Qualla: St Margaret's, Westminster

St Margaret's, Westminster: Introduction

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jordiferrer, CC BY-SA 4.0. In 1863, Sir George Gilbert Scott was preparing to restore St Margaret's church when his workmen pried loose several old doors and found something disturbing on the underside. They appeared to be covered in human skin. Victorian historians, with the appetite for the macabre that defined the period, quickly produced a theory. The skin, they declared, must have belonged to William the Sacrist, a Westminster Abbey monk who in 1303 had masterminded the theft of about 100 million pounds (in modern equivalent) of the King's treasure - a heist involving accomplices disguised as monks and loot hidden in hedges. He was, according to the historians, flayed alive as punishment, and his skin was used to cover the doors of the royal treasury. Later forensic study revealed the doors were lined with cow leather. The Sacrist was never actually flayed. But the story sits comfortably with St Margaret's, the small, stubborn, twelfth-century parish church that has lived for nine hundred years in the shadow of Westminster Abbey and now sits as the official church of the House of Commons.

Image: Jordiferrer | CC BY-SA 4.0

St Margaret's, Westminster: A Church to Stop the Tourists

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Zeisterre, CC BY-SA 3.0. Benedictine monks built the first St Margaret's in the twelfth century for a specific and practical reason: local parishioners around Westminster Abbey kept turning up to worship in the abbey itself, and the monks, who were trying to maintain their own contemplative liturgy, want...

Image: Zeisterre | CC BY-SA 3.0

St Margaret's, Westminster: Parliament's Church

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Man vyi, Public domain. In 1614 the Puritan members of Parliament announced they preferred St Margaret's to Westminster Abbey for their official services. The abbey was too liturgical, too smoky with incense, too high-church for their austere tastes. They came across the green to the simpler building ne...

Image: Man vyi | Public domain

St Margaret's, Westminster: The Window That Travelled

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ojwelch, CC0. Above the altar is a window of 1509 - Flemish stained glass made to celebrate the betrothal of Catherine of Aragon to Prince Arthur, Henry VIII's elder brother. Catherine never married Arthur, who died young; she married Henry instead, then watched him divorce her decades later t...

Image: Ojwelch | CC0

St Margaret's, Westminster: Caxton, Raleigh, Equiano

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ermell, CC BY-SA 4.0. William Caxton, who brought the printing press to England in 1476, was buried at St Margaret's in 1491 - his press had stood just yards away in the abbey precincts. Sir Walter Raleigh was beheaded in 1618 in Old Palace Yard, immediately outside the church, and his body was carrie...

Image: Ermell | CC BY-SA 4.0