprotected at all costs.
St Paul's must be saved, hedeclared.
And now that cathedral kept itspromise, cradling the man who
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once protected it.
The service was led by the Deanof St Paul's with hymns that
Churchill himself had chosen,including Fight, the Good Fight
and the Battle Hymn of theRepublic.
The choir's voices rose likeghosts among the columns.
There were no grand eulogies,just scripture silence and the
solemn sound of ritual.
And yes, the Queen was there.
(21:10):
It's tradition for Britishmonarchs not to attend funerals
of non-royals, but WinstonChurchill was no ordinary
subject.
On January 30, 1965, beneaththe soaring dome of St Paul's
Cathedral, queen Elizabeth IIbroke royal precedent.
She sat among mourners not as asovereign alone, but as a
citizen of the empire he hadonce held, together with grit
(21:33):
and oratory.
As Churchill's coffin passed,she did something even more
extraordinary she bowed her headjust once.
A silent gesture from crownedcommoner, from queen, to a man
who once led Britain through itsdarkest hours.
No words, just that quiet finalacknowledgement.
After the service, churchill'scoffin was taken to the Tower
(21:56):
Pier and loaded onto the Hammonda launch of the port of London
authority.
As the boat passed down theRiver Thames, docked cranes
along the river slowly dipped, ahaunting mechanical salute from
the working class he had onceboth served and scorned.
The journey ended at WaterlooStation, where a train, the same
one used by Queen Victoria,carried his body to Blenheim
(22:19):
Palace and then to the quietchurchyard of St Martin's where
Churchill was laid to rest amonghis ancestors.
Yard of St Martin's whereChurchill was laid to rest among
his ancestors.
No, grandmas and Liam, no greatmonument, just a small plot of
English earth beneath a simplestone.
A private end for a public man.
I won't go into more ofChurchill as he's not buried in
St Paul's, but his orders tocreate St Paul's Watch, to
(22:42):
protect and save the cathedral,was monumental for Britain
during the war.
Churchill himself was anextraordinary man, worthy of
another episode on the Grin bycandlelight.
She walked quiet, determined,spectral, to the wounded
soldiers of the Crimean War.
She was hope, wrapped in awhite shawl, a glimmer in the
(23:02):
blood and mud of militaryhospitals.
White shawl, a glimmer in theblood and mud of military
hospitals.
To history she became a saintof science, statistics and
salvation.
But here at the Grimm weremember that even Florence
Nightingale, the lady with thelamp, moved through darkness
long before she ever carried theflame.
Born in 1820 to a wealthyBritish family, florence was
(23:22):
expected to marry, entertain andobey the quiet rules of high
society.
But from an early age she heardwhat she called a calling, a
voice divine or internal thatinsisted her purpose lay not in
the drawing rooms of the elitebut in the corridors of the
dying.
Against her family's wishes,florence trained in secret,
(23:43):
studying medicine and nursingwhen such things were deemed
undignified for a woman of herstation.
But death didn't care fordignity, and Florence knew that.
When the Crimean War broke outin 1853, she was sent with a
team of nurses to Scutari, aBritish-based hospital in
Constantinople.
What she found there was morehorrifying than healing.
(24:04):
The wars were choked with filth.
Rats crawled between thewounded, gangrens spread like
rot in wet timber, and the deadwere buried too quickly, the
living not soon enough.
Disease claimed more soldiersthan bullets.
And so, in the midst of thisquiet apocalypse, she got to
work.
She got to work, she cleaned,she charted, she demanded proper
(24:24):
sanitation, fresh air andrunning water.
She moved among the dying atnight carrying her small lamp,
the last light that many wouldever see.
They whispered of her as aghost, a savior, a woman who
defied both war and God'sapparent silence.
But Florence Nightingale was noministering angel.
She also was a scientist, adata analyst, before the word
(24:48):
even existed.
Her charts, graphs, came at acost.
After the war, nightingalereturned not to fanfare but to
(25:09):
isolation, worn out by years ofillness.
She spent much of her remaininglife bedridden.
She became a phantom in her ownhome, writing endlessly, her
body failing while her mind kepther sharp and haunted.
Lawrence Nightingale died in1910 at the age of 90.
She was offered burial inWestminster Abbey among
(25:29):
Britain's most celebrated dead,but she refused.
She was buried instead in asmall country graveyard in
Hampshire, her tombstone markedonly with her initials FN.
No grand epithet, no marbleangels, just quiet.
But the shadows she walkedthrough have never entirely
lifted and every clean ward,every sterile scalpel, every
(25:52):
nurse holding the hand of thedying, her ghost lingers, not
mournful but vigilant, a lightin the dark and a reminder that
even angels are forged in fireIn the quiet, dust-straight
corners of science.
Death has always lingered.
It crept beneath the skin ofwounds, blackened the lungs,
filled hospital halls with thesound of rot.
(26:13):
For centuries, infection wasn'ta complication, it was a
sentence.
But in 1928, death met itsmatch in something small,
something unexpected, somethinggrowing in a forgotten petri
dish.
Sir Alexander Fleming was areluctant savior, a man who
stumbled upon salvation whileothers were chasing glory and
(26:33):
chased the course of humanmorality with fungus.
And like all great discoveries,it began not with thunder but
with neglect.
Fleming was born in 1881 in therural shadows of Ayrshire,
scotland.
He came from a farming familysurrounded by fields, damp stone
walls and the silent threat ofinfection that followed every
scrape with childbirth.
(26:55):
He grew quiet, observant andeventually curious enough to
leave the pastoral hush for thehalls of medicine in London.
He served in World War I as abattlefield doctor watching men
die, not from bullets but fromfestering wounds and septic
fevers.
Their trenches were not justsoaked with mud, but they were
soaked with gangrene.
(27:16):
It left a mark on him, a quietfury, and when the war ended,
fleming returned to the lab witha singular obsession to fight
the invisible killers.
But the breakthrough came asoften breakthroughs do, by
accident.
In 1928, fleming left a cultureof staph bacteria on his
workbench while he went away onholiday.
When he returned, he noticedsomething strange.
(27:38):
A blue-green mold had takenroot on one of the dishes and
around it the deadly bacteriahad died.
The mold was penicillin notatum, and Fleming had just
discovered the world's firsttrue antibiotic penicillin.
It wasn't an immediate miracle.
Fleming lacked the resourcesand recognition to fully develop
it.
Years would pass, but themold's promise would eventually
(28:02):
be refined, harvested andmultiplied, would eventually be
refined, harvested andmultiplied.
Just in time for World War II,penicillin swept across the
battlefield like a quiet ghost,saving countless lives that
would have once been lost tofever and filth.
Death had ruled medicine formillennia, but with Penicillin,
for the first time in history,humanity pushed back.
(28:22):
Fleming never chased fame, butit found him.
He was knighted in 1944,awarded the Nobel Prize in 1945,
and hailed as a hero, not forconquering the enemy, but for
disarming one.
He died in 1955 at the age of73 from a heart attack in his
London home.
No pain, no fanfare, justsilence.
(28:45):
He was buried in St Paul'sCathedral among the generals and
architects of empire.
But as like as he was notcarved in granite, it lingers in
the bloodstreams of billions inevery wound that healed.
And yet penicillin is notperfect.
Resistance grows.
The mold that saved us nowstruggles to keep pace.
(29:05):
It sets in scientific circlesthat we're returning to a
post-antibiotic age whereinfection may reclaim its throne
.
Perhaps Fleming's greatestachievement is not his discovery
, but the question he leftbehind what happens when the
mold no longer holds thebacteria?
Some artists paint what they see, others paint what they feel.
(29:27):
But Joseph Mallard WilliamTurner painted what haunted him
the fury of nature, the violenceof time and the slow erosion of
empire, canvas by canvas.
Like a barber, a common childwith uncommon eyes.
By the time he was a teenagerhis sketches were already
(29:50):
unsettling Moody rivers,fractured ruins, skies alive
with silence and menace.
He entered the Royal Academy ofArts at just 14.
By 26, he was a full-timemember.
But the more he painted, thefurther he drifted from the
polite sensibilities of hispeers.
Turner wasn't interested instillness or perfection.
He chased something deeper,something elemental, something
(30:13):
sublime.
Turner painted fire, shipwrecks, fog, floods and the
disintegrated edges of the knownworld.
His canvases blurred the linebetween beauty and terror.
He captured the way the lightcracked through clouds, the way
the sea devoured wood and fleshalike.
He painted London in flames,venice on the brink of drowning,
(30:33):
and the sun as a cruel,watchful god.
One of his most chilling worksthe Slave Ship in 1840, depicts
bodies tossed into a blood-redsea cargo discarded to claim
insurance.
The water gleams, beautiful andobscene.
It's not just a painting, it'san indictment, a scream.
To many in his time.
(30:54):
Turner's late work looked likemadness Color without control,
chaos without form.
But he wasn't losing vision.
He was seeing too much.
He once said indistinctness wasmy forte and in that blur he
painted the truth.
Turner never married.
He had kept few friends.
He lived with his father, whoserved as his assistant and
(31:15):
closest companion until hisdeath, a loss from which Turner
never fully recovered.
In his final years Turner livedunder an assumed name, mr Booth,
and a house near the Thameswhere he painted in near
solitude.
He died in 1851 in obscurity,muttering with his last breath.
The sun is God.
His body was laid to rest inthe crypt of St Paul's Cathedral
(31:38):
beside Sir Joshua Reynolds, thepainter who had once defined
the establishment.
Turner dismantled.
Brushstroke by brushstroke,turner painted the apocalypse as
if it were inevitable, andperhaps it is.
His seas still churn, his skiesstill burn and somewhere beyond
the canvas the painter stillwatches, not from heaven, but
(31:59):
from the horizon where lightmates darkness and nothing stays
still.
They say that D'Azra.
Rest quietly beneath St Paul'sCathedral, but step into the
crypt and you'll feel otherwise.
The gleaming marble, clean tothe eye but cloaked with
something else beyond the veil,feels cold, almost sediment, as
(32:20):
if it remembers every footstep,every prayer, every passing soul
that never truly left.
Stretching over 3,000 squarefeet, the largest crypt in
Europe.
It's a maze of stone coffinsand names carved into time.
The deeper you go, the colderthe air becomes, as if something
breathing.
(32:40):
Just beneath the surface isthere something that never quite
left?
Some call it peaceful, butthose who've walked alone down
there after the crowds have gone, they know better.
Cathedral staff have reportedhearing soft murmurs when the
building is empty, particularlynear the tomb of Lord Nelson.
One former verger claimed heheard the rhythmic sound of
(33:02):
boots pacing back and forth, asthough an officer were still
inspecting his men.
No one was there.
Several visitors in the CrippsChapel of St Dunstan have
reported faint music driftingthrough the corridors notes too
low and slow to be organ music,a deep, resonant hum.
One guest said it sounded likemonks chanting from far below.
(33:25):
The chapel has no active choirsat this time.
Tour guides are often to pointout Sir Christopher Wren's
simple tune, but few haverefused to linger near it.
One cathedral custodian claimedhe saw a figure kneeling beside
the grave sketching somethingin the dust.
When he turned the corner toapproach, the figure vanished.
(33:46):
No footprints, just the outlineof a compass and a square are
drawn in ash.
Visitors standing nearWellington's massive tomb have
complained of sudden headaches,dizziness and the feeling of
pressure, as if something unseenwere pushing back.
Some say he doesn't like to bedisturbed.
Others believe it's the weightof his legend still pressing
(34:07):
down from above.
When you step below the grandeurof the cathedral, past the
polished marble, the echoingnave, and descend into the true
heart of St Paul's, its crypt,you see a hollow kingdom beneath
the dome where the living sipcoffee and the dead listen
closely.
It's a resting place of titans,with the tombs of Admiral Lord
(34:28):
Nelson, the Duke of Wellington,sir Christopher Wren and dozens
of others whose names onceshaped empires.
The crypt houses entirechapters of British history in
its cold stone corridors.
Each plaque, each monument awhisper from the past.
But time doesn't stop here Inthe recent years.
A whisper from the past, buttime doesn't stop here.
(34:50):
In the recent years, the crypthas changed and now features a
modern cafe where visitors cansit just a few feet above
centuries of silence, sippinglattes near the bones of its
empire.
It's quiet, reverent and alittle surreal.
Cakes and cappuccinos abovesarcophagi, the living and the
long gone sharing a space inuneasy harmony.
Even more curious you can hostevents here Dinners, receptions,
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private functions.
Out of the vaulted ceilings,among candlelight and history,
the crypt becomes a venue, agathering of the present and the
company of the past.
It's beautiful, strange, it'sunforgettable.
But don't let the warm lightingand gentle chatter fool you.
Beneath every footstep, thedead keep vigil and while they
(35:34):
may not speak, they never quitestop listening, especially while
you sip your coffee.
The Crave Grind for St Paul'sCrypt was a cappuccino from the
Crypt Cafe.
For more honorary grinds in thearea, please visit
wwwthe-grimcom.
For now we're closing the gateon St Paul's Crypt and with it
(35:55):
this season of The Grim.
We hope you enjoyed our diginto history, hauntings and the
stories beneath the stones.
Be sure to subscribe so you'llknow the moment we return from
the dark.
Be sure to subscribe so you'llknow the moment we return from
the dark.
Until then, have a hauntinglyhot summer Until next season,
(36:23):
hopefully, on The Grim.
Grim Mourning and welcome to The Grim.
I'm your host, Kristin.
On today's episode we'll beopening the gate and entering
the crypt of St Paul's Cathedrallocated in London, England.
So pour yourself a midnightmargarita, settle in and prepare
for the season finale of theGrim.
One last dig into history.
Honestly, I've been lookingforward to this episode ever
(00:39):
since I thought of the idea ofSt Paul's Crypt first crossed my
mind.
It's one of London's mosticonic sites, layered in
centuries of history, mysteryand reverence.
But before we descend into thedepths, I want to take a moment
to thank you for joining me thisseason on the Grim.
This is my first foray intopodcasting.
(00:59):
I came in with no formalbackground, just a passion for
graveyards and ghostly history.
It hasn't always been polished,but if you've been with me
since episode one, I trulyappreciate every listen, every
message and every quiet momentyou've spent wandering through
graveyards with me.
I honestly never expected theGrimm to grow the way it has.
I didn't think even a quarterof the listeners or subscribers
(01:23):
we would have today would bepossible.
It's humbling and as the seasonwraps I'll be taking a short
break to write record andquietly revamp.
But before I go I do have onesmall favor to ask Please take a
moment to rate the Grimm.
Our reviews have been a bitghostly.
If you've enjoyed hitting playeach and every week, I'd be so
(01:44):
grateful for your honestfeedback.
I'm not asking for five stars,just a sign from the veil that
this journey is one worthcontinuing.
Should we keep walking thishaunted path together?
Let me know.
And don't forget.
The Grimm is creeping along onInstagram, tiktok and Itsy shop,
the Grimm Co and even Pinterest.
Yes, that's the whole thing.
(02:04):
I'll be sharing updates thereover the summer, including hits
about what's to come.
But back to the crypt.
I had the pleasure of living inLondon for several years and to
this day I believe it's one ofthe most captivating cities of
the world.
Tourists often flock to theusual sites the London Eye,
buckingham Palace, the postcardlandmarks.
(02:26):
But here at the Grimm we don'tdeal with the ordinary.
We're hatted beneath thesurface, beneath the gilded
splendor of St Paul's Cathedral,into its crypt where time hangs
heavy in the air, taste ofhistory and dust.
The first time I stepped intoSt Paul's I was a student.
It was one of the few days ayear admission was free.
(02:46):
I had skipped class to venturewithin, nervously wondering if I
was wasting one of my fiveallowed absences on a whim.
But the moment I crossed intothe threshold I was gobsmacked.
The grandeur, the echoes ofhistory.
It was absolutely worth it, andever since I've now returned
paying for entry.
But St Paul's doesn't just getyou from what's within.
It was absolutely worth it andever since I've now returned
paying for entry.
But St Paul's doesn't just getyou from what's within, it grabs
(03:09):
you from the outside too,through London's fog, a dome
rises of pale stone and hauntinggrandeur.
It stands today, just not as amarble of architecture but as a
survivor, a monument stitchedfrom fire, war and whispered
prayers, where death walksquietly beneath polished marble
and the grandeur hides a cryptof bones.
(03:30):
Long before Sir Christopher Wrenetched his vision into the ash
of a city, there was another StPaul's.
In fact there were many.
The first church on LudgateHill was believed to be founded
in 604 AD, a wooden structureraised in the name of
Christianity's rising flame.
It was rebuilt in stone, thenreduced to ruin by fire, rebuilt
(03:51):
again, then struck by lightningand again by fire.
The medieval cathedral thatpreceded the current one, known
as Old St Paul's, stood tall forcenturies before it too was
devoured by the Great Fire ofLondon in 1666, a fire so
ferocious it reduced nearly theentire city to cinder.
Out of those ashes rose the StPaul we know today, a phoenix in
(04:16):
Portland, stone designed by SirChristopher Wren, with its
iconic dome reaching skywardlike a challenge to the heavens
themselves.
Completed in 1710, it wouldbecome one of London's most
sacred spaces.
During the long firelight nightsof the Blitz, as London was
pounded wave after wave ofGerman bombs, the city trembled
(04:37):
beneath smoke and ruin.
Entire streets were flattened,neighborhoods vanished beneath
rubble, and firestorms ragedlike a biblical wrath.
And yet, through it all, stPaul's Cathedral remained,
standing defiant against thedarkness.
In those terrible months of1940 and 1941, london was bombed
for 57 consecutive nights.
(04:59):
The city's heart was scorched,but at Toplipgate Hill, amid the
shattered glass and sirens, stPaul's glowed eerily in the
flames, battered, scorched andyet unbroken, it became a beacon
of hope, its dome piercing thesmoke like a silent sentinel
over the ruins.
This was no accident.
(05:20):
A team known as the St Paul'sWatch Composive Clergy,
architects, firemen andVolunteers risked their lives,
night after night, to protectthe cathedral Appointed by
Winston Churchill himself.
They patrolled the rooftop withbuckets of sand and stirrup
pumps dousing incendiary bombsbefore they could even ignite
the timber scaffolding andlead-lined dome.
(05:42):
Their mission was to make sureSt Paul stood standing.
Sometimes bombs crashedstraight through the roof Buried
beneath within the structure.
One of them lodged itself nearthe high altar but somehow
failed to detonate.
Had it exploded, st Paul wouldhave been reduced to memory and
rubble.
Royal engineers managed todefuse it miraculously because
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the process was so dangerousthat, it's whispered, they never
spoke a word the entire time.
On December 29, 1940, one of theworst nights of the Blitz,
flames devoured much of the cityof London.
That night alone, over 24,000high-explosive and incendiary
bombs were dropped.
The glow could be seen formiles, and yet in the early
(06:27):
hours of the morning, throughthe ash and smoke, a photograph
was taken that would becomeimmortal St Paul's Cathedral,
shrouded in smoke, standingalone above the devastation.
That image became propagandafor the British, yes, but also a
symbol, a cathedral thatrefused to fall, representing
(06:47):
not just a building but thenation's will to endure.
Beneath it, in the crypt, thedead kept a silent vigil Nelson,
wellington, wren, the forgottentombs and whispered names.
The blitz shook the earth abovethem, but the dead did not stir
.
They remained, as always,watching from the depths.
(07:07):
To many, st Paul's is just achurch, but for those who lived
through the Blitz it becamesomething else A monument of
stone and spirit, a guardianover the fallen and a survivor
of fire.
Today the tour is shuffledbeneath its bolted ceilings,
unaware of the sentries watchingthem from below.
But if you listen closely, inthe hush, between footsteps and
(07:30):
flashbulbs, you might feel ittoo, that thin veil between
reverence and ruin, betweenmemories and ghosts.
But the Grimm isn't here justfor the dome and the sermons.
We're here for what liesbeneath.
Below the great cathedral,entombed in shadow and stillness
, lies the crypt, a vast andvaulted underworld and the
(07:50):
largest of its kind in all ofEurope, spanning over 30,000
square feet.
It's not simply a place of rest, but of remembrance, of
reverence of ghosts.
The crypt is divided intosolemn chambers the Chapel of
the Order of St Michael and StGeorge and the Chapel of St
Dunstan and the Chapel of theRoyal British Legion, each
(08:12):
filled with the echoes ofdevotion and duty.
The walls are lined withmemorials, from modest stone
plaques to towering marble-cladmonuments, each one a name, a
memory, a life once lived, nowsealed in stone.
Among the dead lie giants One,the very man who dreamed and
built this cathedral into beingthe architect, the scientist,
(08:36):
the mind behind the marble, sirChristopher Wren.
His tomb rests in quiethumility beneath the cathedral
he raised from the ashes.
The Latin inscription above himreads Sir monumentum rigorous
circumspice.
If you seek his monument, lookaround you.
A line so simple and yet soheavy.
Because what Wren left behindwas not just stone and symmetry.
(09:01):
He left behind a vision Born in1632, in a time when plague
still haunted the streets andEngland teetered between
monarchs and war.
Christopher Wren was a man ofstaggering intellect.
Before he ever laid acornerstone, he was a scholar,
mathematician and astronomer.
A founding member of the RoyalSociety.
Wren wasn't just building walls.
(09:23):
He was reshaping the very waythe world understood space,
proportion and light.
It was a great fire of Londonin 1666 that changed his course.
When the flames reduced themedieval city to smoldering ruin
, wren saw opportunity in theashes.
Appointed surveyor of theKing's works, he was tasked with
rebuilding not just homes buthope.
(09:44):
He would go on to design morethan 50 churches across London,
but St Paul's was his crown.
Construction began in 1675, andit would take 35 years to
complete.
Ren would never see it fullyfinished, but he watched it rise
, stone by stone, scaffold byscaffold, until its great dome
(10:05):
pierced the sky.
Inspired by the Pantheon inRome, it became the second
largest cathedral dome in theworld.
To this day, it dominatesLondon's skyline like a monument
not just to faith but to itsresilience.
Yet Wren was not a man whosought glory.
His burial on the crypt ismodest no grand effigy, no
(10:26):
ornate tomb, just the quiet echoof his work all around a man
who rebuilt the city of Londonwe know today.
Every column, every curve,every whisper of candlelight
flickering across stone is hislegacy.
And perhaps that's the mosthaunting part when a man creates
something so vast, so enduring,that even centuries after his
(10:49):
death it still pierces London'sskyline as a symbol of the past.
Yet that lives on in the future.
No matter how one chooses tospend their time in London,
linger long enough and you'lleventually pass through
Turfogger Square.
Tours pause there, buses crawlthrough it, the underground
rumbles beneath it, museumsspill their visitors into it.
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It is in every sense the city'srestless crossroads.
And yet high above the noiseand motion stands a solitary
figure.
Most never truly see A manperched on a column of stone,
watching silently from above,unless you're on a guided tour
if you bother to ask who he isor find out.
But his story casts a longshadow.
(11:32):
Few names echo through Britishnaval history, like that of
Horatio Nelson, a man who gavehis eye, his arm and eventually
his life in service to the crown.
But Lord Nelson wasn't just awar hero.
He was a symbol, a myth in themaking long before he drew his
final breath.
And, fittingly, his storydoesn't end at the sea.
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It ends in stone, far beneaththe grandeur of St Paul's
Cathedral, anda crepe ormausoleum than resting place
where he remains in tune like arelic of a vanished empire.
Born in 1758 in Norfolk, nelsonentered the Royal Navy at just
12 years old.
By the age of 20, he wascommanding ships.
By 39, he had already lost thesight of one eye and the use of
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one arm.
Scars of service were not hiswounds but his symbols.
He fought with a ruthlessprecision in battles across the
Caribbean and the Mediterranean,but it was at Trafalgar in 1805
that his legacy was sealed inblood and salt.
There, off the coast of Spain,nelson led the British fleet
against Napoleon's combinedFrench and Spanish navies.
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He devised an unorthodox battleplan, cutting directly through
enemy lines, and it worked withbrutal success.
The British secured a decisivevictory, but Nelson would not
live to see it celebrated.
A French sniper's bulletpierced his shoulder and spine.
He died hours later below deckwhispering Thank God, I have
(12:59):
done my duty.
His body was preserved in a caskof brandy some say it was
actually rum and it was shippedback to England.
When the cask was opened, thespirit was gone.
Legend has it that the sailorsdrank it to honor him, but
others say the brandy leaked.
Either way, the tale was passedinto myth, known as Nelson's
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Blood.
His deep funeral was one of themost elaborate in British
history.
His state funeral was one ofthe most elaborate in British
history.
Tens of thousands lined thestreets, and beneath the soaring
dome of St Paul's Cathedral andthe dark heart of its crypt,
nelson was laid to rest,entombed in a black marble
sarcophagus originally carvedfor Cardinal Wolsey, a man who
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never made it to his grave.
Fitting perhaps that Nelsontook his place.
He had risen through service,not privilege, and now he rests
among kings.
If you're wondering whyCardinal Wolsey never found rest
within the crypt of St Paul's,it's because history had other
plans Once the most secondpowerful man in England, wolsey
(14:00):
rose high as Lord Chancellor toHenry VIII.
He dreamed of grandeur in bothlife and death, commissioning an
elaborate black marblesarcophagus for his own burial
in St Paul's Cathedral, a tombfit for kings, carved for a
cardinal who fancies himselfeternal.
But when he failed to deliverHenry's divorce from Catherine
(14:20):
of Aragon, wolsey losteverything.
Stripped of titles, chargedwith treason and dead in
disgrace before trial, he wasburied in a rush ceremony in
Leicester Abbey, his grand tombleft behind waning and empty.
Centuries later, that verysarcophagus, cold and unused,
was given to a man who hadearned not favor but immortality
(14:41):
.
Admiral Lord Nelson, the heroof Trafalgar, now rests in
Wolsey's tomb deep within thecrypt of St Paul's Cathedral.
Where ambition failed, thecardinal valor raised the
admiral Wolsey's name was buriedin shame.
Nelson's carved into legend.
But Nelson never quite stayedburied.
Sailors whisper of him, pacingphantom decks, visitors to the
(15:04):
crypt report sudden chills,disembodied footsteps and the
feeling of being watched by eyeslong gone.
Nelson gave everything to theEmpire His eye, his arm, his
life.
In return, it made him eternal,not in peace but in presence.
If Admiral Nelson was Britain'sghost at sea, arthur Wellesley,
(15:25):
the Duke of Wellington, was itsarmored shadow on land, the man
who crushed Napoleon atWaterloo, this soldier turned
statesman who wielded both saberand silence with equal
lethality.
And now, centuries later, helies entombed beneath the weight
of London in the dark crypt ofSt Paul's Cathedral, where stone
(15:45):
kings sleep and echoes outlivememory.
Born in 1769 in Ireland,wellesley's rise was not
expected.
He was a second son,unremarkable in youth, even
labeled a dull boy by his ownmother.
But war has a way of sculptinglegends from silence.
By his early 30s he was carvinga path through India with
(16:06):
ruthless military precision,defeating powerful empires and
returning home-draping colonialvictory.
But it wasn't Europe duringNapoleonic Wars that
Wellington's name became carvedinto history's bones.
At Waterloo in 1815, wellingtonfaced the unseemly, unstoppable
force of Napoleon Bonaparte.
(16:26):
The fields were soaked in rainand the air choked with
gunpowder.
Wellington held the line, calmand impenetrable, while
thousands fell around him.
When it was done, napoleon wasdefeated, finally fatally, and
Wellington was crowned Britain'sgreat land-iron hero, the Iron
(16:47):
Duke.
But his victories were not warm.
He was known for his discipline,his cold efficiency and his
absolute intolerance for failure.
Troops revered him, civiliansfeared him.
His personal life was a ruin ofsilence and duty.
His marriage was loveless.
His letters clipped like orders.
He later became prime minister,not once but twice, and through
(17:10):
his policies where, cautiousand often cold, his power never
truly waned.
The Iron Duke did not bendeasily.
Even in age, when his hearingfailed and his world became
quiet, he walked the halls withinfluence, like a ghost in full
uniform.
When he died in 1852, at theage of 83, the nation mourned.
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His funeral was colossal.
Over a million people lined thestreets of London to watch the
passing of his coffin.
Cannons, thundered, bellstolled across the city and
beneath the dome of St Paul'sthey lowered him into the crypt,
into colossal granitesarcophagus, shadowed and cold,
beside the empire he had helpedforge in blood and steel.
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Even now, in death, he feelsimmovable.
A monument of a man-turned-myth.
Some say his tomb causes theair around it to thicken, that
visitors feel a pressure, apresence not entirely resting.
Arthur Wellesley was no warmlegend.
He was iron, he was silence, hewas a victory bought at the
(18:14):
price too steep to be measuredin men alone.
And he still lies, waiting deepbeneath the cathedral dome,
wrapped out in glory but instone.
On January 30, 1965, the air inLondon hung heavy, not with fog
but with finality.
The lion had died and Britain,that aging empire of ash and
(18:37):
iron, gathered to bury its lastgreat war.
Winston Leonard SpencerChurchill, prime Minister,
wartime leader, noble lauderate,was granted the rarest of
honors, a state funeral heldbeneath the shadowed dome of St
Paul's Cathedral.
It was the first for anon-royal since the Duke of
Wellington more than a centuryearlier, and it would be the
(18:59):
last for a civilian in the 20thcentury.
Churchill had died exactly 70years the day after his father,
lord Randolph Churchill.
He passed away at the age of 90after suffering a final stroke.
The world paused, bells tolledacross London and Parliament
fell silent.
The Queen then declared a fullstate funeral and for three days
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Churchill laid in state inWestminster Hall, his coffin
draped with a Union Jack.
Over 30,000 people filed pastin hushed reverence, some
weeping, some saluting, allbearing witness.
They came not just to mourn theman but to say goodbye to an
era.
On the morning of the funeral,six days after he had passed,
(19:42):
big Ben was silenced, its greatbell muted out of respect, a
rare and solemn act.
Churchill's coffin was carriedon a Royal Navy gun carriage
pulled by naval ratings, nothorses.
Behind it marched a processionof soldiers, statesmen and the
weight of history itself.
The cordage passed through thesilent streets lined with
(20:04):
mourners and memories.
The queen herself watched froma window, and the Ministry of
Defense out of respect, notprecedence.
Among the dignitaries whogathered at St Paul's Cathedral
were six sovereigns, sixpresidents and sixteen prime
ministers, including Charles deGaulle, dwight D Eisenhower and
a young Prince Charles.
(20:25):
Inside the Great StoneCathedral, 3,000 guests waited
beneath the Ren's monumentaldome, bathed in the cold light
of that January morning.
The cathedral itself stoodthrough war and flame During the
Blitz.
Churchill had insisted it to beprotected at all costs.
St Paul's must be saved, hedeclared.
And now that cathedral kept itspromise, cradling the man who
(20:48):
once protected it.
The service was led by the Deanof St Paul's with hymns that
Churchill himself had chosen,including Fight, the Good Fight
and the Battle Hymn of theRepublic.
The choir's voices rose likeghosts among the columns.
There were no grand eulogies,just scripture silence and the
solemn sound of ritual.
And yes, the Queen was there.
(21:10):
It's tradition for Britishmonarchs not to attend funerals
of non-royals, but WinstonChurchill was no ordinary
subject.
On January 30, 1965, beneaththe soaring dome of St Paul's
Cathedral, queen Elizabeth IIbroke royal precedent.
She sat among mourners not as asovereign alone, but as a
citizen of the empire he hadonce held, together with grit
(21:33):
and oratory.
As Churchill's coffin passed,she did something even more
extraordinary she bowed her headjust once.
A silent gesture from crownedcommoner, from queen, to a man
who once led Britain through itsdarkest hours.
No words, just that quiet finalacknowledgement.
After the service, churchill'scoffin was taken to the Tower
(21:56):
Pier and loaded onto the Hammonda launch of the port of London
authority.
As the boat passed down theRiver Thames, docked cranes
along the river slowly dipped, ahaunting mechanical salute from
the working class he had onceboth served and scorned.
The journey ended at WaterlooStation, where a train, the same
one used by Queen Victoria,carried his body to Blenheim
(22:19):
Palace and then to the quietchurchyard of St Martin's where
Churchill was laid to rest amonghis ancestors.
Yard of St Martin's whereChurchill was laid to rest among
his ancestors.
No, grandmas and Liam, no greatmonument, just a small plot of
English earth beneath a simplestone.
A private end for a public man.
I won't go into more ofChurchill as he's not buried in
St Paul's, but his orders tocreate St Paul's Watch, to
(22:42):
protect and save the cathedral,was monumental for Britain
during the war.
Churchill himself was anextraordinary man, worthy of
another episode on the Grin bycandlelight.
She walked quiet, determined,spectral, to the wounded
soldiers of the Crimean War.
She was hope, wrapped in awhite shawl, a glimmer in the
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blood and mud of militaryhospitals.
White shawl, a glimmer in theblood and mud of military
hospitals.
To history she became a saintof science, statistics and
salvation.
But here at the Grimm weremember that even Florence
Nightingale, the lady with thelamp, moved through darkness
long before she ever carried theflame.
Born in 1820 to a wealthyBritish family, florence was
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expected to marry, entertain andobey the quiet rules of high
society.
But from an early age she heardwhat she called a calling, a
voice divine or internal thatinsisted her purpose lay not in
the drawing rooms of the elitebut in the corridors of the
dying.
Against her family's wishes,florence trained in secret,
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studying medicine and nursingwhen such things were deemed
undignified for a woman of herstation.
But death didn't care fordignity, and Florence knew that.
When the Crimean War broke outin 1853, she was sent with a
team of nurses to Scutari, aBritish-based hospital in
Constantinople.
What she found there was morehorrifying than healing.
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The wars were choked with filth.
Rats crawled between thewounded, gangrens spread like
rot in wet timber, and the deadwere buried too quickly, the
living not soon enough.
Disease claimed more soldiersthan bullets.
And so, in the midst of thisquiet apocalypse, she got to
work.
She got to work, she cleaned,she charted, she demanded proper
(24:24):
sanitation, fresh air andrunning water.
She moved among the dying atnight carrying her small lamp,
the last light that many wouldever see.
They whispered of her as aghost, a savior, a woman who
defied both war and God'sapparent silence.
But Florence Nightingale was noministering angel.
She also was a scientist, adata analyst, before the word
(24:48):
even existed.
Her charts, graphs, came at acost.
After the war, nightingalereturned not to fanfare but to
(25:09):
isolation, worn out by years ofillness.
She spent much of her remaininglife bedridden.
She became a phantom in her ownhome, writing endlessly, her
body failing while her mind kepther sharp and haunted.
Lawrence Nightingale died in1910 at the age of 90.
She was offered burial inWestminster Abbey among
(25:29):
Britain's most celebrated dead,but she refused.
She was buried instead in asmall country graveyard in
Hampshire, her tombstone markedonly with her initials FN.
No grand epithet, no marbleangels, just quiet.
But the shadows she walkedthrough have never entirely
lifted and every clean ward,every sterile scalpel, every
(25:52):
nurse holding the hand of thedying, her ghost lingers, not
mournful but vigilant, a lightin the dark and a reminder that
even angels are forged in fireIn the quiet, dust-straight
corners of science.
Death has always lingered.
It crept beneath the skin ofwounds, blackened the lungs,
filled hospital halls with thesound of rot.
(26:13):
For centuries, infection wasn'ta complication, it was a
sentence.
But in 1928, death met itsmatch in something small,
something unexpected, somethinggrowing in a forgotten petri
dish.
Sir Alexander Fleming was areluctant savior, a man who
stumbled upon salvation whileothers were chasing glory and
(26:33):
chased the course of humanmorality with fungus.
And like all great discoveries,it began not with thunder but
with neglect.
Fleming was born in 1881 in therural shadows of Ayrshire,
scotland.
He came from a farming familysurrounded by fields, damp stone
walls and the silent threat ofinfection that followed every
scrape with childbirth.
(26:55):
He grew quiet, observant andeventually curious enough to
leave the pastoral hush for thehalls of medicine in London.
He served in World War I as abattlefield doctor watching men
die, not from bullets but fromfestering wounds and septic
fevers.
Their trenches were not justsoaked with mud, but they were
soaked with gangrene.
(27:16):
It left a mark on him, a quietfury, and when the war ended,
fleming returned to the lab witha singular obsession to fight
the invisible killers.
But the breakthrough came asoften breakthroughs do, by
accident.
In 1928, fleming left a cultureof staph bacteria on his
workbench while he went away onholiday.
When he returned, he noticedsomething strange.
(27:38):
A blue-green mold had takenroot on one of the dishes and
around it the deadly bacteriahad died.
The mold was penicillin notatum, and Fleming had just
discovered the world's firsttrue antibiotic penicillin.
It wasn't an immediate miracle.
Fleming lacked the resourcesand recognition to fully develop
it.
Years would pass, but themold's promise would eventually
(28:02):
be refined, harvested andmultiplied, would eventually be
refined, harvested andmultiplied.
Just in time for World War II,penicillin swept across the
battlefield like a quiet ghost,saving countless lives that
would have once been lost tofever and filth.
Death had ruled medicine formillennia, but with Penicillin,
for the first time in history,humanity pushed back.
(28:22):
Fleming never chased fame, butit found him.
He was knighted in 1944,awarded the Nobel Prize in 1945,
and hailed as a hero, not forconquering the enemy, but for
disarming one.
He died in 1955 at the age of73 from a heart attack in his
London home.
No pain, no fanfare, justsilence.
(28:45):
He was buried in St Paul'sCathedral among the generals and
architects of empire.
But as like as he was notcarved in granite, it lingers in
the bloodstreams of billions inevery wound that healed.
And yet penicillin is notperfect.
Resistance grows.
The mold that saved us nowstruggles to keep pace.
(29:05):
It sets in scientific circlesthat we're returning to a
post-antibiotic age whereinfection may reclaim its throne
.
Perhaps Fleming's greatestachievement is not his discovery
, but the question he leftbehind what happens when the
mold no longer holds thebacteria?
Some artists paint what they see, others paint what they feel.
(29:27):
But Joseph Mallard WilliamTurner painted what haunted him
the fury of nature, the violenceof time and the slow erosion of
empire, canvas by canvas.
Like a barber, a common childwith uncommon eyes.
By the time he was a teenagerhis sketches were already
(29:50):
unsettling Moody rivers,fractured ruins, skies alive
with silence and menace.
He entered the Royal Academy ofArts at just 14.
By 26, he was a full-timemember.
But the more he painted, thefurther he drifted from the
polite sensibilities of hispeers.
Turner wasn't interested instillness or perfection.
He chased something deeper,something elemental, something
(30:13):
sublime.
Turner painted fire, shipwrecks, fog, floods and the
disintegrated edges of the knownworld.
His canvases blurred the linebetween beauty and terror.
He captured the way the lightcracked through clouds, the way
the sea devoured wood and fleshalike.
He painted London in flames,venice on the brink of drowning,
(30:33):
and the sun as a cruel,watchful god.
One of his most chilling worksthe Slave Ship in 1840, depicts
bodies tossed into a blood-redsea cargo discarded to claim
insurance.
The water gleams, beautiful andobscene.
It's not just a painting, it'san indictment, a scream.
To many in his time.
(30:54):
Turner's late work looked likemadness Color without control,
chaos without form.
But he wasn't losing vision.
He was seeing too much.
He once said indistinctness wasmy forte and in that blur he
painted the truth.
Turner never married.
He had kept few friends.
He lived with his father, whoserved as his assistant and
(31:15):
closest companion until hisdeath, a loss from which Turner
never fully recovered.
In his final years Turner livedunder an assumed name, mr Booth,
and a house near the Thameswhere he painted in near
solitude.
He died in 1851 in obscurity,muttering with his last breath.
The sun is God.
His body was laid to rest inthe crypt of St Paul's Cathedral
(31:38):
beside Sir Joshua Reynolds, thepainter who had once defined
the establishment.
Turner dismantled.
Brushstroke by brushstroke,turner painted the apocalypse as
if it were inevitable, andperhaps it is.
His seas still churn, his skiesstill burn and somewhere beyond
the canvas the painter stillwatches, not from heaven, but
(31:59):
from the horizon where lightmates darkness and nothing stays
still.
They say that D'Azra.
Rest quietly beneath St Paul'sCathedral, but step into the
crypt and you'll feel otherwise.
The gleaming marble, clean tothe eye but cloaked with
something else beyond the veil,feels cold, almost sediment, as
(32:20):
if it remembers every footstep,every prayer, every passing soul
that never truly left.
Stretching over 3,000 squarefeet, the largest crypt in
Europe.
It's a maze of stone coffinsand names carved into time.
The deeper you go, the colderthe air becomes, as if something
breathing.
(32:40):
Just beneath the surface isthere something that never quite
left?
Some call it peaceful, butthose who've walked alone down
there after the crowds have gone, they know better.
Cathedral staff have reportedhearing soft murmurs when the
building is empty, particularlynear the tomb of Lord Nelson.
One former verger claimed heheard the rhythmic sound of
(33:02):
boots pacing back and forth, asthough an officer were still
inspecting his men.
No one was there.
Several visitors in the CrippsChapel of St Dunstan have
reported faint music driftingthrough the corridors notes too
low and slow to be organ music,a deep, resonant hum.
One guest said it sounded likemonks chanting from far below.
(33:25):
The chapel has no active choirsat this time.
Tour guides are often to pointout Sir Christopher Wren's
simple tune, but few haverefused to linger near it.
One cathedral custodian claimedhe saw a figure kneeling beside
the grave sketching somethingin the dust.
When he turned the corner toapproach, the figure vanished.
(33:46):
No footprints, just the outlineof a compass and a square are
drawn in ash.
Visitors standing nearWellington's massive tomb have
complained of sudden headaches,dizziness and the feeling of
pressure, as if something unseenwere pushing back.
Some say he doesn't like to bedisturbed.
Others believe it's the weightof his legend still pressing
(34:07):
down from above.
When you step below the grandeurof the cathedral, past the
polished marble, the echoingnave, and descend into the true
heart of St Paul's, its crypt,you see a hollow kingdom beneath
the dome where the living sipcoffee and the dead listen
closely.
It's a resting place of titans,with the tombs of Admiral Lord
(34:28):
Nelson, the Duke of Wellington,sir Christopher Wren and dozens
of others whose names onceshaped empires.
The crypt houses entirechapters of British history in
its cold stone corridors.
Each plaque, each monument awhisper from the past.
But time doesn't stop here Inthe recent years.
A whisper from the past, buttime doesn't stop here.
(34:50):
In the recent years, the crypthas changed and now features a
modern cafe where visitors cansit just a few feet above
centuries of silence, sippinglattes near the bones of its
empire.
It's quiet, reverent and alittle surreal.
Cakes and cappuccinos abovesarcophagi, the living and the
long gone sharing a space inuneasy harmony.
Even more curious you can hostevents here Dinners, receptions,
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private functions.
Out of the vaulted ceilings,among candlelight and history,
the crypt becomes a venue, agathering of the present and the
company of the past.
It's beautiful, strange, it'sunforgettable.
But don't let the warm lightingand gentle chatter fool you.
Beneath every footstep, thedead keep vigil and while they
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may not speak, they never quitestop listening, especially while
you sip your coffee.
The Crave Grind for St Paul'sCrypt was a cappuccino from the
Crypt Cafe.
For more honorary grinds in thearea, please visit
wwwthe-grimcom.
For now we're closing the gateon St Paul's Crypt and with it
(35:55):
this season of The Grim.
We hope you enjoyed our diginto history, hauntings and the
stories beneath the stones.
Be sure to subscribe so you'llknow the moment we return from
the dark.
Be sure to subscribe so you'llknow the moment we return from
the dark.
Until then, have a hauntinglyhot summer Until next season,
(36:23):
hopefully, on The Grim.
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