‘Of all the tears that St. Swithin does cry, St. Bartholomew will wipe them dry‘, says today’s rhyme.

St Bartholomew’s Day, or Bartlemas, being 24 August is forty days after St Swithun’s Day on 15 July when the much quoted lines in Winchester are:

St Swithun’s day if thou dost rain
For forty days it will remain
St Swithun’s day if thou be fair
For forty days ’twill rain nae mair.

So it’s the last of the forty days of rain or sun.

Diamond Geezer has been keeping a record with his Swithinometer.

There is a St Bartholomew’s church at Hyde Abbey on the edge of Winchester.

There is also one at Otford where the pilgrims, from Southwark and Winchester unite on the way to Canterbury.

An arm of St Bartholomew was in the care of Canterbury Cathedral from the 1030s until the 1530s. The monks accepted the relic from the Bishop of Benevento, near Naples, in return for a fine cope .

Bartholomew is one of the twelve Apostles of Jesus who first saw him under a fig tree.