St. Magnus the Martyr

St. Magnus the Martyr church stands on Lower Thames Street, immediately east of London Bridge. It is land that was reclaimed from the river by the Romans to create quays for their ships to unload. A piece of timber from that time, excavated around 1930, stands in the porch of the church.

St. Magnus, to which the church is officially dedicated, was the 12^th century Norwegian Christian Earl of Orkney. He was killed during a power struggle with his cousin Haakon in around 1117, although not martyred for his religious beliefs. Magnus had led an eventful life, including piracy and asylum in a bishop’s house at the court of the Scottish King Malcolm III (successor to Macbeth). He was buried at Kirkwell in the Orkneys where Britain’s most northerly cathedral is now dedicated to him. Within St. Magnus there is horn-helmeted statue of the saint holding a model of the building. In fact, the church dates from around 1100, slightly before the death of Magnus. (One document dates the foundation as 1067 but that is now thought to be a later forgery). Thus, the church may originally have been dedicated to an earlier St. Magnus, possibly the 3^rd century Bishop of Caeserea.

St. Magnus can be seen immediately to the north of the old London Bridge in Civitas Londinum (the ‘Agas map’) from about 1561.

Within St. Magnus there is a magnificent scale model of the medieval London Bridge by David T. Agget. For 700 years the church stood at the northern entrance to the bridge, the only crossing over the river for most of that time. For many years pedestrians passed under the tower portico of the church. Thousands of people would have therefore passed the door of the church every day. London Bridge was rebuilt and realigned slightly to the west by Sir John Rennie in the early 19^th century and St. Magnus is now separated from the approach to the bridge, and somewhat overshadowed, by a 1920s office building. Two of the stones from the medieval bridge now stand in the churchyard.

This detail from the ‘Long View of London’ by the artist Wenceslaus Hollar shows St. Magnus at the northern end of London Bridge before it was destroyed in the Great Fire.

Panoramas of London of 1544, 1616 and 1647 show St. Magnus with a crenelated profile and large tower, similar to the still-standing St. Giles Cripplegate.

Being close to where the Great Fire began at nearby Pudding Lane, St. Magnus was the second church to be destroyed in the conflagration as it spread down Fish Street Hill. Samuel Pepys wrote in his diary of 2^nd December 1666, “it hath burned down St. Magnes Church and most part of Fishstreet already”.

Following the Great Fire, the parishioners were eager to rebuild their church and in 1668 hired the mason George Dowdeswell to erect the north wall. The work to rebuild the church was completed by Christopher Wren’s office, and the workmen were John Thompson (mason), Matthew Banckes Snr. And Thomas Lock (carpenters), William Cleere (joiner), and Doogood & Grove (plasterers), with internal work by William Grey and one Massey. The walls are of Portland stone. The steeple above the tower is one of Wren’s finest, with an arcaded stone octagon, large leaded dome, and a small lantern and obelisk spire. It may have been influenced by a spire in Antwerp. A model was probably made for the steeple in 1684 but it was only completed in 1706 due to lack of funding.

In Wren’s design there were nine bays. On the north wall was a large central door, with four tall windows either side. The door was blocked in 1782 and the windows converted to their current high form to reduce the noise from the busy Thames Street and “foul language” and smell from the nearby Billingsgate fish market.

The large clock projecting from the side of the tower was donated in 1709 by Lord Mayor and goldsmith Sir Charles Duncombe. It was said to be the fulfilment of a vow made when he was an apprentice after missing an appointment due to a lack of a reliable clock. In 1712 Sir Charles also presented the organ, built by Abraham Jordan, father and son, which was the earliest ‘swell organ’.

There were ten bells in the tower. They were taken down for safe-keeping in 1940 but never replaced and eventually melted down due to lack of funds.

St.Magnus, looking down Fish Street Hill in the early years of the 20th century.

The church roof was destroyed by another fire in May 1760, apparently when an apprentice left a flame in an oil shop unguarded while watching the procession of Lord Ferrers on his way from the Tower of London to his execution at Tyburn following his conviction for murder. Rebuilding coincided with major renovation and widening of London Bridge. To provide new pedestrian access to the bridge, two of Wren’s nine bays were demolished at the west end, reducing the length of the church. The base of the tower was converted into a porch to create a path between Fish Street Hill and the bridge.

Various minor changes were made in the late 18^th and early 19^th centuries. St. Magnus was re-ordered by Martin Travers in the mid-1920s during the incumbency of the Reverend Henry Joy Fynes-Clinton, in Anglo-Catholic style. It continues in the ‘High Church’ tradition. A new pair of columns was added at that time. St. Magnus suffered bomb damage in both World Wars, but particularly during an air raid in 1940. Repairs were completed in 1951 but there was some damage in 1995 during a fire.

St. Magnus remains as a parochial church. The first church to be destroyed in the Great Fire was St. Margaret New Fish Street. It was not rebuilt and the site was used for the Monument that commemorates the conflagration. St. Michael Crooked Lane was demolished in 1831 to make way for the creation of King William Street. Both parishes were united with that of St. Magnus.