Qualla: St Magnus the Martyr https://qualla.com/st-magnus-the-martyr en-us © 2026 Bendyline Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:40:15 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/v/st-magnus-the-martyr-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: St Magnus the Martyr https://qualla.com/st-magnus-the-martyr St Magnus the Martyr: Introduction https://qualla.com/st-magnus-the-martyr/ Photo credit Northcote Lea, CC BY-SA 4.0. For roughly six hundred years, anyone arriving in London from the south crossed the river at Old London Bridge and passed within a few feet of the west door of St Magnus the Martyr. The church stood at the north end of the bridge, on the alignment of Fish Street Hill, and its tower clock — a 1709 gift from Sir Charles Duncombe, the story goes, in fulfilment of a vow made one foggy morning when he could not find the hour — projected out over the roadway. T. S. Eliot, who knew the building well, called the interior in The Waste Land "inexplicable splendour of Ionian white and gold." He added in a footnote that it was, to his mind, one of the finest of Wren's interiors. Eliot was right about the building. He was right, too, that you had to come at it as a sinner to feel its full effect.

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Image: Northcote Lea | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/v/st-magnus-the-martyr-wp/gcpv-st-magnus-the-martyr-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full St Magnus the Martyr: The Gateway to London https://qualla.com/st-magnus-the-martyr/ Photo credit Tilman2007, CC BY-SA 4.0. Until 1831 the only fixed crossing between the sea and Kingston-upon-Thames was here, where Peter of Colechurch's stone bridge — completed in 1209 — ran from the Surrey shore to the City. The bridge carried houses, shops, a chapel dedicated to Thomas Becket, and a steady churn of...

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Image: Tilman2007 | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/v/st-magnus-the-martyr-wp/gcpv-st-magnus-the-martyr-the-gateway-to-london.mp3 0:06 2 full St Magnus the Martyr: Which Magnus? https://qualla.com/st-magnus-the-martyr/ Photo credit Basher Eyre, CC BY-SA 2.0. The dedication is contested. Since 1926 the church has been formally dedicated to St Magnus Erlendsson, Earl of Orkney, executed on Egilsay around 1117 for refusing to fight his cousin in a political dispute and later canonised. But the building predates Earl Magnus by roughly a ...

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Image: Basher Eyre | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/v/st-magnus-the-martyr-wp/gcpv-st-magnus-the-martyr-which-magnus.mp3 0:06 3 full St Magnus the Martyr: The Fire and the Rebuilding https://qualla.com/st-magnus-the-martyr/ Photo credit Keith Edkins, CC BY-SA 2.0. St Magnus stood less than three hundred yards from Thomas Farriner's bakehouse on Pudding Lane. It was one of the first buildings the Great Fire took, on 2 September 1666. Farriner himself, a former churchwarden of St Magnus, would be buried in the middle aisle four years later, ...

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Image: Keith Edkins | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/v/st-magnus-the-martyr-wp/gcpv-st-magnus-the-martyr-the-fire-and-the-rebuilding.mp3 0:06 4 full St Magnus the Martyr: The Blitz and What Was Saved https://qualla.com/st-magnus-the-martyr/ Photo credit Public domain. Old London Bridge was demolished in 1831 when Sir John Rennie's new bridge opened upstream, and St Magnus ceased to be the gateway to London. The church kept its tower clock and its sword rest. It survived a serious fire in 1760 in an adjoining oil shop, escaped a 1920 demolition...

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Image: Public domain

]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/v/st-magnus-the-martyr-wp/gcpv-st-magnus-the-martyr-the-blitz-and-what-was-saved.mp3 0:06 5 full St Magnus the Martyr: Ionian White and Gold https://qualla.com/st-magnus-the-martyr/ Photo credit Deror_avi, CC BY-SA 3.0. Step inside today, off Lower Thames Street, and the urban roar drops away. The chequered marble floor of the chancel, the freestone flags of the nave, the rails of Sussex wrought iron, the gilded organ case — all of it survives. The clock that Charles Duncombe gave so that no one...

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Image: Deror_avi | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/v/st-magnus-the-martyr-wp/gcpv-st-magnus-the-martyr-ionian-white-and-gold.mp3 0:06 6 full