Five parish badge markers are stacked in a row inside the portal leading to the St Magnus the Martyr Anglican Churchyard in London trace the history of this 900-year old church site.
The markers are near a preserved piece of a Roman wharf, found while excavating the churchyard, which was formerly right on the Thames quayside.
Today's St Magnus the Martyr is one of Sir Christopher Wren's churches, a gorgeous Baroque landmark is worth an extended visit.
The 5 badges are, from bottom to top:
Old style St Magnus the Martyr
St Magnus the Martyr
St Margaret New Fish Street (absorbed by St Magnus in 1670, when it was decided not to rebuild St Margaret New Fish Street after the Great Fore of 1666)
St Michael Crooked Lane (absorbed by St Magnus in 1831 when new Londion Bridge construction required demolition of St Michael Crooked Lane)
St Martin Orgar
We appreciate the help of St. Magnus the Martyr church personnel who responded to our questions on identification of two of the badges via their Facebook page.
Michael Cooper's article on the History of St Magnus the Martyr is a very good read. See (
visit link)
The church website also has a LOT of detailed history of the parish, broken up into centuries. See: (
visit link)
But for purposes of this waymark, we will stick to excerpts relating to the badges. The rest is yours to discover, waymarkers!
From Michael Cooper's excellent article: (
visit link)
". . .
The archaeological evidence suggests that Thames Street appeared in the late 11th century, running immediately behind (north of) the old Roman riverside wall and crossing the existing north-south streets. Churches such as St Magnus came into being south of the new thoroughfare of Thames Street on reclaimed land to meet the needs of the growing population along the waterfront. It is therefore likely that St Magnus was founded by around 1100, i.e. before the martyrdom of St Magnus of Orkney.
However, in the absence of definitive historical evidence the Bishop of London decided in 1926 that the dedication should be to St Magnus of Orkney, so that is who we, along with Kirkwall Cathedral on the Orkneys, celebrate on 16th April each year as our patron saint.
. . . .
Between the late Saxon period and 1209 there was a series of wooden bridges across the Thames, but in that year Peter de Colechurch’s stone bridge was completed. Until 1831 the bridge was aligned with Fish Street Hill, so the main entrance into the City from the south passed the West door of St Magnus. The bridge included a chapel dedicated to St Thomas a Becket for the use of pilgrims journeying to Canterbury Cathedral to visit his tomb. The chapel was in the parish of St Magnus and after some years of rivalry a dispute arose between the church and the chapel over the offerings given to the chapel by the pilgrims. The matter was resolved by the brethren of the chapel making an annual contribution to St Magnus.
The church grew in importance. It was extended in 1234. In the 14th century the Pope was the Patron of the Living and appointed five rectors to the benefice. An important religious guild, the Confraternity de Salve Regina, was founded. Henry Yevele, the King’s Mason and architect of Westminster Hall, was a parishioner and rebuilt the chapel on the bridge between 1384 and 1397. He was buried at St Magnus on his death in 1400. St Magnus Corner at the north end of London Bridge was an important meeting place in mediaeval London, where notices were exhibited, proclamations read out and wrongdoers punished.
. . .
We then come to the Reformation. The fraternity of Salve Regina was dissolved and the chapel on the bridge turned into a house and later a warehouse. The churchwardens were ordered to break up the altar stones. However, in the 1560s the church had its most famous Rector, Miles Coverdale, translator of the Scriptures into English. It is perhaps worth pausing to consider Coverdale’s achievement in that regard. Working alone in exile in Antwerp, he was the first to translate and print the entire Bible in English. . .
Coverdale was Bishop of Exeter in Edward VI’s reign, fled abroad once again during Queen Mary’s reign and returned to London in 1559. In January 1564 he accepted from Edmund Grindal, bishop of London, the living of St Magnus. He was too poor to pay the first fruits, and they were forgiven him by Queen Elizabeth. He resigned from St Magnus in the summer of 1566 . . .
. . .
In 1632 and again in 1640 there were massive fires on London Bridge and one of the Tables of Benefactions at the West end, dating from the 1670s, records the close escape that the church had in the latter year during the “late terrible Fire on London Bridge”. The Table also records the provision by Mrs Susanna Chambers for a sermon to be preached on every twelfth day of February to commemorate its preservation. The custom of the annual ‘Fire Sermon’ has been revived in recent years. The next sermon will be on 19th February 2009. . .
. . .
Of course, the mediaeval church was swept away in the Great Fire of London of 1666. The fire started close by in Pudding Lane and St Magnus was the second church to perish, the first being St Margaret New Fish Street, which was on the site now occupied by the Monument. St Margaret’s was not rebuilt and that parish united with St Magnus in 1670.
. . .
The next big upheaval came in the 1760s. A dreadful fire broke out on 18th April 1760 in an oil shop at the SE corner of the church, which consumed most of the church roof and did considerable damage to the fabric. There was a major restoration, but no sooner had that been completed than the Corporation decided to widen London Bridge. The end of the church building was on the edge of the roadway at the north end of the bridge. Now a new footpath for pedestrians crossing the bridge was to be created through the tower of the church. As a consequence it was necessary between 1762 and 1768 to remove the vestry rooms at the West end of the church and open up the side arches of the tower so that people could pass underneath the tower. The tower’s lower storey thus became an external porch. Internally a lobby was created at the West end under the organ gallery and a screen with fine octagonal glazing inserted.
By 1782 the noise level from the activities of Billingsgate Fish Market had become unbearable and the large windows on the north side of the church were blocked up leaving only circular windows high up in the wall. At some point between the 1760s and 1814, nobody is quite sure when, the present clerestory was constructed with its oval windows and fluted and coffered plasterwork.
History repeated itself in the early nineteenth century. There was another serious fire in 1827 when a warehouse built up against the south wall of the church caught fire. In 1831 Rennie’s new London Bridge was opened further upstream and the old bridge demolished. Peter de Colechurch’s bones in the crypt of the chapel on the bridge were unceremoniously dumped in the Thames. St Magnus ceased to be the gateway to London as it had been for over 600 years. . . .
Another consequence of the new bridge was the construction of King William Street, the demolition in 1831 of the church of St Michael Crooked Lane and the union of that parish with that of St Magnus and St Margaret. . ."