This is nothing like the stuff resulting from demolition of tax office, looks much earlier plus bits of metalwork to be seen. Contractor has another, larger crusher onsite to deal with it.

2016 Cat 325F-L Hydraulic Excavator

Considering the parish is only a moderate size (pop: ~600), All Saints', Hitcham is a large church. It dates from the 14th century although the Domesday record describes an earlier church. In 1984, a site in a field behind The White Horse Inn was excavated, revealing an ancient burial ground with a number of well preserved skeletons and the foundations of what might have been a church. Fragments of pottery found suggested a date of 10th or 11th century.

 

All Saints' is constructed of flint and stone and is almost all Perpendicular in style. The chancel was largely rebuilt in 1878. The nave and aisles are 14th century, with castellated parapets and chequer work on the nave and stone on the aisles. The west tower is 15th century, with angle buttresses and chequer work on the faces, castellated parapet and a stair turret. The impressive south porch has flush work panelling, set back buttresses and 3 open niches. It closely resembles that of other nearby churches, such as neighbouring Bildeston, Preston St. Mary and Felsham.

 

The nave roof has double-hammer beams with shields with royal emblems at the lower ends. There are monograms of James I and Charles I. The interior fittings include the mainly 15th century benches with poppy head bench ends and an 18th century octagonal pulpit.

 

www.fluidr.com/photos/dogmarten28

 

Wells Cathedral is an Anglican cathedral in Wells, Somerset, England, dedicated to St Andrew the Apostle. It is the seat of the Bishop of Bath and Wells, whose cathedra it holds as mother church of the Diocese of Bath and Wells. Built as a Roman Catholic cathedral from around 1175 to replace an earlier church on the site since 705, it became an Anglican cathedral when King Henry VIII split from Rome. It is moderately sized for an English cathedral. Its broad west front and large central tower are dominant features. It has been called "unquestionably one of the most beautiful" and "most poetic" of English cathedrals.

 

Its Gothic architecture is mostly inspired from Early English style of the late 12th to early 13th centuries, lacking the Romanesque work that survives in many other cathedrals. Building began about 1175 at the east end with the choir. Historian John Harvey sees it as Europe's first truly Gothic structure, breaking the last constraints of Romanesque. The stonework of its pointed arcades and fluted piers bears pronounced mouldings and carved capitals in a foliate, "stiff-leaf" style. Its Early English front with 300 sculpted figures is seen as a "supreme triumph of the combined plastic arts in England". The east end retains much ancient stained glass. Unlike many cathedrals of monastic foundation, Wells has many surviving secular buildings linked to its chapter of secular canons, including the Bishop's Palace and the 15th-century residential Vicars' Close It is a Grade I listed building.

 

The earliest remains of a building on the site are of a late-Roman mausoleum, identified during excavations in 1980. An abbey church was built in Wells in 705 by Aldhelm, first bishop of the newly established Diocese of Sherborne during the reign of King Ine of Wessex. It was dedicated to St Andrew and stood at the site of the cathedral's cloisters, where some excavated remains can be seen. The font in the cathedral's south transept is from this church and is the oldest part of the present building. In 766 Cynewulf, King of Wessex, signed a charter endowing the church with eleven hides of land. In 909 the seat of the diocese was moved from Sherborne to Wells.

 

The first bishop of Wells was Athelm (909), who crowned King Æthelstan. Athelm and his nephew Dunstan both became Archbishops of Canterbury. During this period a choir of boys was established to sing the liturgy. Wells Cathedral School, which was established to educate these choirboys, dates its foundation to this point. There is, however, some controversy over this. Following the Norman Conquest, John de Villula moved the seat of the bishop from Wells to Bath in 1090. The church at Wells, no longer a cathedral, had a college of secular clergy.

 

The cathedral is thought to have been conceived and commenced in about 1175 by Reginald Fitz Jocelin, who died in 1191. Although it is clear from its size that from the outset, the church was planned to be the cathedral of the diocese, the seat of the bishop moved between Wells and the abbeys of Glastonbury and Bath, before settling at Wells. In 1197 Reginald's successor, Savaric FitzGeldewin, with the approval of Pope Celestine III, officially moved his seat to Glastonbury Abbey. The title of Bishop of Bath and Glastonbury was used until the Glastonbury claim was abandoned in 1219.

 

Savaric's successor, Jocelin of Wells, again moved the bishop's seat to Bath Abbey, with the title Bishop of Bath. Jocelin was a brother of Hugh (II) of Lincoln and was present at the signing of the Magna Carta. Jocelin continued the building campaign begun by Reginald and was responsible for the Bishop's Palace, the choristers' school, a grammar school, a hospital for travellers and a chapel. He also had a manor house built at Wookey, near Wells. Jocelin saw the church dedicated in 1239 but, despite much lobbying of the Pope by Jocelin's representatives in Rome, did not live to see cathedral status granted. The delay may have been a result of inaction by Pandulf Verraccio, a Roman ecclesiastical politician, papal legate to England and Bishop of Norwich, who was asked by the Pope to investigate the situation but did not respond. Jocelin died at Wells on 19 November 1242 and was buried in the choir of the cathedral; the memorial brass on his tomb is one of the earliest brasses in England. Following his death the monks of Bath unsuccessfully attempted to regain authority over Wells.

 

In 1245 the ongoing dispute over the title of the bishop was resolved by a ruling of Pope Innocent IV, who established the title as the "Bishop of Bath and Wells", which it has remained until this day, with Wells as the principal seat of the bishop. Since the 11th century the church has had a chapter of secular clergy, like the cathedrals of Chichester, Hereford, Lincoln and York. The chapter was endowed with 22 prebends (lands from which finance was drawn) and a provost to manage them. On acquiring cathedral status, in common with other such cathedrals, it had four chief clergy, the dean, precentor, chancellor and sacristan, who were responsible for the spiritual and material care of the cathedral.

 

The building programme, begun by Reginald Fitz Jocelin, Bishop in the 12th century, continued under Jocelin of Wells, who was a canon from 1200, then bishop from 1206. Adam Locke was master mason from about 1192 until 1230. It was designed in the new style with pointed arches, later known as Gothic, which was introduced at about the same time at Canterbury Cathedral. Work was halted between 1209 and 1213 when King John was excommunicated and Jocelin was in exile, but the main parts of the church were complete by the time of the dedication by Jocelin in 1239.

 

By the time the cathedral, including the chapter house, was finished in 1306, it was already too small for the developing liturgy, and unable to accommodate increasingly grand processions of clergy. John Droxford initiated another phase of building under master mason Thomas of Whitney, during which the central tower was heightened and an eight-sided Lady chapel was added at the east end by 1326. Ralph of Shrewsbury followed, continuing the eastward extension of the choir and retrochoir beyond. He oversaw the building of Vicars' Close and the Vicars' Hall, to give the men who were employed to sing in the choir a secure place to live and dine, away from the town and its temptations. He had an uneasy relationship with the citizens of Wells, partly because of his imposition of taxes, and he surrounded his palace with crenellated walls, a moat and a drawbridge.

 

John Harewell raised money for the completion of the west front by William Wynford, who was appointed as master mason in 1365. One of the foremost master masons of his time, Wynford worked for the king at Windsor, Winchester Cathedral and New College, Oxford. At Wells, he designed the western towers of which north-west was not built until the following century. In the 14th century, the central piers of the crossing were found to be sinking under the weight of the crossing tower which had been damaged by an earthquake in the previous century. Strainer arches, sometimes described as scissor arches, were inserted by master mason William Joy to brace and stabilise the piers as a unit.

 

By the reign of Henry VII the cathedral was complete, appearing much as it does today (though the fittings have changed). From 1508 to 1546, the eminent Italian humanist scholar Polydore Vergil was active as the chapter's representative in London. He donated a set of hangings for the choir of the cathedral. While Wells survived the Dissolution of the Monasteries better than the cathedrals of monastic foundation, the abolition of chantries in 1547 resulted in a reduction in its income. Medieval brasses were sold, and a pulpit was placed in the nave for the first time. Between 1551 and 1568, in two periods as dean, William Turner established a herb garden, which was recreated between 2003 and 2010.

 

Elizabeth I gave the chapter and the Vicars Choral a new charter in 1591, creating a new governing body, consisting of a dean and eight residentiary canons with control over the church estates and authority over its affairs, but no longer entitled to elect the dean (that entitlement thenceforward belonged ultimately to the Crown). The stability brought by the new charter ended with the onset of the Civil War and the execution of Charles I. Local fighting damaged the cathedral's stonework, furniture and windows. The dean, Walter Raleigh, a nephew of the explorer Walter Raleigh, was placed under house arrest after the fall of Bridgwater to the Parliamentarians in 1645, first in the rectory at Chedzoy and then in the deanery at Wells. His jailor, the shoe maker and city constable, David Barrett, caught him writing a letter to his wife. When he refused to surrender it, Barrett ran him through with a sword and he died six weeks later, on 10 October 1646. He was buried in an unmarked grave in the choir before the dean's stall. During the Commonwealth of England under Oliver Cromwell no dean was appointed and the cathedral fell into disrepair. The bishop went into retirement and some of the clerics were reduced to performing menial tasks.

 

In 1661, after Charles II was restored to the throne, Robert Creighton, the king's chaplain in exile, was appointed dean and was bishop for two years before his death in 1672. His brass lectern, given in thanksgiving, can be seen in the cathedral. He donated the nave's great west window at a cost of £140. Following Creighton's appointment as bishop, the post of dean went to Ralph Bathurst, who had been chaplain to the king, president of Trinity College, Oxford and fellow of the Royal Society. During Bathurst's long tenure the cathedral was restored, but in the Monmouth Rebellion of 1685, Puritan soldiers damaged the west front, tore lead from the roof to make bullets, broke the windows, smashed the organ and furnishings, and for a time stabled their horses in the nave.

 

Restoration began again under Thomas Ken who was appointed by the Crown in 1685 and served until 1691. He was one of seven bishops imprisoned for refusing to sign King James II's "Declaration of Indulgence", which would have enabled Catholics to resume positions of political power, but popular support led to their acquittal. Ken refused to take the oath of allegiance to William III and Mary II because James II had not abdicated and with others, known as the Nonjurors, was put out of office. His successor, Richard Kidder, was killed in the Great Storm of 1703 when two chimney stacks on the palace fell on him and his wife, while they were asleep in bed.

 

By the middle of the 19th century, a major restoration programme was needed. Under Dean Goodenough, the monuments were moved to the cloisters and the remaining medieval paint and whitewash removed in an operation known as "the great scrape". Anthony Salvin took charge of the extensive restoration of the choir. Wooden galleries installed in the 16th century were removed and the stalls were given stone canopies and placed further back within the line of the arcade. The medieval stone pulpitum screen was extended in the centre to support a new organ.

 

In 1933 the Friends of Wells Cathedral were formed to support the cathedral's chapter in the maintenance of the fabric, life and work of the cathedral. The late 20th century saw an extensive restoration programme, particularly of the west front. The stained glass is currently under restoration, with a programme underway to conserve the large 14th-century Jesse Tree window at the eastern terminal of the choir.

 

In January 2014, as part of the Bath film festival, the cathedral hosted a special screening of Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ. This provoked some controversy, but the church defended its decision to allow the screening.

 

In 2021, a contemporary sculpture by Anthony Gormley was unveiled on a temporary plinth outside the cathedral.

 

Since the 13th century, Wells Cathedral has been the seat of the Bishop of Bath and Wells. Its governing body, the chapter, is made up of five clerical canons (the dean, the precentor, the canon chancellor, the canon treasurer, and the archdeacon of Wells) and four lay members: the administrator (chief executive), Keeper of the Fabric, Overseer of the Estate and the chairman of the cathedral shop and catering boards. The current bishop of Bath and Wells is Peter Hancock, who was installed in a service in the cathedral on 7 June 2014. John Davies has been Dean of Wells since 2016.

 

Employed staff include the organist and master of choristers, head Verger archivist, librarian and the staff of the shop, café and restaurant. The chapter is advised by specialists such as architects, archaeologists and financial analysts.

 

More than a thousand services are held every year. There are daily services of Matins, Holy Communion and Choral Evensong, as well as major celebrations of Christian festivals such as Christmas, Easter, Pentecost and saints' days. The cathedral is also used for the baptisms, weddings and funerals of those with close connections to it. In July 2009 the cathedral undertook the funeral of Harry Patch, the last British Army veteran of World War I, who died at the age of 111.

 

Three Sunday services are led by the resident choir in school terms and choral services are sung on weekdays. The cathedral hosts visiting choirs and does outreach work with local schools as part of its Chorister Outreach Project. It is also a venue for musical events such as an annual concert by the Somerset Chamber Choir.

 

Each year about 150,000 people attend services and another 300,000 visit as tourists. Entry is free, but visitors are encouraged to make a donation towards the annual running costs of around £1.5 million in 2015.

 

Construction of the cathedral began in about 1175, to the design of an unknown master-mason. Wells is the first cathedral in England to be built, from its foundation, in Gothic style. According to art historian John Harvey, it is the first truly Gothic cathedral in the world, its architects having entirely dispensed with all features that bound the contemporary east end of Canterbury Cathedral and the earlier buildings of France, such as the east end of the Abbey of Saint Denis, to the Romanesque. Unlike these churches, Wells has clustered piers rather than columns and has a gallery of identical pointed arches rather than the typically Romanesque form of paired openings. The style, with its simple lancet arches without tracery and convoluted mouldings, is known as Early English Gothic.

 

From about 1192 to 1230, Adam Lock, the earliest master-mason at Wells for whom a name is known, continued the transept and nave in the same manner as his predecessor. Lock was also the builder of the north porch, to his own design.

 

The Early English west front was commenced around 1230 by Thomas Norreys, with building and sculpture continuing for thirty years. Its south-west tower was begun 100 years later and constructed between 1365 and 1395, and the north-west tower between 1425 and 1435, both in the Perpendicular Gothic style to the design of William Wynford, who also filled many of the cathedral's early English lancet windows with delicate tracery.

 

The undercroft and chapter house were built by unknown architects between 1275 and 1310, the undercroft in the Early English and the chapter house in the Geometric style of Decorated Gothic architecture. In about 1310 work commenced on the Lady Chapel, to the design of Thomas Witney, who also built the central tower from 1315 to 1322 in the Decorated Gothic style. The tower was later braced internally with arches by William Joy. Concurrent with this work, in 1329–45 Joy made alterations and extensions to the choir, joining it to the Lady Chapel with the retrochoir, the latter in the Flowing Decorated style.

 

Later changes include the Perpendicular vault of the tower and construction of Sugar's Chapel, 1475–1490 by William Smyth. Also, Gothic Revival renovations were made to the choir and pulpitum by Benjamin Ferrey and Anthony Salvin, 1842–1857.

 

Wells has a total length of 415 feet (126 m). Like Canterbury, Lincoln and Salisbury cathedrals, it has the distinctly English arrangement of two transepts, with the body of the church divided into distinct parts: nave, choir, and retro-choir, beyond which extends the Lady Chapel. The façade is wide, with its towers extending beyond the transepts on either side. There is a large projecting porch on the north side of the nave forming an entry into the cathedral. To the north-east is the large octagonal chapter house, entered from the north choir aisle by a passage and staircase. To the south of the nave is a large cloister, unusual in that the northern range, that adjacent the cathedral, was never built.

 

In section, the cathedral has the usual arrangement of a large church: a central nave with an aisle on each side, separated by two arcades. The elevation is in three stages, arcade, triforium gallery and clerestory. The nave is 67 feet (20 m) in height, very low compared to the Gothic cathedrals of France. It has a markedly horizontal emphasis, caused by the triforium having a unique form, a series of identical narrow openings, lacking the usual definition of the bays. The triforium is separated from the arcade by a single horizontal string course that runs unbroken the length of the nave. There are no vertical lines linking the three stages, as the shafts supporting the vault rise above the triforium.

 

The exterior of Wells Cathedral presents a relatively tidy and harmonious appearance since the greater part of the building was executed in a single style, Early English Gothic. This is uncommon among English cathedrals where the exterior usually exhibits a plethora of styles. At Wells, later changes in the Perpendicular style were universally applied, such as filling the Early English lancet windows with simple tracery, the construction of a parapet that encircles the roof, and the addition of pinnacles framing each gable, similar to those around the chapter house and on the west front. At the eastern end there is a proliferation of tracery with repeated motifs in the Reticulated style, a stage between Geometric and Flowing Decorated tracery.

 

The west front is 100 feet (30 m) high and 147 feet (45 m) wide, and built of Inferior Oolite of the Middle Jurassic period, which came from the Doulting Stone Quarry, about 8 miles (13 km) to the east. According to the architectural historian Alec Clifton-Taylor, it is "one of the great sights of England".

 

West fronts in general take three distinct forms: those that follow the elevation of the nave and aisles, those that have paired towers at the end of each aisle, framing the nave, and those that screen the form of the building. The west front at Wells has the paired-tower form, unusual in that the towers do not indicate the location of the aisles, but extend well beyond them, screening the dimensions and profile of the building.

 

The west front rises in three distinct stages, each clearly defined by a horizontal course. This horizontal emphasis is counteracted by six strongly projecting buttresses defining the cross-sectional divisions of nave, aisles and towers, and are highly decorated, each having canopied niches containing the largest statues on the façade.

 

At the lowest level of the façade is a plain base, contrasting with and stabilising the ornate arcades that rise above it. The base is penetrated by three doors, which are in stark contrast to the often imposing portals of French Gothic cathedrals. The outer two are of domestic proportion and the central door is ornamented only by a central post, quatrefoil and the fine mouldings of the arch.

 

Above the basement rise two storeys, ornamented with quatrefoils and niches originally holding about four hundred statues, with three hundred surviving until the mid-20th century. Since then, some have been restored or replaced, including the ruined figure of Christ in the gable.

 

The third stages of the flanking towers were both built in the Perpendicular style of the late 14th century, to the design of William Wynford; that on the north-west was not begun until about 1425. The design maintains the general proportions, and continues the strong projection of the buttresses.

 

The finished product has been criticised for its lack of pinnacles, and it is probable that the towers were intended to carry spires which were never built. Despite its lack of spires or pinnacles, the architectural historian Banister Fletcher describes it as "the highest development in English Gothic of this type of façade."

 

The sculptures on the west front at Wells include standing figures, seated figures, half-length angels and narratives in high relief. Many of the figures are life-sized or larger. Together they constitute the finest display of medieval carving in England. The figures and many of the architectural details were painted in bright colours, and the colouring scheme has been deduced from flakes of paint still adhering to some surfaces. The sculptures occupy nine architectural zones stretching horizontally across the entire west front and around the sides and the eastern returns of the towers which extend beyond the aisles. The strongly projecting buttresses have tiers of niches which contain many of the largest figures. Other large figures, including that of Christ, occupy the gable. A single figure stands in one of two later niches high on the northern tower.

 

In 1851 the archaeologist Charles Robert Cockerell published his analysis of the iconography, numbering the nine sculptural divisions from the lowest to the highest. He defined the theme as "a calendar for unlearned men" illustrating the doctrines and history of the Christian faith, its introduction to Britain and its protection by princes and bishops. He likens the arrangement and iconography to the Te Deum.

 

According to Cockerell, the side of the façade that is to the south of the central door is the more sacred and the scheme is divided accordingly. The lowest range of niches each contained a standing figure, of which all but four figures on the west front, two on each side, have been destroyed. More have survived on the northern and eastern sides of the north tower. Cockerell speculates that those to the south of the portal represented prophets and patriarchs of the Old Testament while those to the north represented early missionaries to Britain, of which Augustine of Canterbury, St Birinus, and Benedict Biscop are identifiable by their attributes. In the second zone, above each pair of standing figures, is a quatrefoil containing a half-length angel in relief, some of which have survived. Between the gables of the niches are quatrefoils that contain a series of narratives from the Bible, with the Old Testament stories to the south, above the prophets and patriarchs, and those from the New Testament to the north. A horizontal course runs around the west front dividing the architectural storeys at this point.

 

Above the course, zones four and five, as identified by Cockerell, contain figures which represent the Christian Church in Britain, with the spiritual lords such as bishops, abbots, abbesses and saintly founders of monasteries on the south, while kings, queens and princes occupy the north. Many of the figures survive and many have been identified in the light of their various attributes. There is a hierarchy of size, with the more significant figures larger and enthroned in their niches rather than standing. Immediately beneath the upper course are a series of small niches containing dynamic sculptures of the dead coming forth from their tombs on the Day of Judgement. Although naked, some of the dead are defined as royalty by their crowns and others as bishops by their mitres. Some emerge from their graves with joy and hope, and others with despair.

 

The niches in the lowest zone of the gable contain nine angels, of which Cockerell identifies Michael, Gabriel, Raphael and Uriel. In the next zone are the taller figures of the twelve apostles, some, such as John, Andrew and Bartholomew, clearly identifiable by the attributes that they carry. The uppermost niches of the gable contained the figure of Christ the Judge at the centre, with the Virgin Mary on his right and John the Baptist on his left. The figures all suffered from iconoclasm. A new statue of Jesus was carved for the central niche, but the two side niches now contain cherubim. Christ and the Virgin Mary are also represented by now headless figures in a Coronation of the Virgin in a niche above the central portal. A damaged figure of the Virgin and Christ Child occupies a quatrefoil in the spandrel of the door.

 

The central tower appears to date from the early 13th century. It was substantially reconstructed in the early 14th century during the remodelling of the east end, necessitating the internal bracing of the piers a decade or so later. In the 14th century the tower was given a timber and lead spire which burnt down in 1439. The exterior was then reworked in the Perpendicular style and given the present parapet and pinnacles. Alec Clifton-Taylor describes it as "outstanding even in Somerset, a county famed for the splendour of its church towers".

 

The north porch is described by art historian Nikolaus Pevsner as "sumptuously decorated", and intended as the main entrance. Externally it is simple and rectangular with plain side walls. The entrance is a steeply arched portal framed by rich mouldings of eight shafts with stiff-leaf capitals each encircled by an annular moulding at middle height. Those on the left are figurative, containing images representing the martyrdom of St Edmund the Martyr. The walls are lined with deep niches framed by narrow shafts with capitals and annulets like those of the portal. The path to the north porch is lined by four sculptures in Purbeck stone, each by Mary Spencer Watson, representing the symbols of the Evangelists.

 

The cloisters were built in the late 13th century and largely rebuilt from 1430 to 1508 and have wide openings divided by mullions and transoms, and tracery in the Perpendicular Gothic style. The vault has lierne ribs that form octagons at the centre of each compartment, the joints of each rib having decorative bosses. The eastern range is of two storeys, of which the upper is the library built in the 15th century.

 

Because Wells Cathedral was secular rather than monastic, cloisters were not a practical necessity. They were omitted from several other secular cathedrals but were built here and at Chichester. Explanations for their construction at these two secular cathedrals range from the processional to the aesthetic. As at Chichester, there is no northern range to the cloisters. In monastic cloisters it was the north range, benefiting most from winter sunlight, that was often used as a scriptorium.

 

In 1969, when a large chunk of stone fell from a statue near the main door, it became apparent that there was an urgent need for restoration of the west front. Detailed studies of the stonework and of conservation practices were undertaken under the cathedral architect, Alban D. R. Caroe and a restoration committee formed. The methods selected were those devised by Eve and Robert Baker. W. A. (Bert) Wheeler, clerk of works to the cathedral 1935–1978, had previously experimented with washing and surface treatment of architectural carvings on the building and his techniques were among those tried on the statues.

 

The conservation was carried out between 1974 and 1986, wherever possible using non-invasive procedures such as washing with water and a solution of lime, filling gaps and damaged surfaces with soft mortar to prevent the ingress of water and stabilising statues that were fracturing through corrosion of metal dowels. The surfaces were finished by painting with a thin coat of mortar and silane to resist further erosion and attack by pollutants. The restoration of the façade revealed much paint adhering to the statues and their niches, indicating that it had once been brightly coloured.

 

The particular character of this Early English interior is dependent on the proportions of the simple lancet arches. It is also dependent on the refinement of the architectural details, in particular the mouldings.

 

The arcade, which takes the same form in the nave, choir and transepts, is distinguished by the richness of both mouldings and carvings. Each pier of the arcade has a surface enrichment of 24 slender shafts in eight groups of three, rising beyond the capitals to form the deeply undulating mouldings of the arches. The capitals themselves are remarkable for the vitality of the stylised foliage, in a style known as "stiff-leaf". The liveliness contrasts with the formality of the moulded shafts and the smooth unbroken areas of ashlar masonry in the spandrels. Each capital is different, and some contain small figures illustrating narratives.

 

The vault of the nave rises steeply in a simple quadripartite form, in harmony with the nave arcade. The eastern end of the choir was extended and the whole upper part elaborated in the second quarter of the 14th century by William Joy. The vault has a multiplicity of ribs in a net-like form, which is very different from that of the nave, and is perhaps a recreation in stone of a local type of compartmented wooden roof of which examples remain from the 15th century, including those at St Cuthbert's Church, Wells. The vaults of the aisles of the choir also have a unique pattern.

 

Until the early 14th century, the interior of the cathedral was in a unified style, but it was to undergo two significant changes, to the tower and to the eastern end. Between 1315 and 1322 the central tower was heightened and topped by a spire, which caused the piers that supported it to show signs of stress. In 1338 the mason William Joy employed an unorthodox solution by inserting low arches topped by inverted arches of similar dimensions, forming scissors-like structures. These arches brace the piers of the crossing on three sides, while the easternmost side is braced by a choir screen. The bracing arches are known as "St Andrew's Cross arches", in a reference to the patron saint of the cathedral. They have been described by Wim Swaan – rightly or wrongly – as "brutally massive" and intrusive in an otherwise restrained interior.

 

Wells Cathedral has a square east end to the choir, as is usual, and like several other cathedrals including Salisbury and Lichfield, has a lower Lady Chapel projecting at the eastern end, begun by Thomas Witney in about 1310, possibly before the chapter house was completed. The Lady Chapel seems to have begun as a free-standing structure in the form of an elongated octagon, but the plan changed and it was linked to the eastern end by extension of the choir and construction of a second transept or retrochoir east of the choir, probably by William Joy.

 

The Lady Chapel has a vault of complex and somewhat irregular pattern, as the chapel is not symmetrical about both axes. The main ribs are intersected by additional non-supporting, lierne ribs, which in this case form a star-shaped pattern at the apex of the vault. It is one of the earliest lierne vaults in England. There are five large windows, of which four are filled with fragments of medieval glass. The tracery of the windows is in the style known as Reticulated Gothic, having a pattern of a single repeated shape, in this case a trefoil, giving a "reticulate" or net-like appearance.

 

The retrochoir extends across the east end of the choir and into the east transepts. At its centre the vault is supported by a remarkable structure of angled piers. Two of these are placed as to complete the octagonal shape of the Lady Chapel, a solution described by Francis Bond as "an intuition of Genius". The piers have attached shafts of marble, and, with the vaults that they support, create a vista of great complexity from every angle. The windows of the retrochoir are in the Reticulated style like those of the Lady Chapel, but are fully Flowing Decorated in that the tracery mouldings form ogival curves.

 

The chapter house was begun in the late 13th century and built in two stages, completed about 1310. It is a two-storeyed structure with the main chamber raised on an undercroft. It is entered from a staircase which divides and turns, one branch leading through the upper storey of Chain Gate to Vicars' Close. The Decorated interior is described by Alec Clifton-Taylor as "architecturally the most beautiful in England". It is octagonal, with its ribbed vault supported on a central column. The column is surrounded by shafts of Purbeck Marble, rising to a single continuous rippling foliate capital of stylised oak leaves and acorns, quite different in character from the Early English stiff-leaf foliage. Above the moulding spring 32 ribs of strong profile, giving an effect generally likened to "a great palm tree". The windows are large with Geometric Decorated tracery that is beginning to show an elongation of form, and ogees in the lesser lights that are characteristic of Flowing Decorated tracery. The tracery lights still contain ancient glass. Beneath the windows are 51 stalls, the canopies of which are enlivened by carvings including many heads carved in a light-hearted manner.

 

Wells Cathedral contains one of the most substantial collections of medieval stained glass in England, despite damage by Parliamentary troops in 1642 and 1643. The oldest surviving glass dates from the late 13th century and is in two windows on the west side of the chapter-house staircase. Two windows in the south choir aisle are from 1310 to 1320.

 

The Lady Chapel has five windows, of which four date from 1325 to 1330 and include images of a local saint, Dunstan. The east window was restored to a semblance of its original appearance by Thomas Willement in 1845. The other windows have complete canopies, but the pictorial sections are fragmented.

 

The east window of the choir is a broad, seven-light window dating from 1340 to 1345. It depicts the Tree of Jesse (the genealogy of Christ) and demonstrates the use of silver staining, a new technique that allowed the artist to paint details on the glass in yellow, as well as black. The combination of yellow and green glass and the application of the bright yellow stain gives the window its popular name, the "Golden Window". It is flanked by two windows each side in the clerestory, with large figures of saints, also dated to 1340–45. In 2010 a major conservation programme was undertaken on the Jesse Tree window.

 

The panels in the chapel of St Katherine are attributed to Arnold of Nijmegen and date from about 1520. They were acquired from the destroyed church of Saint-Jean, Rouen, with the last panel having been purchased in 1953.

 

The large triple lancet to the nave west end was glazed at the expense of Dean Creighton at a cost of £140 in 1664. It was repaired in 1813, and the central light was largely replaced to a design by Archibald Keightley Nicholson between 1925 and 1931. The main north and south transept end windows by James Powell and Sons were erected in the early 20th century.

 

The greater part of the stone carving of Wells Cathedral comprises foliate capitals in the stiff-leaf style. They are found ornamenting the piers of the nave, choir and transepts. Stiff-leaf foliage is highly abstract. Though possibly influenced by carvings of acanthus leaves or vine leaves, it cannot be easily identified with any particular plant. Here the carving of the foliage is varied and vigorous, the springing leaves and deep undercuts casting shadows that contrast with the surface of the piers. In the transepts and towards the crossing in the nave the capitals have many small figurative carvings among the leaves. These include a man with toothache and a series of four scenes depicting the "Wages of Sin" in a narrative of fruit stealers who creep into an orchard and are then beaten by the farmer. Another well-known carving is in the north transept aisle: a foliate corbel, on which climbs a lizard, sometimes identified as a salamander, a symbol of eternal life.

 

Carvings in the Decorated Gothic style may be found in the eastern end of the buildings, where there are many carved bosses. In the chapter house, the carvings of the 51 stalls include numerous small heads of great variety, many of them smiling or laughing. A well-known figure is the corbel of the dragon-slaying monk in the chapter house stair. The large continuous capital that encircles the central pillar of the chapter house is markedly different in style to the stiff-leaf of the Early English period. In contrast to the bold projections and undercutting of the earlier work, it has a rippling form and is clearly identifiable as grapevine.

 

The 15th-century cloisters have many small bosses ornamenting the vault. Two in the west cloister, near the gift shop and café, have been called sheela na gigs, i. e. female figures displaying their genitals and variously judged to depict the sin of lust or stem from ancient fertility cults.

 

Wells Cathedral has one of the finest sets of misericords in Britain. Its clergy has a long tradition of singing or reciting from the Book of Psalms each day, along with the customary daily reading of the Holy Office. In medieval times the clergy assembled in the church eight times daily for the canonical hours. As the greater part of the services was recited while standing, many monastic or collegiate churches fitted stalls whose seats tipped up to provide a ledge for the monk or cleric to lean against. These were "misericords" because their installation was an act of mercy. Misericords typically have a carved figurative bracket beneath the ledge framed by two floral motifs known, in heraldic manner, as "supporters".

 

The misericords date from 1330 to 1340. They may have been carved under the direction of Master Carpenter John Strode, although his name is not recorded before 1341. He was assisted by Bartholomew Quarter, who is documented from 1343. They originally numbered 90, of which 65 have survived. Sixty-one are installed in the choir, three are displayed in the cathedral, and one is held by the Victoria and Albert Museum. New stalls were ordered when the eastern end of the choir was extended in the early 14th century. The canons complained that they had borne the cost of the rebuilding and ordered the prebendary clerics to pay for their own stalls. When the newly refurbished choir opened in 1339 many misericords were left unfinished, including one-fifth of the surviving 65. Many of the clerics had not paid, having been called to contribute a total sum of £200. The misericords survived better than the other sections of the stalls, which during the Protestant Reformation had their canopies chopped off and galleries inserted above them. One misericord, showing a boy pulling a thorn from his foot, dates from the 17th century. In 1848 came a complete rearrangement of the choir furniture, and 61 of the misericords were reused in the restructured stalls.

 

The subject matter of the carvings of the central brackets as misericords varies, but many themes recur in different churches. Typically the themes are less unified or directly related to the Bible and Christian theology than small sculptures seen elsewhere within churches, such as bosses. This applies at Wells, where none of the misericord carvings is directly based on a Bible story. The subjects, chosen either by the woodcarver, or perhaps by the one paying for the stall, have no overriding theme. The sole unifying elements are the roundels on each side of the pictorial subject, which all show elaborately carved foliage, in most cases formal and stylised in the later Decorated manner, but with several examples of naturalistic foliage, including roses and bindweed. Many of the subjects carry traditional interpretations. The image of the "Pelican in her Piety" (believed to feed her young on her own blood) is a recognised symbol for Christ's love for the Church. A cat playing with a mouse may represent the Devil snaring a human soul. Other subjects illustrate popular fables or sayings such as "When the fox preaches, look to your geese". Many depict animals, some of which may symbolise a human vice or virtue, or an aspect of faith.

 

Twenty-seven of the carvings depict animals: rabbits, dogs, a puppy biting a cat, a ewe feeding a lamb, monkeys, lions, bats, and the Early Christian motif of two doves drinking from a ewer. Eighteen have mythological subjects, including mermaids, dragons and wyverns. Five are clearly narrative, such as the Fox and the Geese, and the story of Alexander the Great being raised to Heaven by griffins. There are three heads: a bishop in a mitre, an angel, and a woman wearing a veil over hair arranged in coils over each ear. Eleven carvings show human figures, among which are several of remarkable design, conceived by the artist specifically for their purpose of supporting a shelf. One figure lies beneath the seat, supporting the shelf with a cheek, a hand and a foot. Another sits in a contorted manner supporting the weight on his elbow, while a further figure squats with his knees wide apart and a strained look on his face.

 

Some of the cathedral's fittings and monuments are hundreds of years old. The brass lectern in the Lady Chapel dates from 1661 and has a moulded stand and foliate crest. In the north transept chapel is a 17th-century oak screen with columns, formerly used in cow stalls, with artisan Ionic capitals and cornice, set forward over the chest tomb of John Godelee. There is a bound oak chest from the 14th century, which was used to store the chapter seal and key documents. The bishop's throne dates from 1340, and has a panelled, canted front and stone doorway, and a deep nodding cusped ogee canopy above it, with three-stepped statue niches and pinnacles. The throne was restored by Anthony Salvin around 1850. Opposite the throne is a 19th-century octagonal pulpit on a coved base with panelled sides, and steps up from the north aisle. The round font in the south transept is from the former Saxon cathedral and has an arcade of round-headed arches, on a round plinth. The font cover was made in 1635 and is decorated with the heads of putti. The Chapel of St Martin is a memorial to every Somerset man who fell in World War I.

 

The monuments and tombs include Gisa, bishop; † 1088; William of Bitton, bishop; † 1274; William of March, bishop; † 1302; John Droxford; † 1329; John Godelee; † 1333; John Middleton, died †1350; Ralph of Shrewsbury, died †; John Harewell, bishop; † 1386; William Bykonyll; † c. 1448; John Bernard; † 1459; Thomas Beckington; † died 1464; John Gunthorpe; † 1498; John Still; † 1607; Robert Creighton; † 1672; Richard Kidder, bishop; † 1703; George Hooper, bishop; † 1727 and Arthur Harvey, bishop; † 1894.

 

In the north transept is Wells Cathedral clock, an astronomical clock from about 1325 believed to be by Peter Lightfoot, a monk of Glastonbury. Its mechanism, dated between 1386 and 1392, was replaced in the 19th century and the original moved to the Science Museum in London, where it still operates. It is the second oldest surviving clock in England after the Salisbury Cathedral clock.

 

The clock has its original medieval face. Apart from the time on a 24-hour dial, it shows the motion of the Sun and Moon, the phases of the Moon, and the time since the last new Moon. The astronomical dial presents a geocentric or pre-Copernican view, with the Sun and Moon revolving round a central fixed Earth, like that of the clock at Ottery St Mary. The quarters are chimed by a quarter jack: a small automaton known as Jack Blandifers, who hits two bells with hammers and two with his heels. At the striking of the clock, jousting knights appear above the clock face.

 

On the outer wall of the transept, opposite Vicars' Hall, is a second clock face of the same clock, placed there just over seventy years after the interior clock and driven by the same mechanism. The second clock face has two quarter jacks (which strike on the quarter-hour) in the form of knights in armour.

 

In 2010 the official clock-winder retired and was replaced by an electric mechanism.

 

The first record of an organ at this church dates from 1310. A smaller organ, probably for the Lady Chapel, was installed in 1415. In 1620 an organ built by Thomas Dallam was installed at a cost of £398 1s 5d.

 

The 1620 organ was destroyed by parliamentary soldiers in 1643. An organ built in 1662 was enlarged in 1786 and again in 1855. In 1909–1910 an organ was built by Harrison & Harrison of Durham, with the best parts of the old organ retained. It has been serviced by the same company ever since.

 

Since November 1996 the cathedral has also had a portable chamber organ, by the Scottish makers, Lammermuir. It is used regularly to accompany performances of Tudor and baroque music.

 

The first recorded organist of Wells was Walter Bagele (or Vageler) in 1416. The post of organist or assistant organist has been held by more than 60 people since. Peter Stanley Lyons was Master of Choristers at Wells Cathedral, and Director of Music at Wells Cathedral School in 1954–1960. The choral conductor James William Webb-Jones, father of Lyons's wife Bridget (whom he married in the cathedral), was Headmaster of Wells Cathedral School in 1955–1960. Malcolm Archer was the appointed Organist and Master of the Choristers from 1996 to 2004. Matthew Owens was the appointed organist from 2005 to 2019.

 

There has been a choir of boy choristers at Wells since 909. Currently there are 18 boy choristers and a similar number of girl choristers, aged from eight to fourteen. The Vicars Choral was formed in the 12th century and the sung liturgy provided by a traditional cathedral choir of men and boys until the formation of an additional choir of girls in 1994. The boys and girls sing alternately with the Vicars Choral and are educated at Wells Cathedral School.

 

The Vicars Choral currently number twelve men, of whom three are choral scholars. Since 1348 the College of Vicars had its own accommodation in a quadrangle converted in the early 15th century to form Vicar's Close. The Vicars Choral generally perform with the choristers, except on Wednesdays, when they sing alone, allowing them to present a different repertoire, in particular plainsong.

 

In December 2010 Wells Cathedral Choir was rated by Gramophone magazine as "the highest ranking choir with children in the world". It continues to provide music for the liturgy at Sunday and weekday services. The choir has made many recordings and toured frequently, including performances in Beijing and Hong Kong in 2012. Its repertoire ranges from the choral music of the Renaissance to recently commissioned works.

 

The Wells Cathedral Chamber Choir is a mixed adult choir of 25 members, formed in 1986 to sing at the midnight service on Christmas Eve, and invited to sing at several other special services. It now sings for about 30 services a year, when the Cathedral Choir is in recess or on tour, and spends one week a year singing as the "choir in residence" at another cathedral. Although primarily liturgical, the choir's repertoire includes other forms of music, as well as performances at engagements such as weddings and funerals.

 

The cathedral is home to Wells Cathedral Oratorio Society (WCOS), founded in 1896. With around 160 voices, the society gives three concerts a year under the direction of Matthew Owens, Organist and Master of the Choristers at the cathedral. Concerts are normally in early November, December (an annual performance of Handel's Messiah) and late March. It performs with a number of specialist orchestras including: Music for Awhile, Chameleon Arts and La Folia.

 

The bells at Wells Cathedral are the heaviest ring of ten bells in the world, the tenor bell (the 10th and largest), known as Harewell, weighing 56.25 long hundredweight (2,858 kg). They are hung for full-circle ringing in the English style of change ringing. These bells are now hung in the south-west tower, although some were originally hung in the central tower.

 

The library above the eastern cloister was built between 1430 and 1508. Its collection is in three parts: early documents housed in the Muniment Room; the collection predating 1800 housed in the Chained Library; and the post-1800 collection housed in the Reading Room. The chapter's earlier collection was destroyed during the Reformation, so that the present library consists chiefly of early printed books, rather than medieval manuscripts. The earlier books in the Chained Library number 2,800 volumes and give an indication of the variety of interests of the members of the cathedral chapter from the Reformation until 1800. The focus of the collection is predominantly theology, but there are volumes on science, medicine, exploration, and languages. Books of particular interest include Pliny's Natural History printed in 1472, an Atlas of the World by Abraham Ortelius, printed in 1606, and a set of the works by Aristotle that once belonged to Erasmus. The library is open to the public at appointed times in the summer and presents a small exhibition of documents and books.

 

Three early registers of the Dean and Chapter edited by W. H. B. Bird for the Historical Manuscripts Commissioners – Liber Albus I (White Book; R I), Liber Albus II (R III) and Liber Ruber (Red Book; R II, section i) – were published in 1907. They contain with some repetition, a cartulary of possessions of the cathedral, with grants of land back to the 8th century, well before hereditary surnames developed in England, and acts of the Dean and Chapter and surveys of their estates, mostly in Somerset.

 

Adjacent to the cathedral is a large lawned area, Cathedral Green, with three ancient gateways: Brown's Gatehouse, Penniless Porch and Chain Gate. On the green is the 12th-century Old Deanery, largely rebuilt in the late 15th century by Dean Gunthorpe and remodelled by Dean Bathurst in the late 17th century. No longer the dean's residence, it is used as diocesan offices.

 

To the south of the cathedral is the moated Bishop's Palace, begun about 1210 by Jocelin of Wells but dating mostly from the 1230s. In the 15th century Thomas Beckington added a north wing, now the bishop's residence. It was restored and extended by Benjamin Ferrey between 1846 and 1854.

 

To the north of the cathedral and connected to it by the Chain Gate is Vicars' Close, a street planned in the 14th century and claimed to be the oldest purely residential street in Europe, with all but one of its original buildings intact. Buildings in the close include the Vicars Hall and gateway at the south end, and the Vicars Chapel and Library at the north end.

 

The Liberty of St Andrew was the historic liberty and parish that encompassed the cathedral and surrounding lands closely associated with it.

 

The English painter J. M. W. Turner visited Wells in 1795, making sketches of the precinct and a water colour of the west front, now in the Tate gallery. Other artists whose paintings of the cathedral are in national collections are Albert Goodwin, John Syer and Ken Howard.

 

The cathedral served to inspire Ken Follett's 1989 novel The Pillars of the Earth and with a modified central tower, featured as the fictional Kingsbridge Cathedral at the end of the 2010 television adaptation of that novel. The interior of the cathedral was used for a 2007 Doctor Who episode, "The Lazarus Experiment", while the exterior shots were filmed at Southwark Cathedral.

 

An account of the damage to the cathedral during the Monmouth Rebellion is included in Arthur Conan Doyle's 1889 historical novel Micah Clarke.

 

The cathedral provided scenes for the 2019–2020 television series The Spanish Princess.

In stillness I meet the mess of my mind—

a shovel, a seed, a ringing bell.

Thoughts rise like dust and fall like rain.

Breath by breath, I come home again.

Pompeii, Italy.

 

"Pompeii was an ancient city located near Naples. Pompeii, along with Herculaneum and many villas in the surrounding area, was buried under13 to 20 feet of volcanic ash and pumice in the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79.

 

Largely preserved under the ash, the excavated city offered a unique snapshot of Roman life, frozen at the moment it was buried, although much of the detailed evidence of the everyday life of its inhabitants was lost in the excavations. It was a wealthy town, with a population of ca. 11,000 in AD 79, enjoying many fine public buildings and luxurious private houses with lavish decorations, furnishings and works of art which were the main attractions for the early excavators. Organic remains, including wooden objects and human bodies, were entombed in the ash. Over time, they decayed, leaving voids that archaeologists found could be used as molds to make plaster casts of unique, and often gruesome, figures in their final moments of life. The numerous graffiti carved on the walls and inside rooms provide a wealth of examples of the largely lost Vulgar Latin spoken colloquially at the time, contrasting with the formal language of the classical writers."

 

Like so many archeological sites, much of the most interesting finds have been carted off to museums leaving only a small portion of the findings.

 

It appears there was a second story by the pockets where support beams would have been. The wooden doors are obviously new.

2014 Kenworth T-800

19?? Cat 936

In stillness I meet the mess of my mind—

a shovel, a seed, a ringing bell.

Thoughts rise like dust and fall like rain.

Breath by breath, I come home again.

Kenworth T880 / Soil King Extreme

The excavated town offers a snapshot of Roman life in the 1st century, frozen at the moment it was buried on 24 August 79. The Forum, the baths, many houses, and some out-of-town villas like the Villa of the Mysteries remain surprisingly well preserved.

 

Pompeii was a lively place, and evidence abounds of literally the smallest details of everyday life. For example, on the floor of one of the houses (Sirico's), a famous inscription Salve, lucru (Welcome, money), perhaps humorously intended, shows us a trading company owned by two partners, Sirico and Nummianus (but this could be a nickname, since nummus means coin, money). In other houses, details abound concerning professions and categories, such as for the "laundry" workers (Fullones). Wine jars have been found bearing what is apparently the world's earliest known marketing pun, Vesuvinum (combining Vesuvius and the Latin for wine, vinum). Graffiti carved on the walls shows us real street Latin (Vulgar Latin, a different dialect than the literary or classical Latin). In 89 BC, after the final occupation of the city by Roman General Lucius Cornelius Sulla, Pompeii was finally annexed to the Roman Republic. During this period, Pompeii underwent a vast process of infrastructural development, most of which was built during the Augustan period. Worth noting are an amphitheatre, a Palaestra with a central natatorium or swimming pool, and an aqueduct that provided water for more than 25 street fountains, at least four public baths, and a large number of private houses (domus) and businesses. The amphitheatre has been cited by modern scholars as a model of sophisticated design particularly in the area of crowd control.[4] The aqueduct branched out through three main pipes from the Castellum Aquae, where the waters were collected before being distributed to the city; although it did much more than distribute the waters, it did so with the prerequisite that in the case of extreme drought, the water supply would first fail to reach the public baths (the least vital service), then private houses and businesses, and when there would be no water flow at all, the system would then at last fail to supply the public fountains (the most vital service) in the streets of Pompeii.

 

www.pompeiturismo.it

Excavated in 1367 by Rawal Gadsi Singh, the Gadi Sagar is a scenic rainwater lake surrounded by small temples and shrines. Rowing boats are available.

Afflecks Palace is the red brick building at the far side - check album for original artwork

Found these excavating machines working hard in moderate to heavy fog with their lights on removing the remains of a large building torn down. Even though around 7:30 am it was extremely dark and eerie looking due to the fog so had to grab some photos. These are how it looked to the eye. Reminded me of scenes from War Of The Worlds, but then I have a weird imagination. :-) Went back an hour or so later with more light but still dark enough they still had to use their lights, shown in last 4 photos. Didn't use a tripod so detail not very good.

 

Excavated film taken @ Shintomicho, Tokyo.

During Flickr sampo 7 years ago!

LEICAFLEX SL, Leica summicronR 50mm F2, Kodak SUPER GOLD 400.

I watched this Red-banded Sand Wasp (Ammophila sabulosa) find & drag this large Caterpillar with some difficulty to it's burrow over the shingle this morning. It then opened up the burrow (presumably already dug) & pushed the Caterpillar in. It then closed the burrow with a good sized stone & also scraped some sand around the stone. An interesting 15 minutes on the beach @ Snettisham RSPB.

What craziness is this, a day in that London on a weekday? Well, working one day last weekend, and another next weekend, meant I took a day in Lieu.

 

So there.

 

And top of my list of places to visit was St Magnus. This would be the fifth time I have tried to get inside, and the first since I wrote to the church asking whether they would be open a particular Saturday, and then any Saturday. Letters which were ignored

 

So, I walked out of Monument Station, down the hill there was St Magnus: would it be open?

 

It was, and inside it was a box, nay a treasure chest of delights.

 

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St Magnus the Martyr, London Bridge is a Church of England church and parish within the City of London. The church, which is located in Lower Thames Street near The Monument to the Great Fire of London,[1] is part of the Diocese of London and under the pastoral care of the Bishop of London and the Bishop of Fulham.[2] It is a Grade I listed building.[3] The rector uses the title "Cardinal Rector". [4]

St Magnus lies on the original alignment of London Bridge between the City and Southwark. The ancient parish was united with that of St Margaret, New Fish Street, in 1670 and with that of St Michael, Crooked Lane, in 1831.[5] The three united parishes retained separate vestries and churchwardens.[6] Parish clerks continue to be appointed for each of the three parishes.[7]

St Magnus is the guild church of the Worshipful Company of Fishmongers and the Worshipful Company of Plumbers, and the ward church of the Ward of Bridge and Bridge Without. It is also twinned with the Church of the Resurrection in New York City.[8]

Its prominent location and beauty has prompted many mentions in literature.[9] In Oliver Twist Charles Dickens notes how, as Nancy heads for her secret meeting with Mr. Brownlow and Rose Maylie on London Bridge, "the tower of old Saint Saviour's Church, and the spire of Saint Magnus, so long the giant-warders of the ancient bridge, were visible in the gloom". The church's spiritual and architectural importance is celebrated in the poem The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot, who adds in a footnote that "the interior of St. Magnus Martyr is to my mind one of the finest among Wren's interiors".[10] One biographer of Eliot notes that at first he enjoyed St Magnus aesthetically for its "splendour"; later he appreciated its "utility" when he came there as a sinner.

 

The church is dedicated to St Magnus the Martyr, earl of Orkney, who died on 16 April in or around 1116 (the precise year is unknown).[12] He was executed on the island of Egilsay having been captured during a power struggle with his cousin, a political rival.[13] Magnus had a reputation for piety and gentleness and was canonised in 1135. St. Ronald, the son of Magnus's sister Gunhild Erlendsdotter, became Earl of Orkney in 1136 and in 1137 initiated the construction of St. Magnus Cathedral in Kirkwall.[14] The story of St. Magnus has been retold in the 20th century in the chamber opera The Martyrdom of St Magnus (1976)[15] by Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, based on George Mackay Brown's novel Magnus (1973).

 

he identity of the St Magnus referred to in the church's dedication was only confirmed by the Bishop of London in 1926.[16] Following this decision a patronal festival service was held on 16 April 1926.[17] In the 13th century the patronage was attributed to one of the several saints by the name of Magnus who share a feast day on 19 August, probably St Magnus of Anagni (bishop and martyr, who was slain in the persecution of the Emperor Decius in the middle of the 3rd century).[18] However, by the early 18th century it was suggested that the church was either "dedicated to the memory of St Magnus or Magnes, who suffer'd under the Emperor Aurelian in 276 [see St Mammes of Caesarea, feast day 17 August], or else to a person of that name, who was the famous Apostle or Bishop of the Orcades."[19] For the next century historians followed the suggestion that the church was dedicated to the Roman saint of Cæsarea.[20] The famous Danish archaeologist Professor Jens Jacob Asmussen Worsaae (1821–85) promoted the attribution to St Magnus of Orkney during his visit to the British Isles in 1846-7, when he was formulating the concept of the 'Viking Age',[21] and a history of London written in 1901 concluded that "the Danes, on their second invasion ... added at least two churches with Danish names, Olaf and Magnus".[22] A guide to the City Churches published in 1917 reverted to the view that St Magnus was dedicated to a martyr of the third century,[23] but the discovery of St Magnus of Orkney's relics in 1919 renewed interest in a Scandinavian patron and this connection was encouraged by the Rector who arrived in 1921

 

A metropolitan bishop of London attended the Council of Arles in 314, which indicates that there must have been a Christian community in Londinium by this date, and it has been suggested that a large aisled building excavated in 1993 near Tower Hill can be compared with the 4th-century Cathedral of St Tecla in Milan.[25] However, there is no archaeological evidence to suggest that any of the mediaeval churches in the City of London had a Roman foundation.[26] A grant from William I in 1067 to Westminster Abbey, which refers to the stone church of St Magnus near the bridge ("lapidee eccle sci magni prope pontem"), is generally accepted to be 12th century forgery,[27] and it is possible that a charter of confirmation in 1108-16 might also be a later fabrication.[28] Nonetheless, these manuscripts may preserve valid evidence of a date of foundation in the 11th century.

 

Archaeological evidence suggests that the area of the bridgehead was not occupied from the early 5th century until the early 10th century. Environmental evidence indicates that the area was waste ground during this period, colonised by elder and nettles. Following Alfred's decision to reoccupy the walled area of London in 886, new harbours were established at Queenhithe and Billingsgate. A bridge was in place by the early 11th century, a factor which would have encouraged the occupation of the bridgehead by craftsmen and traders.[30] A lane connecting Botolph's Wharf and Billingsgate to the rebuilt bridge may have developed by the mid-11th century. The waterfront at this time was a hive of activity, with the construction of embankments sloping down from the riverside wall to the river. Thames Street appeared in the second half of the 11th century immediately behind (north of) the old Roman riverside wall and in 1931 a piling from this was discovered during the excavation of the foundations of a nearby building. It now stands at the base of the church tower.[31] St Magnus was built to the south of Thames Street to serve the growing population of the bridgehead area[32] and was certainly in existence by 1128-33.[33]

The small ancient parish[34] extended about 110 yards along the waterfront either side of the old bridge, from 'Stepheneslane' (later Churchehawlane or Church Yard Alley) and 'Oystergate' (later called Water Lane or Gully Hole) on the West side to 'Retheresgate' (a southern extension of Pudding Lane) on the East side, and was centred on the crossroads formed by Fish Street Hill (originally Bridge Street, then New Fish Street) and Thames Street.[35] The mediaeval parish also included Drinkwater's Wharf (named after the owner, Thomas Drinkwater), which was located immediately West of the bridge, and Fish Wharf, which was to the South of the church. The latter was of considerable importance as the fishmongers had their shops on the wharf. The tenement was devised by Andrew Hunte to the Rector and Churchwardens in 1446.[36] The ancient parish was situated in the South East part of Bridge Ward, which had evolved in the 11th century between the embankments to either side of the bridge.[37]

In 1182 the Abbot of Westminster and the Prior of Bermondsey agreed that the advowson of St Magnus should be divided equally between them. Later in the 1180s, on their presentation, the Archdeacon of London inducted his nephew as parson.

 

Between the late Saxon period and 1209 there was a series of wooden bridges across the Thames, but in that year a stone bridge was completed.[39] The work was overseen by Peter de Colechurch, a priest and head of the Fraternity of the Brethren of London Bridge. The Church had from early times encouraged the building of bridges and this activity was so important it was perceived to be an act of piety - a commitment to God which should be supported by the giving of alms. London’s citizens made gifts of land and money "to God and the Bridge".[40] The Bridge House Estates became part of the City's jurisdiction in 1282.

 

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 on the north bank of the river.[41] The bridge included a chapel dedicated to St Thomas Becket[42] for the use of pilgrims journeying to Canterbury Cathedral to visit his tomb.[43] The chapel and about two thirds of the bridge were in the parish of St Magnus. 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.[44] At the Reformation the chapel was turned into a house and later a warehouse, the latter being demolished in 1757-58.

The church grew in importance. On 21 November 1234 a grant of land was made to the parson of St Magnus for the enlargement of the church.[45] The London eyre of 1244 recorded that in 1238 "A thief named William of Ewelme of the county of Buckingham fled to the church of St. Magnus the Martyr, London, and there acknowledged the theft and abjured the realm. He had no chattels."[46] Another entry recorded that "The City answers saying that the church of ... St. Magnus the Martyr ... which [is] situated on the king's highway ... ought to belong to the king and be in his gift".[47] The church presumably jutted into the road running to the bridge, as it did in later times.[48] In 1276 it was recorded that "the church of St. Magnus the Martyr is worth £15 yearly and Master Geoffrey de la Wade now holds it by the grant of the prior of Bermundeseie and the abbot of Westminster to whom King Henry conferred the advowson by his charter.

 

In 1274 "came King Edward and his wife [Eleanor] from the Holy Land and were crowned at Westminster on the Sunday next after the Feast of the Assumption of Our Lady [15 August], being the Feast of Saint Magnus [19 August]; and the Conduit in Chepe ran all the day with red wine and white wine to drink, for all such as wished."[50] Stow records that "in the year 1293, for victory obtained by Edward I against the Scots, every citizen, according to their several trade, made their several show, but especially the fishmongers" whose solemn procession including a knight "representing St Magnus, because it was upon St Magnus' day".

An important religious guild, the Confraternity de Salve Regina, was in existence by 1343, having been founded by the "better sort of the Parish of St Magnus" to sing the anthem 'Salve Regina' every evening.[51] The Guild certificates of 1389 record that the Confraternity of Salve Regina and the guild of St Thomas the Martyr in the chapel on the bridge, whose members belonged to St Magnus parish, had determined to become one, to have the anthem of St Thomas after the Salve Regina and to devote their united resources to restoring and enlarging the church of St Magnus.[52] An Act of Parliament of 1437[53] provided that all incorporated fraternities and companies should register their charters and have their ordinances approved by the civic authorities.[54] Fear of enquiry into their privileges may have led established fraternities to seek a firm foundation for their rights. The letters patent of the fraternity of St Mary and St Thomas the Martyr of Salve Regina in St Magnus dated 26 May 1448 mention that the fraternity had petitioned for a charter on the grounds that the society was not duly founded.

 

In the mid-14th century the Pope was the Patron of the living and appointed five rectors to the benefice.[56]

Henry Yevele, the master mason whose work included the rebuilding of Westminster Hall and the naves of Westminster Abbey and Canterbury Cathedral, was a parishioner and rebuilt the chapel on London Bridge between 1384 and 1397. He served as a warden of London Bridge and was buried at St Magnus on his death in 1400. His monument was extant in John Stow's time, but was probably destroyed by the fire of 1666.[57]

Yevele, as the King’s Mason, was overseen by Geoffrey Chaucer in his capacity as the Clerk of the King's Works. In The General Prologue of Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales the five guildsmen "were clothed alle in o lyveree Of a solempne and a greet fraternitee"[58] and may be thought of as belonging to the guild in the parish of St Magnus, or one like it.[59] Chaucer's family home was near to the bridge in Thames Street.

 

n 1417 a dispute arose concerning who should take the place of honour amongst the rectors in the City churches at the Whit Monday procession, a place that had been claimed from time to time by the rectors of St Peter Cornhill, St Magnus the Martyr and St Nicholas Cole Abbey. The Mayor and Aldermen decided that the Rector of St Peter Cornhill should take precedence.[61]

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.[62] As it was conveniently close to the River Thames, the church was chosen by the Bishop between the 15th and 17th centuries as a convenient venue for general meetings of the clergy in his diocese.[63] Dr John Young, Bishop of Callipolis (rector of St Magnus 1514-15) pronounced judgement on 16 December 1514 (with the Bishop of London and in the presence of Thomas More, then under-sheriff of London) in the heresy case concerning Richard Hunne.[64]

In pictures from the mid-16th century the old church looks very similar to the present-day St Giles without Cripplegate in the Barbican.[65] According to the martyrologist John Foxe, a woman was imprisoned in the 'cage' on London Bridge in April 1555 and told to "cool herself there" for refusing to pray at St Magnus for the recently deceased Pope Julius III.[66]

Simon Lowe, a Member of Parliament and Master of the Merchant Taylors' Company during the reign of Queen Mary and one of the jurors who acquitted Sir Nicholas Throckmorton in 1554, was a parishioner.[67] He was a mourner at the funeral of Maurice Griffith, Bishop of Rochester from 1554 to 1558 and Rector of St Magnus from 1537 to 1558, who was interred in the church on 30 November 1558 with much solemnity. In accordance with the Catholic church's desire to restore ecclesiastical pageantry in England, the funeral was a splendid affair, ending in a magnificent dinner.

 

Lowe was included in a return of recusants in the Diocese of Rochester in 1577,[69] but was buried at St Magnus on 6 February 1578.[70] Stow refers to his monument in the church. His eldest son, Timothy (died 1617), was knighted in 1603. His second son, Alderman Sir Thomas Lowe (1550–1623), was Master of the Haberdashers' Company on several occasions, Sheriff of London in 1595/96, Lord Mayor in 1604/05 and a Member of Parliament for London.[71] His youngest son, Blessed John Lowe (1553–1586), having originally been a Protestant minister, converted to Roman Catholicism, studied for the priesthood at Douay and Rome and returned to London as a missionary priest.[72] His absence had already been noted; a list of 1581 of "such persons of the Diocese of London as have any children ... beyond the seas" records "John Low son to Margaret Low of the Bridge, absent without licence four years". Having gained 500 converts to Catholicism between 1583 and 1586, he was arrested whilst walking with his mother near London Bridge, committed to The Clink and executed at Tyburn on 8 October 1586.[73] He was beatified in 1987 as one of the eighty-five martyrs of England and Wales.

 

Sir William Garrard, Master of the Haberdashers' Company, Alderman, Sheriff of London in 1553/53, Lord Mayor in 1555/56 and a Member of Parliament was born in the parish and buried at St Magnus in 1571.[74] Sir William Romney, merchant, philanthropist, Master of the Haberdashers' Company, Alderman for Bridge Within and Sheriff of London in 1603/04[75] was married at St Magnus in 1582. Ben Jonson is believed to have been married at St Magnus in 1594.[76]

The patronage of St Magnus, having previously been in the Abbots and Convents of Westminster and Bermondsey (who presented alternatively), fell to the Crown on the suppression of the monasteries. In 1553, Queen Mary, by letters patent, granted it to the Bishop of London and his successors.[77]

The church had a series of distinguished rectors in the second half of the 16th and first half of the 17th century, including Myles Coverdale (Rector 1564-66), John Young (Rector 1566-92), Theophilus Aylmer (Rector 1592-1625), (Archdeacon of London and son of John Aylmer), and Cornelius Burges (Rector 1626-41). Coverdale was buried in the chancel of St Bartholomew-by-the-Exchange, but when that church was pulled down in 1840 his remains were removed to St Magnus.[78]

On 5 November 1562 the churchwardens were ordered to break, or cause to be broken, in two parts all the altar stones in the church.[79] Coverdale, an anti-vestiarian, was Rector at the peak of the vestments controversy. In March 1566 Archbishop Parker caused great consternation among many clergy by his edicts prescribing what was to be worn and by his summoning the London clergy to Lambeth to require their compliance. Coverdale excused himself from attending.[80] Stow records that a non-conforming Scot who normally preached at St Magnus twice a day precipitated a fight on Palm Sunday 1566 at Little All Hallows in Thames Street with his preaching against vestments.[81] Coverdale's resignation from St Magnus in summer 1566 may have been associated with these events. Separatist congregations started to emerge after 1566 and the first such, who called themselves 'Puritans' or 'Unspottyd Lambs of the Lord', was discovered close to St Magnus at Plumbers' Hall in Thames Street on 19 June 1567.

 

St Magnus narrowly escaped destruction in 1633. A later edition of Stow's Survey records that "On the 13th day of February, between eleven and twelve at night, there happened in the house of one Briggs, a Needle-maker near St Magnus Church, at the North end of the Bridge, by the carelessness of a Maid-Servant setting a tub of hot sea-coal ashes under a pair of stairs, a sad and lamentable fire, which consumed all the buildings before eight of the clock the next morning, from the North end of the Bridge to the first vacancy on both sides, containing forty-two houses; water then being very scarce, the Thames being almost frozen over."[83] Susannah Chambers "by her last will & testament bearing date 28th December 1640 gave the sum of Twenty-two shillings and Sixpence Yearly for a Sermon to be preached on the 12th day of February in every Year within the Church of Saint Magnus in commemoration of God's merciful preservation of the said Church of Saint Magnus from Ruin, by the late and terrible Fire on London Bridge. Likewise Annually to the Poor the sum of 17/6."[84] The tradition of a "Fire Sermon" was revived on 12 February 2004, when the first preacher was the Rt Revd and Rt Hon Richard Chartres, Bishop of London.

 

Parliamentarian rule and the more Protestant ethos of the 1640s led to the removal or destruction of "superstitious" and "idolatrous" images and fittings. Glass painters such as Baptista Sutton, who had previously installed "Laudian innovations", found new employment by repairing and replacing these to meet increasingly strict Protestant standards. In January 1642 Sutton replaced 93 feet of glass at St Magnus and in June 1644 he was called back to take down the "painted imagery glass" and replace it.[86] In June 1641 "rail riots" broke out at a number of churches. This was a time of high tension following the trial and execution of the Earl of Strafford and rumours of army and popish plots were rife. The Protestation Oath, with its pledge to defend the true religion "against all Popery and popish innovation", triggered demands from parishioners for the removal of the rails as popish innovations which the Protestation had bound them to reform. The minister arranged a meeting between those for and against the pulling down of the rails, but was unsuccessful in reaching a compromise and it was feared that they would be demolished by force.[87] However, in 1663 the parish resumed Laudian practice and re-erected rails around its communion table.[88]

Joseph Caryl was incumbent from 1645 until his ejection in 1662. In 1663 he was reportedly living near London Bridge and preaching to an Independent congregation that met at various places in the City.[89]

During the Great Plague of 1665, the City authorities ordered fires to be kept burning night and day, in the hope that the air would be cleansed. Daniel Defoe's semi-fictictional, but highly realistic, work A Journal of the Plague Year records that one of these was "just by St Magnus Church"

 

Despite its escape in 1633, the church was one of the first buildings to be destroyed in the Great Fire of London in 1666.[91] St Magnus stood less than 300 yards from the bakehouse of Thomas Farriner in Pudding Lane where the fire started. Farriner, a former churchwarden of St Magnus, was buried in the middle aisle of the church on 11 December 1670, perhaps within a temporary structure erected for holding services.[92]

The parish engaged the master mason George Dowdeswell to start the work of rebuilding in 1668. The work was carried forward between 1671 and 1687 under the direction of Sir Christopher Wren, the body of the church being substantially complete by 1676.[93] At a cost of £9,579 19s 10d St Magnus was one of Wren's most expensive churches.[94] The church of St Margaret New Fish Street was not rebuilt after the fire and its parish was united to that of St Magnus.

 

The chancels of many of Wren’s city churches had chequered marble floors and the chancel of St Magnus is an example,[95] the parish agreeing after some debate to place the communion table on a marble ascent with steps[96] and to commission altar rails of Sussex wrought iron. The nave and aisles are paved with freestone flags. A steeple, closely modelled on one built between 1614 and 1624 by François d'Aguilon and Pieter Huyssens for the church of St Carolus Borromeus in Antwerp, was added between 1703 and 1706.[97] London's skyline was transformed by Wren's tall steeples and that of St Magnus is considered to be one his finest.[98]

The large clock projecting from the tower was a well-known landmark in the city as it hung over the roadway of Old London Bridge.[99] It was presented to the church in 1709 by Sir Charles Duncombe[100] (Alderman for the Ward of Bridge Within and, in 1708/09, Lord Mayor of London). Tradition says "that it was erected in consequence of a vow made by the donor, who, in the earlier part of his life, had once to wait a considerable time in a cart upon London Bridge, without being able to learn the hour, when he made a promise, that if he ever became successful in the world, he would give to that Church a public clock ... that all passengers might see the time of day."[101] The maker was Langley Bradley, a clockmaker in Fenchurch Street, who had worked for Wren on many other projects, including the clock for the new St Paul's Cathedral. The sword rest in the church, designed to hold the Lord Mayor's sword and mace when he attended divine service "in state", dates from 1708.

Duncombe and his benefactions to St Magnus feature prominently in Daniel Defoe's The True-Born Englishman, a biting satire on critics of William III that went through several editions from 1700 (the year in which Duncombe was elected Sheriff).

 

Shortly before his death in 1711, Duncombe commissioned an organ for the church, the first to have a swell-box, by Abraham Jordan (father and son).[103] The Spectator announced that "Whereas Mr Abraham Jordan, senior and junior, have, with their own hands, joinery excepted, made and erected a very large organ in St Magnus' Church, at the foot of London Bridge, consisting of four sets of keys, one of which is adapted to the art of emitting sounds by swelling notes, which never was in any organ before; this instrument will be publicly opened on Sunday next [14 February 1712], the performance by Mr John Robinson. The above-said Abraham Jordan gives notice to all masters and performers, that he will attend every day next week at the said Church, to accommodate all those gentlemen who shall have a curiosity to hear it".[104]

The organ case, which remains in its original state, is looked upon as one of the finest existing examples of the Grinling Gibbons's school of wood carving.[105] The first organist of St Magnus was John Robinson (1682–1762), who served in that role for fifty years and in addition as organist of Westminster Abbey from 1727. Other organists have included the blind organist George Warne (1792–1868, organist 1820-26 until his appointment to the Temple Church), James Coward (1824–80, organist 1868-80 who was also organist to the Crystal Palace and renowned for his powers of improvisation) and George Frederick Smith FRCO (1856–1918, organist 1880-1918 and Professor of Music at the Guildhall School of Music).[106] The organ has been restored several times - in 1760, 1782, 1804, 1855, 1861, 1879, 1891, 1924, 1949 after wartime damage and 1997 - since it was first built.[107] Sir Peter Maxwell Davies was one of several patrons of the organ appeal in the mid-1990s[108] and John Scott gave an inaugural recital on 20 May 1998 following the completion of that restoration.[109] The instrument has an Historic Organ Certificate and full details are recorded in the National Pipe Organ Register.[110]

The hymn tune "St Magnus", usually sung at Ascensiontide to the text "The head that once was crowned with thorns", was written by Jeremiah Clarke in 1701 and named for the church.

 

Canaletto drew St Magnus and old London Bridge as they appeared in the late 1740s.[112] Between 1756 and 1762, under the London Bridge Improvement Act of 1756 (c. 40), the Corporation of London demolished the buildings on London Bridge to widen the roadway, ease traffic congestion and improve safety for pedestrians.[113] The churchwardens’ accounts of St Magnus list many payments to those injured on the Bridge and record that in 1752 a man was crushed to death between two carts.[114] After the House of Commons had resolved upon the alteration of London Bridge, the Rev Robert Gibson, Rector of St Magnus, applied to the House for relief; stating that 48l. 6s. 2d. per annum, part of his salary of 170l. per annum, was assessed upon houses on London Bridge; which he should utterly lose by their removal unless a clause in the bill about to be passed should provide a remedy.[115] Accordingly, Sections 18 and 19 of 1756 Act provided that the relevant amounts of tithe and poor rate should be a charge on the Bridge House Estates.[116]

A serious fire broke out on 18 April 1760 in an oil shop at the south east corner of the church, which consumed most of the church roof and did considerable damage to the fabric. The fire burnt warehouses to the south of the church and a number of houses on the northern end of London Bridge.

 

As part of the bridge improvements, overseen by the architect Sir Robert Taylor, a new pedestrian walkway was built along the eastern side of the bridge. With the other buildings gone St Magnus blocked the new walkway.[117] As a consequence it was necessary in 1762 to 1763 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.[118] 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. A new Vestry was built to the South of the church.[119] The Act also provided that the land taken from the church for the widening was "to be considered ... as part of the cemetery of the said church ... but if the pavement thereof be broken up on account of the burying of any persons, the same shall be ... made good ... by the churchwardens"

 

Soldiers were stationed in the Vestry House of St Magnus during the Gordon Riots in June 1780.[121]

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.[122] At some point between the 1760s and 1814 the present clerestory was constructed with its oval windows and fluted and coffered plasterwork.[123] J. M. W. Turner painted the church in the mid-1790s.[124]

The rector of St Magnus between 1792 and 1808, following the death of Robert Gibson on 28 July 1791,[125] was Thomas Rennell FRS. Rennell was President of Sion College in 1806/07. There is a monument to Thomas Leigh (Rector 1808-48 and President of Sion College 1829/30,[126] at St Peter's Church, Goldhanger in Essex.[127] Richard Hazard (1761–1837) was connected with the church as sexton, parish clerk and ward beadle for nearly 50 years[128] and served as Master of the Parish Clerks' Company in 1831/32.[129]

In 1825 the church was "repaired and beautified at a very considerable expense. During the reparation the east window, which had been closed, was restored, and the interior of the fabric conformed to the state in which it was left by its great architect, Sir Christopher Wren. The magnificent organ ... was taken down and rebuilt by Mr Parsons, and re-opened, with the church, on the 12th February, 1826".[130] Unfortunately, as a contemporary writer records, "On the night of the 31st of July, 1827, [the church's] safety was threatened by the great fire which consumed the adjacent warehouses, and it is perhaps owing to the strenuous and praiseworthy exertions of the firemen, that the structure exists at present. ... divine service was suspended and not resumed until the 20th January 1828. In the interval the church received such tasteful and elegant decorations, that it may now compete with any church in the metropolis.

 

In 1823 royal assent was given to ‘An Act for the Rebuilding of London Bridge’ and in 1825 John Garratt, Lord Mayor and Alderman of the Ward of Bridge Within, laid the first stone of the new London Bridge.[132] In 1831 Sir John Rennie’s new bridge was opened further upstream and the old bridge demolished. St Magnus ceased to be the gateway to London as it had been for over 600 years. Peter de Colechurch[133] had been buried in the crypt of the chapel on the bridge and his bones were unceremoniously dumped in the River Thames.[134] In 1921 two stones from Old London Bridge were discovered across the road from the church. They now stand in the churchyard.

Wren's church of St Michael Crooked Lane was demolished, the final service on Sunday 20 March 1831 having to be abandoned due to the effects of the building work. The Rector of St Michael preached a sermon the following Sunday at St Magnus lamenting the demolition of his church with its monuments and "the disturbance of the worship of his parishioners on the preceeding Sabbath".[135] The parish of St Michael Crooked Lane was united to that of St Magnus, which itself lost a burial ground in Church Yard Alley to the approach road for the new bridge.[136] However, in substitution it had restored to it the land taken for the widening of the old bridge in 1762 and was also given part of the approach lands to the east of the old bridge.[137] In 1838 the Committee for the London Bridge Approaches reported to Common Council that new burial grounds had been provided for the parishes of St Michael, Crooked Lane and St Magnus, London Bridge.

 

Depictions of St Magnus after the building of the new bridge, seen behind Fresh Wharf and the new London Bridge Wharf, include paintings by W. Fenoulhet in 1841 and by Charles Ginner in 1913.[139] This prospect was affected in 1924 by the building of Adelaide House to a design by John James Burnet,[140] The Times commenting that "the new ‘architectural Matterhorn’ ... conceals all but the tip of the church spire".[141] There was, however, an excellent view of the church for a few years between the demolition of Adelaide Buildings and the erection of its replacement.[142] Adelaide House is now listed.[143] Regis House, on the site of the abandoned King William Street terminus of the City & South London Railway (subsequently the Northern Line),[144] and the Steam Packet Inn, on the corner of Lower Thames Street and Fish Street Hill,[145] were developed in 1931.

 

By the early 1960s traffic congestion had become a problem[147] and Lower Thames Street was widened over the next decade[148] to form part of a significant new east-west transport artery (the A3211).[149] The setting of the church was further affected by the construction of a new London Bridge between 1967 and 1973.[150] The New Fresh Wharf warehouse to the east of the church, built in 1939, was demolished in 1973-4 following the collapse of commercial traffic in the Pool of London[151] and, after an archaeological excavation,[152] St Magnus House was constructed on the site in 1978 to a design by R. Seifert & Partners.[153] This development now allows a clear view of the church from the east side.[154] The site to the south east of The Monument (between Fish Street Hill and Pudding Lane), formerly predominantly occupied by fish merchants,[155] was redeveloped as Centurion House and Gartmore (now Providian) House at the time of the closure of old Billingsgate Market in January 1982.[156] A comprehensive redevelopment of Centurion House began in October 2011 with completion planned in 2013.[157] Regis House, to the south west of The Monument, was redeveloped by Land Securities PLC in 1998.[158]

The vista from The Monument south to the River Thames, over the roof of St Magnus, is protected under the City of London Unitary Development Plan,[159] although the South bank of the river is now dominated by The Shard. Since 2004 the City of London Corporation has been exploring ways of enhancing the Riverside Walk to the south of St Magnus.[160] Work on a new staircase to connect London Bridge to the Riverside Walk is due to commence in March 2013.[161] The story of St Magnus's relationship with London Bridge and an interview with the rector featured in the television programme The Bridges That Built London with Dan Cruickshank, first broadcast on BBC Four on 14 June 2012.[162] The City Corporation's 'Fenchurch and Monument Area Enhancement Strategy' of August 2012 recommended ways of reconnecting St Magnus and the riverside to the area north of Lower Thames Street.

 

A lectureship at St Michael Crooked Lane, which was transferred to St Magnus in 1831, was endowed by the wills of Thomas and Susannah Townsend in 1789 and 1812 respectively.[164] The Revd Henry Robert Huckin, Headmaster of Repton School from 1874 to 1882, was appointed Townsend Lecturer at St Magnus in 1871.[165]

St Magnus narrowly escaped damage from a major fire in Lower Thames Street in October 1849.

 

During the second half of the 19th century the rectors were Alexander McCaul, DD (1799–1863, Rector 1850-63), who coined the term 'Judaeo Christian' in a letter dated 17 October 1821,[167] and his son Alexander Israel McCaul (1835–1899, curate 1859-63, rector 1863-99). The Revd Alexander McCaul Sr[168] was a Christian missionary to the Polish Jews, who (having declined an offer to become the first Anglican Bishop in Jerusalem)[169] was appointed professor of Hebrew and rabbinical literature at King's College, London in 1841. His daughter, Elizabeth Finn (1825–1921), a noted linguist, founded the Distressed Gentlefolk Aid Association (now known as Elizabeth Finn Care).[170]

In 1890 it was reported that the Bishop of London was to hold an inquiry as to the desirability of uniting the benefices of St George Botolph Lane and St Magnus. The expectation was a fusion of the two livings, the demolition of St George’s and the pensioning of "William Gladstone’s favourite Canon", Malcolm MacColl. Although services ceased there, St George’s was not demolished until 1904. The parish was then merged with St Mary at Hill rather than St Magnus.[171]

The patronage of the living was acquired in the late 19th century by Sir Henry Peek Bt. DL MP, Senior Partner of Peek Brothers & Co of 20 Eastcheap, the country's largest firm of wholesale tea brokers and dealers, and Chairman of the Commercial Union Assurance Co. Peek was a generous philanthropist who was instrumental in saving both Wimbledon Common and Burnham Beeches from development. His grandson, Sir Wilfred Peek Bt. DSO JP, presented a cousin, Richard Peek, as rector in 1904. Peek, an ardent Freemason, held the office of Grand Chaplain of England. The Times recorded that his memorial service in July 1920 "was of a semi-Masonic character, Mr Peek having been a prominent Freemason".[172] In June 1895 Peek had saved the life of a young French girl who jumped overboard from a ferry midway between Dinard and St Malo in Brittany and was awarded the bronze medal of the Royal Humane Society and the Gold Medal 1st Class of the Sociâetâe Nationale de Sauvetage de France.[173]

In November 1898 a memorial service was held at St Magnus for Sir Stuart Knill Bt. (1824–1898), head of the firm of John Knill and Co, wharfingers, and formerly Lord Mayor and Master of the Plumbers' Company.[174] This was the first such service for a Roman Catholic taken in an Anglican church.[175] Sir Stuart's son, Sir John Knill Bt. (1856-1934), also served as Alderman for the Ward of Bridge Within, Lord Mayor and Master of the Plumbers' Company.

 

Until 1922 the annual Fish Harvest Festival was celebrated at St Magnus.[176] The service moved in 1923 to St Dunstan in the East[177] and then to St Mary at Hill, but St Magnus retained close links with the local fish merchants until the closure of old Billingsgate Market. St Magnus, in the 1950s, was "buried in the stink of Billingsgate fish-market, against which incense was a welcome antidote".

 

A report in 1920 proposed the demolition of nineteen City churches, including St Magnus.[179] A general outcry from members of the public and parishioners alike prevented the execution of this plan.[180] The members of the City Livery Club passed a resolution that they regarded "with horror and indignation the proposed demolition of 19 City churches" and pledged the Club to do everything in its power to prevent such a catastrophe.[181] T. S. Eliot wrote that the threatened churches gave "to the business quarter of London a beauty which its hideous banks and commercial houses have not quite defaced. ... the least precious redeems some vulgar street ... The loss of these towers, to meet the eye down a grimy lane, and of these empty naves, to receive the solitary visitor at noon from the dust and tumult of Lombard Street, will be irreparable and unforgotten."[182] The London County Council published a report concluding that St Magnus was "one of the most beautiful of all Wren's works" and "certainly one of the churches which should not be demolished without specially good reasons and after very full consideration."[183] Due to the uncertainty about the church's future, the patron decided to defer action to fill the vacancy in the benefice and a curate-in-charge temporarily took responsibility for the parish.[184] However, on 23 April 1921 it was announced that the Revd Henry Joy Fynes-Clinton would be the new Rector. The Times concluded that the appointment, with the Bishop’s approval, meant that the proposed demolition would not be carried out.[185] Fr Fynes-Clinton was inducted on 31 May 1921.[186]

The rectory, built by Robert Smirke in 1833-5, was at 39 King William Street.[187] A decision was taken in 1909 to sell the property, the intention being to purchase a new rectory in the suburbs, but the sale fell through and at the time of the 1910 Land Tax Valuations the building was being let out to a number of tenants. The rectory was sold by the diocese on 30 May 1921 for £8,000 to Ridgways Limited, which owned the adjoining premises.[188] The Vestry House adjoining the south west of the church, replacing the one built in the 1760s, may also have been by Smirke. Part of the burial ground of St Michael Crooked Lane, located between Fish Street Hill and King William Street, survived as an open space until 1987 when it was compulsorily purchased to facilitate the extension of the Docklands Light Railway into the City.[189] The bodies were reburied at Brookwood Cemetery.

 

The interior of the church was restored by Martin Travers in 1924, in a neo-baroque style,[191] reflecting the Anglo-Catholic character of the congregation[192] following the appointment of Henry Joy Fynes-Clinton as Rector.[193] Fr Fynes, as he was often known, served as Rector of St Magnus from 31 May 1921 until his death on 4 December 1959 and substantially beautified the interior of the church.[194]

Fynes-Clinton held very strong Anglo-Catholic views, and proceeded to make St Magnus as much like a baroque Roman Catholic church as possible. However, "he was such a loveable character with an old-world courtesy which was irresistible, that it was difficult for anyone to be unpleasant to him, however much they might disapprove of his views".[195] He generally said the Roman Mass in Latin; and in personality was "grave, grand, well-connected and holy, with a laconic sense of humour".[196] To a Protestant who had come to see Coverdale's monument he is reported to have said "We have just had a service in the language out of which he translated the Bible".[197] The use of Latin in services was not, however, without grammatical danger. A response from his parishioners of "Ora pro nobis" after "Omnes sancti Angeli et Archangeli" in the Litany of the Saints would elicit a pause and the correction "No, Orate pro nobis."

 

In 1922 Fynes-Clinton refounded the Fraternity of Our Lady de Salve Regina.[198] The Fraternity's badge[199] is shown in the stained glass window at the east end of the north wall of the church above the reredos of the Lady Chapel altar. He also erected a statue of Our Lady of Walsingham and arranged pilgrimages to the Norfolk shrine, where he was one of the founding Guardians.[200] In 1928 the journal of the Catholic League reported that St Magnus had presented a votive candle to the Shrine at Walsingham "in token of our common Devotion and the mutual sympathy and prayers that are we hope a growing bond between the peaceful country shrine and the church in the heart of the hurrying City, from the Altar of which the Pilgrimages regularly start".[201]

Fynes-Clinton was General Secretary of the Anglican and Eastern Orthodox Churches Union and its successor, the Anglican and Eastern Churches Association, from 1906 to 1920 and served as Secretary to the Archbishop of Canterbury's Eastern Churches Committee from 1920 to around 1924. A Solemn Requiem was celebrated at St Magnus in September 1921 for the late King Peter of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes.

At the midday service on 1 March 1922, J.A. Kensit, leader of the Protestant Truth Society, got up and protested against the form of worship.[202] The proposed changes to the church in 1924 led to a hearing in the Consistory Court of the Chancellor of the Diocese of London and an appeal to the Court of Arches.[203] Judgement was given by the latter Court in October 1924. The advowson was purchased in 1931, without the knowledge of the Rector and Parochial Church Council, by the evangelical Sir Charles King-Harman.[204] A number of such cases, including the purchase of the advowsons of Clapham and Hampstead Parish Churches by Sir Charles, led to the passage of the Benefices (Purchase of Rights of Patronage) Measure 1933.[205] This allowed the parishioners of St Magnus to purchase the advowson from Sir Charles King-Harman for £1,300 in 1934 and transfer it to the Patronage Board.

 

St Magnus was one of the churches that held special services before the opening of the second Anglo-Catholic Congress in 1923.[207] Fynes-Clinton[208] was the first incumbent to hold lunchtime services for City workers.[209] Pathé News filmed the Palm Sunday procession at St Magnus in 1935.[210] In The Towers of Trebizond, the novel by Rose Macauley published in 1956, Fr Chantry-Pigg's church is described as being several feet higher than St Mary’s Bourne Street and some inches above even St Magnus the Martyr.[211]

In July 1937 Fr Fynes-Clinton, with two members of his congregation, travelled to Kirkwall to be present at the 800th anniversary celebrations of St Magnus Cathedral, Kirkwall. During their stay they visited Egilsay and were shown the spot where St Magnus had been slain. Later Fr Fynes-Clinton was present at a service held at the roofless church of St Magnus on Egilsay, where he suggested to his host Mr Fryer, the minister of the Cathedral, that the congregations of Kirkwall and London should unite to erect a permanent stone memorial on the traditional site where Earl Magnus had been murdered. In 1938 a cairn was built of local stone on Egilsay. It stands 12 feet high and is 6 feet broad at its base. The memorial was dedicated on 7 September 1938 and a bronze inscription on the monument reads "erected by the Rector and Congregation of St Magnus the Martyr by London Bridge and the Minister and Congregation of St Magnus Cathedral, Kirkwall to commemorate the traditional spot where Earl Magnus was slain, AD circa 1116 and to commemorate the Octocentenary of St Magnus Cathedral 1937"

 

A bomb which fell on London Bridge in 1940 during the Blitz of World War II blew out all the windows and damaged the plasterwork and the roof of the north aisle.[213] However, the church was designated a Grade I listed building on 4 January 1950[214] and repaired in 1951, being re-opened for worship in June of that year by the Bishop of London, William Wand.[215] The architect was Laurence King.[216] Restoration and redecoration work has subsequently been carried out several times, including after a fire in the early hours of 4 November 1995.[217] Cleaning of the exterior stonework was completed in 2010.

 

Some minor changes were made to the parish boundary in 1954, including the transfer to St Magnus of an area between Fish Street Hill and Pudding Lane. The site of St Leonard Eastcheap, a church that was not rebuilt after the Great Fire, is therefore now in the parish of St Magnus despite being united to St Edmund the King.

Fr Fynes-Clinton marked the 50th anniversary of his priesthood in May 1952 with High Mass at St Magnus and lunch at Fishmongers' Hall.[218] On 20 September 1956 a solemn Mass was sung in St Magnus to commence the celebration of the 25th anniversary of the restoration of the Holy House at Walsingham in 1931. In the evening of that day a reception was held in the large chamber of Caxton Hall, when between three and four hundred guests assembled.[219]

Fr Fynes-Clinton was succeeded as rector in 1960 by Fr Colin Gill,[220] who remained as incumbent until his death in 1983.[221] Fr Gill was also closely connected with Walsingham and served as a Guardian between 1953 and 1983, including nine years as Master of the College of Guardians.[222] He celebrated the Mass at the first National Pilgrimage in 1959[223] and presided over the Jubilee celebrations to mark the 50th anniversary of the Shrine in 1981, having been present at the Holy House's opening.[224] A number of the congregation of St Stephen's Lewisham moved to St Magnus around 1960, following temporary changes in the form of worship there.

 

In 1994 the Templeman Commission proposed a radical restructuring of the churches in the City Deanery. St Magnus was identified as one of the 12 churches that would remain as either a parish or an 'active' church.[226] However, the proposals were dropped following a public outcry and the consecration of a new Bishop of London.

The parish priest since 2003 has been Fr Philip Warner, who was previously priest-in-charge of St Mary's Church, Belgrade (Diocese in Europe) and Apokrisiarios for the Archbishop of Canterbury to the Serbian Orthodox Church. Since January 2004 there has been an annual Blessing of the Thames, with the congregations of St Magnus and Southwark Cathedral meeting in the middle of London Bridge.[227] On Sunday 3 July 2011, in anticipation of the feast of the translation of St Thomas Becket (7 July), a procession from St Magnus brought a relic of the saint to the middle of the bridge.[228]

David Pearson specially composed two new pieces, a communion anthem A Mhànais mo rùin (O Magnus of my love) and a hymn to St Magnus Nobilis, humilis, for performance at the church on the feast of St Magnus the Martyr, 16 April 2012.[229] St Magnus's organist, John Eady, has won composition competitions for new choral works at St Paul's Cathedral (a setting of Veni Sancte Spiritus first performed on 27 May 2012) and at Lincoln Cathedral (a setting of the Matin responsory for Advent first performed on 30 November 2013).[230]

In addition to liturgical music of a high standard, St Magnus is the venue for a wide range of musical events. The Clemens non Papa Consort, founded in 2005, performs in collaboration with the production team Concert Bites as the church's resident ensemble.[231] The church is used by The Esterhazy Singers for rehearsals and some concerts.[232] The band Mishaped Pearls performed at the church on 17 December 2011.[233] St Magnus featured in the television programme Jools Holland: London Calling, first broadcast on BBC2 on 9 June 2012.[234] The Platinum Consort made a promotional film at St Magnus for the release of their debut album In the Dark on 2 July 2012.[235]

The Friends of the City Churches had their office in the Vestry House of St Magnus until 2013.

 

Martin Travers modified the high altar reredos, adding paintings of Moses and Aaron and the Ten Commandments between the existing Corinthian columns and reconstructing the upper storey. Above the reredos Travers added a painted and gilded rood.[237] In the centre of the reredos there is a carved gilded pelican (an early Christian symbol of self-sacrifice) and a roundel with Baroque-style angels. The glazed east window, which can be seen in an early photograph of the church, appears to have been filled in at this time. A new altar with console tables was installed and the communion rails moved outwards to extend the size of the sanctuary. Two old door frames were used to construct side chapels and placed at an angle across the north-east and south-east corners of the church. One, the Lady Chapel, was dedicated to the Rector's parents in 1925 and the other was dedicated to Christ the King. Originally, a baroque aumbry was used for Reservation of the Blessed Sacrament, but later a tabernacle was installed on the Lady Chapel altar and the aumbry was used to house a relic of the True Cross.

The interior was made to look more European by the removal of the old box pews and the installation of new pews with cut-down ends. Two new columns were inserted in the nave to make the lines regular. The Wren-period pulpit by the joiner William Grey[238] was opened up and provided with a soundboard and crucifix. Travers also designed the statue of St Magnus of Orkney, which stands in the south aisle, and the statue of Our Lady of Walsingham.[239]

On the north wall there is a Russian Orthodox icon, painted in 1908. The modern stations of the cross in honey-coloured Japanese oak are the work of Robert Randall and Ashley Sands.[240] One of the windows in the north wall dates from 1671 and came from Plumbers' Hall in Chequer Yard, Bush Lane, which was demolished in 1863 to make way for Cannon Street Railway Station.[241] A fireplace from the Hall was re-erected in the Vestry House. The other windows on the north side are by Alfred Wilkinson and date from 1952 to 1960. These show the arms of the Plumbers’, Fishmongers’ and Coopers’ Companies together with those of William Wand when Bishop of London and Geoffrey Fisher when Archbishop of Canterbury and (as noted above) the badge of the Fraternity of Our Lady de Salve Regina.

The stained glass windows in the south wall, which are by Lawrence Lee and date from 1949 to 1955, represent lost churches associated with the parish: St Magnus and his ruined church of Egilsay, St Margaret of Antioch with her lost church in New Fish Street (where the Monument to the Great Fire now stands), St Michael with his lost church of Crooked Lane (demolished to make way for the present King William Street) and St Thomas Becket with his chapel on Old London Bridge.[242]

The church possesses a fine model of Old London Bridge. One of the tiny figures on the bridge appears out of place in the mediaeval setting, wearing a policeman's uniform. This is a representation of the model-maker, David T. Aggett, who is a Liveryman of the Worshipful Company of Plumbers and was formerly in the police service.[243]

The Mischiefs by Fire Act 1708 and the Fires Prevention (Metropolis) Act 1774 placed a requirement on every parish to keep equipment to fight fires. The church owns two historic fire engines that belonged to the parish of St Michael, Crooked Lane.[244] One of these is in storage at the Museum of London. The whereabouts of the other, which was misappropriated and sold at auction in 2003, is currently unknown.

In 1896 many bodies were disinterred from the crypt and reburied at the St Magnus's plot at Brookwood Cemetery, which remains the church's burial ground.

 

Prior to the Great Fire of 1666 the old tower had a ring of five bells, a small saints bell and a clock bell.[246] 47 cwt of bell metal was recovered[247] which suggests that the tenor was 13 or 14 cwt. The metal was used to cast three new bells, by William Eldridge of Chertsey in 1672,[248] with a further saints bell cast that year by Hodson.[249] In the absence of a tower, the tenor and saints bell were hung in a free standing timber structure, whilst the others remained unhung.[250]

A new tower was completed in 1704 and it is likely that these bells were transferred to it. However, the tenor became cracked in 1713 and it was decided to replace the bells with a new ring of eight.[251] The new bells, with a tenor of 21 cwt, were cast by Richard Phelps of the Whitechapel Bell Foundry. Between 1714 and 1718 (the exact date of which is unknown), the ring was increased to ten with the addition of two trebles given by two former ringing Societies, the Eastern Youths and the British Scholars.[252] The first peal was rung on 15 February 1724 of Grandsire Caters by the Society of College Youths. The second bell had to be recast in 1748 by Robert Catlin, and the tenor was recast in 1831 by Thomas Mears of Whitechapel,[253] just in time to ring for the opening of the new London Bridge. In 1843, the treble was said to be "worn out" and so was scrapped, together with the saints bell, while a new treble was cast by Thomas Mears.[254] A new clock bell was erected in the spire in 1846, provided by B R & J Moore, who had earlier purchased it from Thomas Mears.[255] This bell can still be seen in the tower from the street.

The 10 bells were removed for safe keeping in 1940 and stored in the churchyard. They were taken to Whitechapel Bell Foundry in 1951 whereupon it was discovered that four of them were cracked. After a long period of indecision, fuelled by lack of funds and interest, the bells were finally sold for scrap in 1976. The metal was used to cast many of the Bells of Congress that were then hung in the Old Post Office Tower in Washington, D.C.

A fund was set up on 19 September 2005, led by Dickon Love, a member of the Ancient Society of College Youths, with a view to installing a new ring of 12 bells in the tower in a new frame. This was the first of three new rings of bells he has installed in the City of London (the others being at St Dunstan-in-the-West and St James Garlickhythe). The money was raised and the bells were cast during 2008/9 by the Whitechapel Bell Foundry. The tenor weighed 26cwt 3qtr 9 lbs (1360 kg) and the new bells were designed to be in the same key as the former ring of ten. They were consecrated by the Bishop of London on 3 March 2009 in the presence of the Lord Mayor[256] and the ringing dedicated on 26 October 2009 by the Archdeacon of London.[257] The bells are named (in order smallest to largest) Michael, Margaret, Thomas of Canterbury, Mary, Cedd, Edward the Confessor, Dunstan, John the Baptist, Erkenwald, Paul, Mellitus and Magnus.[258] The bells project is recorded by an inscription in the vestibule of the church.

 

The first peal on the twelve was rung on 29 November 2009 of Cambridge Surprise Maximus.[260] Notable other recent peals include a peal of Stedman Cinques on 16 April 2011 to mark the 400th anniversary of the granting of a Royal Charter to the Plumbers' Company,[261] a peal of Cambridge Surprise Royal on 28 June 2011 when the Fishmongers' Company gave a dinner for Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh at their hall on the occasion of his 90th birthday[262] and a peal of Avon Delight Maximus on 24 July 2011 in solidarity with the people of Norway following the tragic massacre on Utoeya Island and in Oslo.[263] On the latter occasion the flag of the Orkney Islands was flown at half mast. In 2012 peals were rung during the Thames Diamond Jubilee Pageant on 3 June and during each of the three Olympic/Paralympic marathons, on 5 and 12 August and 9 September.

The BBC television programme, Still Ringing After All These Years: A Short History of Bells, broadcast on 14 December 2011, included an interview at St Magnus with the Tower Keeper, Dickon Love,[264] who was captain of the band that rang the "Royal Jubilee Bells" during the Thames Diamond Jubilee Pageant on 3 June 2012 to celebrate the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II.[265] Prior to this, he taught John Barrowman to handle a bell at St Magnus for the BBC coverage.

The bells are currently rung every Sunday around 12:15 (following the service) by the Guild of St Magnus.

 

Every other June, newly elected wardens of the Fishmongers' Company, accompanied by the Court, proceed on foot from Fishmongers' Hall[267] to St Magnus for an election service.[268] St Magnus is also the Guild Church of The Plumbers' Company. Two former rectors have served as master of the company,[269] which holds all its services at the church.[270] On 12 April 2011 a service was held to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the granting of the company's Royal Charter at which the Bishop of London, the Rt Revd and Rt Hon Richard Chartres KCVO, gave the sermon and blessed the original Royal Charter. For many years the Cloker Service was held at St Magnus, attended by the Coopers' Company and Grocers' Company, at which the clerk of the Coopers' Company read the will of Henry Cloker dated 10 March 1573.[271]

St Magnus is also the ward church for the Ward of Bridge and Bridge Without, which elects one of the city's aldermen. Between 1550 and 1978 there were separate aldermen for Bridge Within and Bridge Without, the former ward being north of the river and the latter representing the City's area of control in Southwark. The Bridge Ward Club was founded in 1930 to "promote social activities and discussion of topics of local and general interest and also to exchange Ward and parochial information" and holds its annual carol service at St Magnus.

 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Magnus-the-Martyr

 

One of the smaller mounds near the Newgrange Passage Tomb, Ireland. This one is un-excavated, and I think not open to the public. The person walking in front gives a good sense of scale.

Near maximum length (c.35mm) for the species.

1: posterior profile slightly convex.

2: anterior profile straight.

3: excavated vertex patch.

 

SPECIES DESCRIPTION part A BELOW

SPECIES DESCRIPTION part B 2Pd flic.kr/p/AfbFkR

Key id. features 3Pd flic.kr/p/Ay7bhf

PDF version at www.researchgate.net/profile/Ian_Smith19/research

 

OTHER SPECIES ALBUMS www.flickr.com/photos/56388191@N08/collections/

 

Patella_depressa Pennant, 1777

 

Current taxonomy: World Register of Marine Species (WoRMS)

www.marinespecies.org/aphia.php?p=taxdetails&id=151374

Synonyms: Patella intermedia Murray in Knapp,1857; Patella vulgata var. intermedia Jeffreys, 1865; Patella athletica [as dark variant of] Forbes & Hanley,1849;

Jeffreys (1865) mistakenly took the rudimentary description of P. depressa by Pennant (1777) to be what is currently (2015) called P. ulyssiponensis Gmelin, 1791 (syn. P. athletica). Until 1923, most authors followed Jeffreys in applying the name P. depressa Pennant to the wrong species, and in using the name P. intermedia Jeffreys for what is now recognised as P. depressa Pennant. Examination of Pennant's type specimen by Tomlin (1923) exposed the error and authors started to use the name P. athletica Bean, 1844, for what is now called P. ulyssiponensis but, probably to avoid confusion, many retained use of P. intermedia Jeffreys for the true P. depressa Pennant, despite Pennant's priority, until the 1970s (e.g.Yonge & Thompson, 1976).

Vernacular names: Black footed limpet (English); Brenigen dorddu (Welsh); Platte schaalhoren (Dutch); Patelle bernique (French);

 

Meaning of name:

Patella (Latin) = little pan. depressa (Latin) = depressed /low.

 

Terms in text used with restricted or specialised meaning are marked with hashtag#; refer to GLOSSARY below.

 

Shell Description

Patellid limpets have great geographical variation within and between species. This account refers to typical British specimens.

Usual maximum length c.35mm and height# 12mm 1Pd flic.kr/p/BaSA3C . Strong. Conoid; apex is positioned to anterior of centre. The base is ovoid , widest and sometimes angulated at posterior. Profile usually low (H/L 25-37% in sample of twelve typical shells from S.W.England and N.W. Wales) 2Pd flic.kr/p/AfbFkR . In profile, anterior and posterior usually slightly convex or almost straight. Sculpture of narrow, radiating, whitish ribs that tend to be arranged in triplets; one major flanked by a minor each side 10Pd flic.kr/p/BaScwq . Ribs project as points from aperture-rim of unworn shells 3Pd flic.kr/p/Ay7bhf , but often majority have ribs rounded, and rib-points reduced, by erosion, and outer shell-layer eroded away from apical half of the shell 4Pd flic.kr/p/Bc5Hk6 to almost whole shell 5Pd flic.kr/p/Ay7kFz . Dark radiating rays in grooves of exterior shell-layer visible externally only on uneroded parts 4Pd flic.kr/p/Bc5Hk6 , but usually clearly visible on interior through transparent, iridescent skirt-shell-layer# for much 6Pd flic.kr/p/Ay7i76 or most 7Pd flic.kr/p/AfbuN8 of the way to opaque, whitish, pallial-groove-band#. On interior, whitish projecting points of ribs have short, unglazed, chalky-white central line, but reduced or lacking where projecting point of rib eroded 8Pd flic.kr/p/Ay6YL9 . Pedal-retractor muscle leaves translucent horseshoe-shape scar 7Pd flic.kr/p/AfbuN8 , often containing an opaque white line 9Pd flic.kr/p/Ay7bJg . Mouth of horseshoe-scar is closed by thin anterior mantle-attachment scar 9Pd flic.kr/p/Ay7bJg ; the two scars enclose area shaped like fat amphora# filled with blackish 10Pd flic.kr/p/BaScwq , grey 11Pd flic.kr/p/Bd4YEr , orange-cream 12Pd flic.kr/p/Af3iJS , opaque-white and/or yellowish-cream 7Pd flic.kr/p/AfbuN8 shell-layer. Some have excavated, colourless, translucent patch near vertex#, 13Pd flic.kr/p/AApFbT , perhaps caused by re-absorption of shell-material. Juvenile spat lack ridges on main antero-posterior axis and have broad, prominent, mid-lateral pigment lines from apex to lip that are swept forwards on left and backwards on right.

 

Body description

Translucent white head, darkened to purple-pink by internal odontophore 14Pd flic.kr/p/Bc5hcv ; has substantial snout , slit at posterior, with large mouth (transverse when shut) fringed by thick outer lips 15Pd flic.kr/p/Ay6H2J . Distal end of snout and lips tinted pale yellow 14Pd flic.kr/p/Bc5hcv . When outer lips opened, dull-yellow inner lips exposed. Inner lips open laterally to expose radula with crimson ribbon and golden teeth, and white, cuticularized, triangular licker 15Pd flic.kr/p/Ay6H2J . Sturdy pale grey cephalic tentacles have small black eye in slight swelling at base 2Pd flic.kr/p/AfbFkR . Eye is primitive (or degenerate) cavity, open to seawater and lined with black retina cells. Mantle-skirt translucent buff 16Pd flic.kr/p/Afb9yv ; colour most saturated and translucency least when skirt retracted from shell-periphery 17Pd flic.kr/p/BaRWfU . Mantle cavity consists of nuchal cavity over head, and pallial groove filled with pallial gills around entire periphery of foot-head 16Pd flic.kr/p/Afb9yv ; no ctenidium. Each gill is tongue-shaped leaflet attached by stalk to distal wall of pallial-groove, and has densely ciliated groove on stalk and thickened rim 18Pd flic.kr/p/Bc59v8 . Efferent pallial vessel in mantle-skirt, close to pallial-groove, enters nuchal cavity on left 16Pd flic.kr/p/Afb9yv . Mantle-edge has many opaquely-pigmented chalky-white pallial tentacles, becoming translucent and less intensely coloured only in a small distal portion; tentacles distinct from translucent, buff mantle-skirt that they arise from 19Pd flic.kr/p/Af37zY . Around perimeter, pallial tentacles alternate single long with several short. Length of pallial tentacles, and their position relative to shell, vary with degree of extension of mantle skirt 20Pd flic.kr/p/Ay6PEH , 21Pd flic.kr/p/Azyo2Q and 17Pd flic.kr/p/BaRWfU . Pedal-retractor muscle arranged in horseshoe pattern of white muscle bundles demarcated by gaps 20Pd flic.kr/p/Ay6PEH ; muscle attaches body/foot to shell (a.k.a. shell muscle) 17Pd flic.kr/p/BaRWfU . Sole of foot approximately circular 20Pd flic.kr/p/Ay6PEH to oval with slightly tapered posterior 21Pd flic.kr/p/Azyo2Q , pitch-brown to black with pale peripheral rim, colour most saturated when foot contracted 17Pd flic.kr/p/BaRWfU . White sides of foot lack features such as epipodial tentacles 2Pd flic.kr/p/AfbFkR . When crawling, usually only extended pallial tentacles and, perhaps, tips of cephalic tentacles protrude beyond shelter of shell 22Pd flic.kr/p/BexkLe . No penis as fertilization external.

 

Further detail visible with simple dissection

Shell removal by severing pedal-retractor muscle shows muscle-bundles clearly 23Pd flic.kr/p/AzykaY ; anterior bundle on each side is largest and strongest as must firmly pull down shell further to anterior where bundles are absent. Removal of viscera reveals that muscle bundles continue far into foot 24Pd flic.kr/p/BdwNkP towards median groove of large blood-sinus 25Pd flic.kr/p/ABS7Sp . Shell removal exposes entire mantle 23Pd flic.kr/p/AzykaY subdivided into a) pale translucent mantle-skirt, b) narrow black band over pallial-groove containing gills, c) large black amphora-shaped area, often with pale vertex patch, over viscera and d) separated from amphora by pale anterior-mantle attachment, smaller black area over the nuchal cavity containing the head and anterior pallial gills 26Pd flic.kr/p/BciErS . Pale patch within black amphora may be related to excavated patch near shell-vertex, see 11Pd flic.kr/p/Bd4YEr , a feature frequently found on P. depressa. If mantle skirt is folded back, 26Pd flic.kr/p/BciErS , collapsed pallial gills exposed. Careful removal of black amphora area of mantle reveals translucent membrane over viscera 27Pd flic.kr/p/AzysF8 ; when removed, clear view, 28Pd flic.kr/p/BbdZum , of digestive gland, intestine and rectum. Efferent pallial vessel in mantle-skirt, 26Pd flic.kr/p/BciErS carries blood from mantle to right of nuchal cavity 29Pd flic.kr/p/AguVDE and through it to elongated heart behind left of cavity 30Pd flic.kr/p/Bex7R6 . When roof of nuchal cavity folded back, translucent white head showing purple-red of internal odontophore visible 26Pd flic.kr/p/BciErS . Removal of head's epithelium reveals odontophore and anterior of radula with hyaline shield 28Pd flic.kr/p/BbdZum . Removal of viscera reveals entire long radula, folded and coiled to fit in body 24Pd flic.kr/p/BdwNkP . P. depressa probably has longest radula relative to shell-length, up to 270%, of any British mollusc 31Pd flic.kr/p/BbdUdE (Fretter & Graham, 1962, p.172). Fully mineralized, golden radular teeth, ready for action, clearly visible at anterior where radula rests on transparent hyaline shield on top of odontophore 32Pd flic.kr/p/Bcivym . Inner lips enclosed at sides and anterior by white chitinous unarticulated jaw# 24Pd flic.kr/p/BdwNkP . White, cuticularized, triangular licker at tip of radula is divided into plate-like ridges by deep transverse grooves 32Pd flic.kr/p/Bcivym . Teeth obscured by white translucent radular sac to posterior of hyaline shield. When radular sac removed by treatment with 10% solution NaOH, posterior of radula clearly seen to have white ribbon with slightly pigmented teeth as mineralization at early stage 33Pd flic.kr/p/ABRUWR while further forward ribbon is rich crimson, and teeth strongly pigmented golden with strong hard minerals of iron and silica. Each row of teeth arranged in docoglossan formula, 3+D+2+R+2+D+3: at centre, two pairs of large, unicuspid, pigmented lateral teeth (with small, unpigmented rachidian/median tooth hidden from easy view at their base), and near each margin of ribbon a single, tricuspid, pigmented, dominant-marginal tooth with, close-by, three inconspicuous, unicuspid, marginal teeth 33Pd flic.kr/p/ABRUWR . Middle cusp of dominant-marginal on P. depressa and P. vulgata is largest; on P. ulyssiponensis outer cusp largest. Before and during spring-autumn breeding season, large gonads (20% of female's mass) occur in mature adults between viscera and foot and, when fully developed, spread up around periphery of visceral mass 30Pd flic.kr/p/Bex7R6 . Male testes are pinkish/orange/yellow with numerous interconnected tubules seen side-on 34Pd flic.kr/p/ABRUor or end-on 35Pd flic.kr/p/BbdNHb . Female gonads not observed by IFS (four adults dissected in late September; two with testes, two without gonads- spent females?) but as reproductive systems similar in the genus, probably greenish and granular as in P. vulgata .

SPECIES DESCRIPTION part B at 2Pd flic.kr/p/AfbFkR

GLOSSARY

 

amphora – (on interior of limpet shell) Roman amphora-shaped area enclosed by scars of pedal-retractor muscle and anterior mantle-attachment.

 

aperture – mouth of gastropod shell; outlet for head and foot.

apex - earliest formed part of a gastropod shell, the summit of the cone. (In this limpet-account restricted to the exterior of the shell, and “vertex” used for the interior.)

 

cephalic – (adj.) of or on the head.

cilia – (pl.) microscopic linear extensions of membrane that move in rhythmic waves to create locomotion, or move particles and liquids e.g. inhalent water currents. (“cilium” singular). (Electron scanning microscope image at flic.kr/p/qQB5zj )

 

ciliary – (adj.) relating to or involving cilia.

coll. – in the collection of (named person or institution) (compare with legit).

conoid – shaped like a cone.

ctenidium – comb-like molluscan gill; usually an axis with a row of filaments either side (missing from Patella spp.).

distal - away from centre of body or point of attachment.

ditaxic - (of locomotion waves on foot) double series of waves, out of phase with each other, one series on each side of median line on sole.

 

ELWS – extreme low water spring tide level (usually near March and September equinoxes).

EHWS - extreme high water spring tide level (usually near March and September equinoxes).

epipodial - (adj.) of the epipodium (collar or circlet running round sides of foot of some gastropods).

 

epithelium – membranous covering of internal and external surfaces of animal's body, e.g. skin and lining of tubes and cavities.

 

head scar – term used by many British authors for patch of different shell-material, and often different colour, near vertex of interior of limpet shell; misnomer as the mobile head, free of any attachment to the shell or mantle-roof of the nuchal cavity cannot make a scar. A preferable term is “vertex patch”.

 

height – (of limpet) perpendicular distance from apex to plane of aperture-rim (best measured with callipers).

 

hyaline shield – transparent sheet of chitin at anterior of radula that rests on bolsters of odontophore; attachment point for retractor muscles of radula; helps guide food particles into mouth.

 

interspecific – existing or arising between different species.

intraspecific – occuring within a single species or involving members of one species.

jaw - unarticulated chitinous structure that encloses inner lips of Patella spp. at sides and anterior.

 

legit – (abbreviation; leg.) collected/ found by (compare with coll.)

licker - cuticularized structure with plate-like ridges and deep transverse grooves at tip of radula of Patella spp.; retains and sweeps up food particles.

 

mantle – sheet of tissue covering visceral mass of molluscs. Secretes shell of shelled species, and forms part or all of dorsal body surface (notum) of those without shells. (See mantle skirt.)

 

mantle skirt – extension on gastropods of mantle proper as a flap roofing a cavity containing gills, genital and renal openings, anus etc. On limpets, skirt and cavity extend around periphery of animal.

 

MHWN - mean high water neap tide level (mean level reached by weakest high tides for a few days every fortnight. i.e. those that rise the least).

 

MLWN – mean low water neap tide level (mean level reached by weakest low tides for a few days every fortnight. i.e. those that fall the least).

 

MLWS - mean low water spring tide level (mean level reached by lowest low tides for a few days every fortnight; Laminaria or Coralline zone on rocky coasts).

 

nuchal – (adj.) of nape of the neck.

nuchal cavity – cavity roofed by mantle skirt that contains head of limpet; part of mantle cavity (remainder consists of pallial groove on each side of body).

 

ovoid – egg-shaped, as a solid or in outline.

pallial groove band – shell material deposited on interior of shell by strip of black mantle roofing the pallial groove that contains the gills. On British Patella spp. it is often clouded-white.

pedal retractor muscle – strong muscle that retracts foot into shell of most gastropods, but on limpets is used to clamp shell to substrate, a.k.a. “foot muscle”.

retrograde - (of locomotion waves on foot) waves travel from anterior to posterior.

scar – mark on shell made by attachment point of muscle or other body part.

skirt shell layer - shell material deposited on interior of shell by mantle skirt. On British Patella spp. colourless when deposited, and clouded white, or transparent showing the colours of the outer layer. Crystalline structure causes short lines of blue iridescence parallel to the aperture rim on all four British species of Patella when the light is right.

 

trochophore – spherical or pear-shaped larva that swims with aid of girdle of cilia. Stage preceding veliger, passed within gastropod egg in most spp. but free in plankton for patellid limpets, most Trochidae and Tricolia pullus.

 

tricuspid - (of tooth) having three points.

unicuspid - (of tooth) having a single point.

veliger – shelled larva of marine gastropod or bivalve mollusc which moves by beating cilia of a velum (bilobed flap).

 

vertex – angle at highest point on interior of limpet-shell. [Synonym of “apex”, chosen (by IFS) to help avoid confusion with the highest point, apex, on the exterior. Gmelin used “vertex” when describing the interior of Patella ulyssiponensis, and in classical Latin “vertex” was used for the “pole of the heavens”; obviously only seen from below.]

 

vertex patch –layer of different shell-material, and often different colour, at vertex of interior of limpet shell. (See “head scar”.)

 

Excavated remains of Harrapan civilisation (Indus valley) of 3rd Millennium, BC. The place is Dholavira village in Kutch District of Gujarat, India.

Regents Park, London

Eleanor must have had to dig a new hole so she could fit all the food she's been gathering. She would go in and push it out with her head. We collected half a bucket of dirt off of the grass.

 

I don't want my photostream to be all about Eleanor, but she's just so darn cute!

1993 Mack DM / (Unknown Tank Manufacturer)

Zuzu excavating. Working hard on her tunnel.

Volubilis is a partly excavated Berber and Roman city in Morocco situated near the city of Meknes, and commonly considered as the ancient capital of the kingdom of Mauretania. Built in a fertile agricultural area, it developed from the 3rd century BC onward as a Berber, then proto-Carthaginian, settlement before being the capital of the kingdom of Mauretania. It grew rapidly under Roman rule from the 1st century AD onward and expanded to cover about 42 hectares (100 acres) with a 2.6 km (1.6 mi) circuit of walls. The city gained a number of major public buildings in the 2nd century, including a basilica, temple and triumphal arch. Its prosperity, which was derived principally from olive growing, prompted the construction of many fine town-houses with large mosaic floors.

 

The city fell to local tribes around 285 and was never retaken by Rome because of its remoteness and indefensibility on the south-western border of the Roman Empire. It continued to be inhabited for at least another 700 years, first as a Latinised Christian community, then as an early Islamic settlement. In the late 8th century it became the seat of Idris ibn Abdallah, the founder of the Idrisid dynasty and the state of Morocco. By the 11th century Volubilis had been abandoned after the seat of power was relocated to Fes. Much of the local population was transferred to the new town of Moulay Idriss Zerhoun, about 5 km (3.1 mi) from Volubilis.

 

The ruins remained substantially intact until they were devastated by an earthquake in the mid-18th century and subsequently looted by Moroccan rulers seeking stone for building Meknes. It was not until the latter part of the 19th century that the site was definitively identified as that of the ancient city of Volubilis. During and after the period of French rule over Morocco, about half of the site was excavated, revealing many fine mosaics, and some of the more prominent public buildings and high-status houses were restored or reconstructed. Today it is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, listed for being "an exceptionally well preserved example of a large Roman colonial town on the fringes of the Empire

Excavated film taken @ Ueno station, Tokyo.

LEICAFLEX SL, Leica summicronR 50mm F2, FUJICOLOR SUPERIA X-TRA 400

Excavated from the sacred pool of Bagno Grande at San Casciano dei Bagni, this bronze bust of a matron was used as a votive offering in the 1st century CE. One of 24 bronzes recently discovered in the ruins of this ancient sanctuary. She’s missing her eyes, which were probably made from stone or bone and glass. Her ears are pierced, meaning she probably wore gold earrings.

 

Between 2020 and 2022 part of this Etruscan and Roman sanctuary came to light at Bagno Grande. The ancient building encircled a sacred pool - over 4 meters deep - made of travertine blocks. An earlier Etruscan pool, underneath the Roman one, was restructured and enlarged at the time of Emperor Tiberius (1st century CE, the same time period when this bronze went into the water).

 

Votive offerings were deposited into the water until the late 4th century CE. The earliest statue offerings date to the 3rd century BCE and continued throughout the 2nd and the ist century CE. They were deposited all together at the beginning of the 1st century CE into the earliest pool, at over three meters in depth, underneath a compact layer of terracotta tiles. The only artifacts associated with the tiles are the representation of a thunderbolt in bronze and a prehistoric flint arrowhead. These objects may symbolize a "fulmen conditum", the "burying" of a thunderbolt. According to the "ars fulguratoria" - the Etruscan tradition of reading the lightening - the objects that were hit by a lightening within a sacred place had to be buried. The place of ritual burial - in this case the pool - became a "bidental".

 

Probably Roman, 1st century CE, late Augustan, Bagno Grande, San Casciano dei Bagni.

 

Photographed at the Musei Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli (MANN, the National Archaeological Museum of Naples)

Location: Sh Feydhoo, Republic of Maldives

 

This is while construction of Feydhoo Harbor.

In stillness I meet the mess of my mind—

a shovel, a seed, a ringing bell.

Thoughts rise like dust and fall like rain.

Breath by breath, I come home again.

In stillness I meet the mess of my mind—

a shovel, a seed, a ringing bell.

Thoughts rise like dust and fall like rain.

Breath by breath, I come home again.

Excavated material is removed adjacent to the recently-built lanes of Lynx Viaduct, making room to construct the future westbound lanes.

 

Visit www.kickinghorsecanyon.ca/

Excavated film taken @ Ichihara, Chiba.

LEICAFLEX SL, Leica summicronR 50mm F2, FUJICOLOR SUPERIA X-TRA 400

Excavated from site E3266 Kilnacranna Site 1, N7 Nenagh to Limerick High Quality Dual Carriageway.

 

Photographed by Sara Nylund, 2009

 

Client: Kildare County Council

Funding body: National Roads Authority (NRA) with funds from the NDP and Transport 21

Excavated portorait of my wife taken in Hakone, Kanagawa.

ASAHI PENTAX SPOTMATIC, Super-Takumar 55mm F1.8.

FUJICOLOR C200

 

Key to the solo game Under Falling Skies is excavating more of your underground bunker, making more and better actions available for fighting off those darn space invaders.

Excavated from site E2856 Mullamast, N9/N10 Kilcullen to Waterford Scheme, Contract 5.

 

Photographed by: Hannah Sims, 2010

 

Client: Kildare County Council

Funding body: National Roads Authority (NRA) with funds from the NDP and Transport 21

St Margaret, New Fish Street, was a parish church in the City of London.

 

The Mortality Bill for the year 1665, published by the Parish Clerks' Company, shows 97 parishes within the City of London.[2] By September 6 the city lay in ruins, 86 churches having been destroyed.[3] In 1670 a Rebuilding Act was passed and a committee set up under the stewardship of Sir Christopher Wren to decide which would be rebuilt.[4] Fifty-one were chosen, but St Margaret New Fish Street where the Monument now stands[5] in Bridge Ward was one of the minority never to be rebuilt.[6] Variously called St Margaret Bridge Street and St Margaret Fish Street Hill,[7] it received many gifts from the pilgrims who passed it on the way to and from London Bridge.[8] Following the fire it was united to St Magnus-the-Martyr.

 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Margaret,_New_Fish_Street

 

The first church lost to the Great Fire was St. Margaret New Fish Street; it was not rebuilt, the parish being united with St. Magnus and the site given to The Monument, which stands there yet, 202 feet tall and 202 feet to the east of the spot where the fire began.

 

The church is first mentioned in the last decade of the 12th century and must have been well known to the many pilgrims and others who crossed over the nearby London Bridge. A fish market was set up in the street in the same century while a City Ordinance of the 14th century required lampreys from France to he sold 'from under the walls of the church'. A further Ordinance of 1379 mentions the conduit, 'hard by the church', as one of the two places where fresh fish could be sold. In the Guildhall Library can be seen the Book of St. Margaret, New Fish Street in which are listed an extraordinary collection of saintly relics. Among the relics claimed were portions of the crib of Christ at Bethlehem, Moses's rod with which he divided the Red Sea, and the 'usual' pieces of clothing for early saints of the church.

 

During the Middle Ages the parish had two rectors of note. In 1461 John Alcock was appointed rector. He stayed until 1471 when he was made Bishop of Rochester, to be followed by Worcester, and in 1486 he succeeded John Morton at Ely when he became the Archbishop of Canterbury. Alcock was twice Chancellor of England, Master of the Rolls, President of Wales and the founder of Jesus College Cambridge. The other was Geoffrey Wren 1512-1527 when during his stay at St. Margaret's he became a Canon of Windsor. He lies buried under the sixth arch of the North aisle of the Royal Chapel of St. George at Windsor.

 

John Stow in his 'survay' describes the church as being 'a proper church, but monuments hath it none'. From that we assume that he meant it was a building of some size in good repair. In a survey, 'Valor Ecclesiasticus' during the reign of Henry VIII the rectory was valued at £31 11s. 8d. In 1636 the annual income was shown as £150 which is, presumably, the stipend of Thomas Brooks, a Puritan preacher here during the commonwealth. He was ejected at the time of the Restoration of the Monarch in 1660 when Robert Porey, the legal tenant of the rectory became a prebendary and canon residentary of St. Paul's. At which time George Smalwood became rector of St. Margaret's. The church was the first to perish in the Great Fire of 1666 and was not rebuilt. The monument stands on the site today and a City plaque commemorates the church on a nearby office building.

 

www.stmagnusmartyr.org.uk/history/st-margaret-new-fish-st

 

St Magnus the Martyr, London Bridge is a Church of England church and parish within the City of London. The church, which is located in Lower Thames Street near The Monument to the Great Fire of London,[1] is part of the Diocese of London and under the pastoral care of the Bishop of London and the Bishop of Fulham.[2] It is a Grade I listed building.[3] The rector uses the title "Cardinal Rector". [4]

St Magnus lies on the original alignment of London Bridge between the City and Southwark. The ancient parish was united with that of St Margaret, New Fish Street, in 1670 and with that of St Michael, Crooked Lane, in 1831.[5] The three united parishes retained separate vestries and churchwardens.[6] Parish clerks continue to be appointed for each of the three parishes.[7]

St Magnus is the guild church of the Worshipful Company of Fishmongers and the Worshipful Company of Plumbers, and the ward church of the Ward of Bridge and Bridge Without. It is also twinned with the Church of the Resurrection in New York City.[8]

Its prominent location and beauty has prompted many mentions in literature.[9] In Oliver Twist Charles Dickens notes how, as Nancy heads for her secret meeting with Mr. Brownlow and Rose Maylie on London Bridge, "the tower of old Saint Saviour's Church, and the spire of Saint Magnus, so long the giant-warders of the ancient bridge, were visible in the gloom". The church's spiritual and architectural importance is celebrated in the poem The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot, who adds in a footnote that "the interior of St. Magnus Martyr is to my mind one of the finest among Wren's interiors".[10] One biographer of Eliot notes that at first he enjoyed St Magnus aesthetically for its "splendour"; later he appreciated its "utility" when he came there as a sinner.

 

The church is dedicated to St Magnus the Martyr, earl of Orkney, who died on 16 April in or around 1116 (the precise year is unknown).[12] He was executed on the island of Egilsay having been captured during a power struggle with his cousin, a political rival.[13] Magnus had a reputation for piety and gentleness and was canonised in 1135. St. Ronald, the son of Magnus's sister Gunhild Erlendsdotter, became Earl of Orkney in 1136 and in 1137 initiated the construction of St. Magnus Cathedral in Kirkwall.[14] The story of St. Magnus has been retold in the 20th century in the chamber opera The Martyrdom of St Magnus (1976)[15] by Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, based on George Mackay Brown's novel Magnus (1973).

 

he identity of the St Magnus referred to in the church's dedication was only confirmed by the Bishop of London in 1926.[16] Following this decision a patronal festival service was held on 16 April 1926.[17] In the 13th century the patronage was attributed to one of the several saints by the name of Magnus who share a feast day on 19 August, probably St Magnus of Anagni (bishop and martyr, who was slain in the persecution of the Emperor Decius in the middle of the 3rd century).[18] However, by the early 18th century it was suggested that the church was either "dedicated to the memory of St Magnus or Magnes, who suffer'd under the Emperor Aurelian in 276 [see St Mammes of Caesarea, feast day 17 August], or else to a person of that name, who was the famous Apostle or Bishop of the Orcades."[19] For the next century historians followed the suggestion that the church was dedicated to the Roman saint of Cæsarea.[20] The famous Danish archaeologist Professor Jens Jacob Asmussen Worsaae (1821–85) promoted the attribution to St Magnus of Orkney during his visit to the British Isles in 1846-7, when he was formulating the concept of the 'Viking Age',[21] and a history of London written in 1901 concluded that "the Danes, on their second invasion ... added at least two churches with Danish names, Olaf and Magnus".[22] A guide to the City Churches published in 1917 reverted to the view that St Magnus was dedicated to a martyr of the third century,[23] but the discovery of St Magnus of Orkney's relics in 1919 renewed interest in a Scandinavian patron and this connection was encouraged by the Rector who arrived in 1921

 

A metropolitan bishop of London attended the Council of Arles in 314, which indicates that there must have been a Christian community in Londinium by this date, and it has been suggested that a large aisled building excavated in 1993 near Tower Hill can be compared with the 4th-century Cathedral of St Tecla in Milan.[25] However, there is no archaeological evidence to suggest that any of the mediaeval churches in the City of London had a Roman foundation.[26] A grant from William I in 1067 to Westminster Abbey, which refers to the stone church of St Magnus near the bridge ("lapidee eccle sci magni prope pontem"), is generally accepted to be 12th century forgery,[27] and it is possible that a charter of confirmation in 1108-16 might also be a later fabrication.[28] Nonetheless, these manuscripts may preserve valid evidence of a date of foundation in the 11th century.

 

Archaeological evidence suggests that the area of the bridgehead was not occupied from the early 5th century until the early 10th century. Environmental evidence indicates that the area was waste ground during this period, colonised by elder and nettles. Following Alfred's decision to reoccupy the walled area of London in 886, new harbours were established at Queenhithe and Billingsgate. A bridge was in place by the early 11th century, a factor which would have encouraged the occupation of the bridgehead by craftsmen and traders.[30] A lane connecting Botolph's Wharf and Billingsgate to the rebuilt bridge may have developed by the mid-11th century. The waterfront at this time was a hive of activity, with the construction of embankments sloping down from the riverside wall to the river. Thames Street appeared in the second half of the 11th century immediately behind (north of) the old Roman riverside wall and in 1931 a piling from this was discovered during the excavation of the foundations of a nearby building. It now stands at the base of the church tower.[31] St Magnus was built to the south of Thames Street to serve the growing population of the bridgehead area[32] and was certainly in existence by 1128-33.[33]

The small ancient parish[34] extended about 110 yards along the waterfront either side of the old bridge, from 'Stepheneslane' (later Churchehawlane or Church Yard Alley) and 'Oystergate' (later called Water Lane or Gully Hole) on the West side to 'Retheresgate' (a southern extension of Pudding Lane) on the East side, and was centred on the crossroads formed by Fish Street Hill (originally Bridge Street, then New Fish Street) and Thames Street.[35] The mediaeval parish also included Drinkwater's Wharf (named after the owner, Thomas Drinkwater), which was located immediately West of the bridge, and Fish Wharf, which was to the South of the church. The latter was of considerable importance as the fishmongers had their shops on the wharf. The tenement was devised by Andrew Hunte to the Rector and Churchwardens in 1446.[36] The ancient parish was situated in the South East part of Bridge Ward, which had evolved in the 11th century between the embankments to either side of the bridge.[37]

In 1182 the Abbot of Westminster and the Prior of Bermondsey agreed that the advowson of St Magnus should be divided equally between them. Later in the 1180s, on their presentation, the Archdeacon of London inducted his nephew as parson.

 

Between the late Saxon period and 1209 there was a series of wooden bridges across the Thames, but in that year a stone bridge was completed.[39] The work was overseen by Peter de Colechurch, a priest and head of the Fraternity of the Brethren of London Bridge. The Church had from early times encouraged the building of bridges and this activity was so important it was perceived to be an act of piety - a commitment to God which should be supported by the giving of alms. London’s citizens made gifts of land and money "to God and the Bridge".[40] The Bridge House Estates became part of the City's jurisdiction in 1282.

 

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 on the north bank of the river.[41] The bridge included a chapel dedicated to St Thomas Becket[42] for the use of pilgrims journeying to Canterbury Cathedral to visit his tomb.[43] The chapel and about two thirds of the bridge were in the parish of St Magnus. 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.[44] At the Reformation the chapel was turned into a house and later a warehouse, the latter being demolished in 1757-58.

The church grew in importance. On 21 November 1234 a grant of land was made to the parson of St Magnus for the enlargement of the church.[45] The London eyre of 1244 recorded that in 1238 "A thief named William of Ewelme of the county of Buckingham fled to the church of St. Magnus the Martyr, London, and there acknowledged the theft and abjured the realm. He had no chattels."[46] Another entry recorded that "The City answers saying that the church of ... St. Magnus the Martyr ... which [is] situated on the king's highway ... ought to belong to the king and be in his gift".[47] The church presumably jutted into the road running to the bridge, as it did in later times.[48] In 1276 it was recorded that "the church of St. Magnus the Martyr is worth £15 yearly and Master Geoffrey de la Wade now holds it by the grant of the prior of Bermundeseie and the abbot of Westminster to whom King Henry conferred the advowson by his charter.

 

In 1274 "came King Edward and his wife [Eleanor] from the Holy Land and were crowned at Westminster on the Sunday next after the Feast of the Assumption of Our Lady [15 August], being the Feast of Saint Magnus [19 August]; and the Conduit in Chepe ran all the day with red wine and white wine to drink, for all such as wished."[50] Stow records that "in the year 1293, for victory obtained by Edward I against the Scots, every citizen, according to their several trade, made their several show, but especially the fishmongers" whose solemn procession including a knight "representing St Magnus, because it was upon St Magnus' day".

An important religious guild, the Confraternity de Salve Regina, was in existence by 1343, having been founded by the "better sort of the Parish of St Magnus" to sing the anthem 'Salve Regina' every evening.[51] The Guild certificates of 1389 record that the Confraternity of Salve Regina and the guild of St Thomas the Martyr in the chapel on the bridge, whose members belonged to St Magnus parish, had determined to become one, to have the anthem of St Thomas after the Salve Regina and to devote their united resources to restoring and enlarging the church of St Magnus.[52] An Act of Parliament of 1437[53] provided that all incorporated fraternities and companies should register their charters and have their ordinances approved by the civic authorities.[54] Fear of enquiry into their privileges may have led established fraternities to seek a firm foundation for their rights. The letters patent of the fraternity of St Mary and St Thomas the Martyr of Salve Regina in St Magnus dated 26 May 1448 mention that the fraternity had petitioned for a charter on the grounds that the society was not duly founded.

 

In the mid-14th century the Pope was the Patron of the living and appointed five rectors to the benefice.[56]

Henry Yevele, the master mason whose work included the rebuilding of Westminster Hall and the naves of Westminster Abbey and Canterbury Cathedral, was a parishioner and rebuilt the chapel on London Bridge between 1384 and 1397. He served as a warden of London Bridge and was buried at St Magnus on his death in 1400. His monument was extant in John Stow's time, but was probably destroyed by the fire of 1666.[57]

Yevele, as the King’s Mason, was overseen by Geoffrey Chaucer in his capacity as the Clerk of the King's Works. In The General Prologue of Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales the five guildsmen "were clothed alle in o lyveree Of a solempne and a greet fraternitee"[58] and may be thought of as belonging to the guild in the parish of St Magnus, or one like it.[59] Chaucer's family home was near to the bridge in Thames Street.

 

n 1417 a dispute arose concerning who should take the place of honour amongst the rectors in the City churches at the Whit Monday procession, a place that had been claimed from time to time by the rectors of St Peter Cornhill, St Magnus the Martyr and St Nicholas Cole Abbey. The Mayor and Aldermen decided that the Rector of St Peter Cornhill should take precedence.[61]

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.[62] As it was conveniently close to the River Thames, the church was chosen by the Bishop between the 15th and 17th centuries as a convenient venue for general meetings of the clergy in his diocese.[63] Dr John Young, Bishop of Callipolis (rector of St Magnus 1514-15) pronounced judgement on 16 December 1514 (with the Bishop of London and in the presence of Thomas More, then under-sheriff of London) in the heresy case concerning Richard Hunne.[64]

In pictures from the mid-16th century the old church looks very similar to the present-day St Giles without Cripplegate in the Barbican.[65] According to the martyrologist John Foxe, a woman was imprisoned in the 'cage' on London Bridge in April 1555 and told to "cool herself there" for refusing to pray at St Magnus for the recently deceased Pope Julius III.[66]

Simon Lowe, a Member of Parliament and Master of the Merchant Taylors' Company during the reign of Queen Mary and one of the jurors who acquitted Sir Nicholas Throckmorton in 1554, was a parishioner.[67] He was a mourner at the funeral of Maurice Griffith, Bishop of Rochester from 1554 to 1558 and Rector of St Magnus from 1537 to 1558, who was interred in the church on 30 November 1558 with much solemnity. In accordance with the Catholic church's desire to restore ecclesiastical pageantry in England, the funeral was a splendid affair, ending in a magnificent dinner.

 

Lowe was included in a return of recusants in the Diocese of Rochester in 1577,[69] but was buried at St Magnus on 6 February 1578.[70] Stow refers to his monument in the church. His eldest son, Timothy (died 1617), was knighted in 1603. His second son, Alderman Sir Thomas Lowe (1550–1623), was Master of the Haberdashers' Company on several occasions, Sheriff of London in 1595/96, Lord Mayor in 1604/05 and a Member of Parliament for London.[71] His youngest son, Blessed John Lowe (1553–1586), having originally been a Protestant minister, converted to Roman Catholicism, studied for the priesthood at Douay and Rome and returned to London as a missionary priest.[72] His absence had already been noted; a list of 1581 of "such persons of the Diocese of London as have any children ... beyond the seas" records "John Low son to Margaret Low of the Bridge, absent without licence four years". Having gained 500 converts to Catholicism between 1583 and 1586, he was arrested whilst walking with his mother near London Bridge, committed to The Clink and executed at Tyburn on 8 October 1586.[73] He was beatified in 1987 as one of the eighty-five martyrs of England and Wales.

 

Sir William Garrard, Master of the Haberdashers' Company, Alderman, Sheriff of London in 1553/53, Lord Mayor in 1555/56 and a Member of Parliament was born in the parish and buried at St Magnus in 1571.[74] Sir William Romney, merchant, philanthropist, Master of the Haberdashers' Company, Alderman for Bridge Within and Sheriff of London in 1603/04[75] was married at St Magnus in 1582. Ben Jonson is believed to have been married at St Magnus in 1594.[76]

The patronage of St Magnus, having previously been in the Abbots and Convents of Westminster and Bermondsey (who presented alternatively), fell to the Crown on the suppression of the monasteries. In 1553, Queen Mary, by letters patent, granted it to the Bishop of London and his successors.[77]

The church had a series of distinguished rectors in the second half of the 16th and first half of the 17th century, including Myles Coverdale (Rector 1564-66), John Young (Rector 1566-92), Theophilus Aylmer (Rector 1592-1625), (Archdeacon of London and son of John Aylmer), and Cornelius Burges (Rector 1626-41). Coverdale was buried in the chancel of St Bartholomew-by-the-Exchange, but when that church was pulled down in 1840 his remains were removed to St Magnus.[78]

On 5 November 1562 the churchwardens were ordered to break, or cause to be broken, in two parts all the altar stones in the church.[79] Coverdale, an anti-vestiarian, was Rector at the peak of the vestments controversy. In March 1566 Archbishop Parker caused great consternation among many clergy by his edicts prescribing what was to be worn and by his summoning the London clergy to Lambeth to require their compliance. Coverdale excused himself from attending.[80] Stow records that a non-conforming Scot who normally preached at St Magnus twice a day precipitated a fight on Palm Sunday 1566 at Little All Hallows in Thames Street with his preaching against vestments.[81] Coverdale's resignation from St Magnus in summer 1566 may have been associated with these events. Separatist congregations started to emerge after 1566 and the first such, who called themselves 'Puritans' or 'Unspottyd Lambs of the Lord', was discovered close to St Magnus at Plumbers' Hall in Thames Street on 19 June 1567.

 

St Magnus narrowly escaped destruction in 1633. A later edition of Stow's Survey records that "On the 13th day of February, between eleven and twelve at night, there happened in the house of one Briggs, a Needle-maker near St Magnus Church, at the North end of the Bridge, by the carelessness of a Maid-Servant setting a tub of hot sea-coal ashes under a pair of stairs, a sad and lamentable fire, which consumed all the buildings before eight of the clock the next morning, from the North end of the Bridge to the first vacancy on both sides, containing forty-two houses; water then being very scarce, the Thames being almost frozen over."[83] Susannah Chambers "by her last will & testament bearing date 28th December 1640 gave the sum of Twenty-two shillings and Sixpence Yearly for a Sermon to be preached on the 12th day of February in every Year within the Church of Saint Magnus in commemoration of God's merciful preservation of the said Church of Saint Magnus from Ruin, by the late and terrible Fire on London Bridge. Likewise Annually to the Poor the sum of 17/6."[84] The tradition of a "Fire Sermon" was revived on 12 February 2004, when the first preacher was the Rt Revd and Rt Hon Richard Chartres, Bishop of London.

 

Parliamentarian rule and the more Protestant ethos of the 1640s led to the removal or destruction of "superstitious" and "idolatrous" images and fittings. Glass painters such as Baptista Sutton, who had previously installed "Laudian innovations", found new employment by repairing and replacing these to meet increasingly strict Protestant standards. In January 1642 Sutton replaced 93 feet of glass at St Magnus and in June 1644 he was called back to take down the "painted imagery glass" and replace it.[86] In June 1641 "rail riots" broke out at a number of churches. This was a time of high tension following the trial and execution of the Earl of Strafford and rumours of army and popish plots were rife. The Protestation Oath, with its pledge to defend the true religion "against all Popery and popish innovation", triggered demands from parishioners for the removal of the rails as popish innovations which the Protestation had bound them to reform. The minister arranged a meeting between those for and against the pulling down of the rails, but was unsuccessful in reaching a compromise and it was feared that they would be demolished by force.[87] However, in 1663 the parish resumed Laudian practice and re-erected rails around its communion table.[88]

Joseph Caryl was incumbent from 1645 until his ejection in 1662. In 1663 he was reportedly living near London Bridge and preaching to an Independent congregation that met at various places in the City.[89]

During the Great Plague of 1665, the City authorities ordered fires to be kept burning night and day, in the hope that the air would be cleansed. Daniel Defoe's semi-fictictional, but highly realistic, work A Journal of the Plague Year records that one of these was "just by St Magnus Church"

 

Despite its escape in 1633, the church was one of the first buildings to be destroyed in the Great Fire of London in 1666.[91] St Magnus stood less than 300 yards from the bakehouse of Thomas Farriner in Pudding Lane where the fire started. Farriner, a former churchwarden of St Magnus, was buried in the middle aisle of the church on 11 December 1670, perhaps within a temporary structure erected for holding services.[92]

The parish engaged the master mason George Dowdeswell to start the work of rebuilding in 1668. The work was carried forward between 1671 and 1687 under the direction of Sir Christopher Wren, the body of the church being substantially complete by 1676.[93] At a cost of £9,579 19s 10d St Magnus was one of Wren's most expensive churches.[94] The church of St Margaret New Fish Street was not rebuilt after the fire and its parish was united to that of St Magnus.

 

The chancels of many of Wren’s city churches had chequered marble floors and the chancel of St Magnus is an example,[95] the parish agreeing after some debate to place the communion table on a marble ascent with steps[96] and to commission altar rails of Sussex wrought iron. The nave and aisles are paved with freestone flags. A steeple, closely modelled on one built between 1614 and 1624 by François d'Aguilon and Pieter Huyssens for the church of St Carolus Borromeus in Antwerp, was added between 1703 and 1706.[97] London's skyline was transformed by Wren's tall steeples and that of St Magnus is considered to be one his finest.[98]

The large clock projecting from the tower was a well-known landmark in the city as it hung over the roadway of Old London Bridge.[99] It was presented to the church in 1709 by Sir Charles Duncombe[100] (Alderman for the Ward of Bridge Within and, in 1708/09, Lord Mayor of London). Tradition says "that it was erected in consequence of a vow made by the donor, who, in the earlier part of his life, had once to wait a considerable time in a cart upon London Bridge, without being able to learn the hour, when he made a promise, that if he ever became successful in the world, he would give to that Church a public clock ... that all passengers might see the time of day."[101] The maker was Langley Bradley, a clockmaker in Fenchurch Street, who had worked for Wren on many other projects, including the clock for the new St Paul's Cathedral. The sword rest in the church, designed to hold the Lord Mayor's sword and mace when he attended divine service "in state", dates from 1708.

Duncombe and his benefactions to St Magnus feature prominently in Daniel Defoe's The True-Born Englishman, a biting satire on critics of William III that went through several editions from 1700 (the year in which Duncombe was elected Sheriff).

 

Shortly before his death in 1711, Duncombe commissioned an organ for the church, the first to have a swell-box, by Abraham Jordan (father and son).[103] The Spectator announced that "Whereas Mr Abraham Jordan, senior and junior, have, with their own hands, joinery excepted, made and erected a very large organ in St Magnus' Church, at the foot of London Bridge, consisting of four sets of keys, one of which is adapted to the art of emitting sounds by swelling notes, which never was in any organ before; this instrument will be publicly opened on Sunday next [14 February 1712], the performance by Mr John Robinson. The above-said Abraham Jordan gives notice to all masters and performers, that he will attend every day next week at the said Church, to accommodate all those gentlemen who shall have a curiosity to hear it".[104]

The organ case, which remains in its original state, is looked upon as one of the finest existing examples of the Grinling Gibbons's school of wood carving.[105] The first organist of St Magnus was John Robinson (1682–1762), who served in that role for fifty years and in addition as organist of Westminster Abbey from 1727. Other organists have included the blind organist George Warne (1792–1868, organist 1820-26 until his appointment to the Temple Church), James Coward (1824–80, organist 1868-80 who was also organist to the Crystal Palace and renowned for his powers of improvisation) and George Frederick Smith FRCO (1856–1918, organist 1880-1918 and Professor of Music at the Guildhall School of Music).[106] The organ has been restored several times - in 1760, 1782, 1804, 1855, 1861, 1879, 1891, 1924, 1949 after wartime damage and 1997 - since it was first built.[107] Sir Peter Maxwell Davies was one of several patrons of the organ appeal in the mid-1990s[108] and John Scott gave an inaugural recital on 20 May 1998 following the completion of that restoration.[109] The instrument has an Historic Organ Certificate and full details are recorded in the National Pipe Organ Register.[110]

The hymn tune "St Magnus", usually sung at Ascensiontide to the text "The head that once was crowned with thorns", was written by Jeremiah Clarke in 1701 and named for the church.

 

Canaletto drew St Magnus and old London Bridge as they appeared in the late 1740s.[112] Between 1756 and 1762, under the London Bridge Improvement Act of 1756 (c. 40), the Corporation of London demolished the buildings on London Bridge to widen the roadway, ease traffic congestion and improve safety for pedestrians.[113] The churchwardens’ accounts of St Magnus list many payments to those injured on the Bridge and record that in 1752 a man was crushed to death between two carts.[114] After the House of Commons had resolved upon the alteration of London Bridge, the Rev Robert Gibson, Rector of St Magnus, applied to the House for relief; stating that 48l. 6s. 2d. per annum, part of his salary of 170l. per annum, was assessed upon houses on London Bridge; which he should utterly lose by their removal unless a clause in the bill about to be passed should provide a remedy.[115] Accordingly, Sections 18 and 19 of 1756 Act provided that the relevant amounts of tithe and poor rate should be a charge on the Bridge House Estates.[116]

A serious fire broke out on 18 April 1760 in an oil shop at the south east corner of the church, which consumed most of the church roof and did considerable damage to the fabric. The fire burnt warehouses to the south of the church and a number of houses on the northern end of London Bridge.

 

As part of the bridge improvements, overseen by the architect Sir Robert Taylor, a new pedestrian walkway was built along the eastern side of the bridge. With the other buildings gone St Magnus blocked the new walkway.[117] As a consequence it was necessary in 1762 to 1763 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.[118] 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. A new Vestry was built to the South of the church.[119] The Act also provided that the land taken from the church for the widening was "to be considered ... as part of the cemetery of the said church ... but if the pavement thereof be broken up on account of the burying of any persons, the same shall be ... made good ... by the churchwardens"

 

Soldiers were stationed in the Vestry House of St Magnus during the Gordon Riots in June 1780.[121]

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.[122] At some point between the 1760s and 1814 the present clerestory was constructed with its oval windows and fluted and coffered plasterwork.[123] J. M. W. Turner painted the church in the mid-1790s.[124]

The rector of St Magnus between 1792 and 1808, following the death of Robert Gibson on 28 July 1791,[125] was Thomas Rennell FRS. Rennell was President of Sion College in 1806/07. There is a monument to Thomas Leigh (Rector 1808-48 and President of Sion College 1829/30,[126] at St Peter's Church, Goldhanger in Essex.[127] Richard Hazard (1761–1837) was connected with the church as sexton, parish clerk and ward beadle for nearly 50 years[128] and served as Master of the Parish Clerks' Company in 1831/32.[129]

In 1825 the church was "repaired and beautified at a very considerable expense. During the reparation the east window, which had been closed, was restored, and the interior of the fabric conformed to the state in which it was left by its great architect, Sir Christopher Wren. The magnificent organ ... was taken down and rebuilt by Mr Parsons, and re-opened, with the church, on the 12th February, 1826".[130] Unfortunately, as a contemporary writer records, "On the night of the 31st of July, 1827, [the church's] safety was threatened by the great fire which consumed the adjacent warehouses, and it is perhaps owing to the strenuous and praiseworthy exertions of the firemen, that the structure exists at present. ... divine service was suspended and not resumed until the 20th January 1828. In the interval the church received such tasteful and elegant decorations, that it may now compete with any church in the metropolis.

 

In 1823 royal assent was given to ‘An Act for the Rebuilding of London Bridge’ and in 1825 John Garratt, Lord Mayor and Alderman of the Ward of Bridge Within, laid the first stone of the new London Bridge.[132] In 1831 Sir John Rennie’s new bridge was opened further upstream and the old bridge demolished. St Magnus ceased to be the gateway to London as it had been for over 600 years. Peter de Colechurch[133] had been buried in the crypt of the chapel on the bridge and his bones were unceremoniously dumped in the River Thames.[134] In 1921 two stones from Old London Bridge were discovered across the road from the church. They now stand in the churchyard.

Wren's church of St Michael Crooked Lane was demolished, the final service on Sunday 20 March 1831 having to be abandoned due to the effects of the building work. The Rector of St Michael preached a sermon the following Sunday at St Magnus lamenting the demolition of his church with its monuments and "the disturbance of the worship of his parishioners on the preceeding Sabbath".[135] The parish of St Michael Crooked Lane was united to that of St Magnus, which itself lost a burial ground in Church Yard Alley to the approach road for the new bridge.[136] However, in substitution it had restored to it the land taken for the widening of the old bridge in 1762 and was also given part of the approach lands to the east of the old bridge.[137] In 1838 the Committee for the London Bridge Approaches reported to Common Council that new burial grounds had been provided for the parishes of St Michael, Crooked Lane and St Magnus, London Bridge.

 

Depictions of St Magnus after the building of the new bridge, seen behind Fresh Wharf and the new London Bridge Wharf, include paintings by W. Fenoulhet in 1841 and by Charles Ginner in 1913.[139] This prospect was affected in 1924 by the building of Adelaide House to a design by John James Burnet,[140] The Times commenting that "the new ‘architectural Matterhorn’ ... conceals all but the tip of the church spire".[141] There was, however, an excellent view of the church for a few years between the demolition of Adelaide Buildings and the erection of its replacement.[142] Adelaide House is now listed.[143] Regis House, on the site of the abandoned King William Street terminus of the City & South London Railway (subsequently the Northern Line),[144] and the Steam Packet Inn, on the corner of Lower Thames Street and Fish Street Hill,[145] were developed in 1931.

 

By the early 1960s traffic congestion had become a problem[147] and Lower Thames Street was widened over the next decade[148] to form part of a significant new east-west transport artery (the A3211).[149] The setting of the church was further affected by the construction of a new London Bridge between 1967 and 1973.[150] The New Fresh Wharf warehouse to the east of the church, built in 1939, was demolished in 1973-4 following the collapse of commercial traffic in the Pool of London[151] and, after an archaeological excavation,[152] St Magnus House was constructed on the site in 1978 to a design by R. Seifert & Partners.[153] This development now allows a clear view of the church from the east side.[154] The site to the south east of The Monument (between Fish Street Hill and Pudding Lane), formerly predominantly occupied by fish merchants,[155] was redeveloped as Centurion House and Gartmore (now Providian) House at the time of the closure of old Billingsgate Market in January 1982.[156] A comprehensive redevelopment of Centurion House began in October 2011 with completion planned in 2013.[157] Regis House, to the south west of The Monument, was redeveloped by Land Securities PLC in 1998.[158]

The vista from The Monument south to the River Thames, over the roof of St Magnus, is protected under the City of London Unitary Development Plan,[159] although the South bank of the river is now dominated by The Shard. Since 2004 the City of London Corporation has been exploring ways of enhancing the Riverside Walk to the south of St Magnus.[160] Work on a new staircase to connect London Bridge to the Riverside Walk is due to commence in March 2013.[161] The story of St Magnus's relationship with London Bridge and an interview with the rector featured in the television programme The Bridges That Built London with Dan Cruickshank, first broadcast on BBC Four on 14 June 2012.[162] The City Corporation's 'Fenchurch and Monument Area Enhancement Strategy' of August 2012 recommended ways of reconnecting St Magnus and the riverside to the area north of Lower Thames Street.

 

A lectureship at St Michael Crooked Lane, which was transferred to St Magnus in 1831, was endowed by the wills of Thomas and Susannah Townsend in 1789 and 1812 respectively.[164] The Revd Henry Robert Huckin, Headmaster of Repton School from 1874 to 1882, was appointed Townsend Lecturer at St Magnus in 1871.[165]

St Magnus narrowly escaped damage from a major fire in Lower Thames Street in October 1849.

 

During the second half of the 19th century the rectors were Alexander McCaul, DD (1799–1863, Rector 1850-63), who coined the term 'Judaeo Christian' in a letter dated 17 October 1821,[167] and his son Alexander Israel McCaul (1835–1899, curate 1859-63, rector 1863-99). The Revd Alexander McCaul Sr[168] was a Christian missionary to the Polish Jews, who (having declined an offer to become the first Anglican Bishop in Jerusalem)[169] was appointed professor of Hebrew and rabbinical literature at King's College, London in 1841. His daughter, Elizabeth Finn (1825–1921), a noted linguist, founded the Distressed Gentlefolk Aid Association (now known as Elizabeth Finn Care).[170]

In 1890 it was reported that the Bishop of London was to hold an inquiry as to the desirability of uniting the benefices of St George Botolph Lane and St Magnus. The expectation was a fusion of the two livings, the demolition of St George’s and the pensioning of "William Gladstone’s favourite Canon", Malcolm MacColl. Although services ceased there, St George’s was not demolished until 1904. The parish was then merged with St Mary at Hill rather than St Magnus.[171]

The patronage of the living was acquired in the late 19th century by Sir Henry Peek Bt. DL MP, Senior Partner of Peek Brothers & Co of 20 Eastcheap, the country's largest firm of wholesale tea brokers and dealers, and Chairman of the Commercial Union Assurance Co. Peek was a generous philanthropist who was instrumental in saving both Wimbledon Common and Burnham Beeches from development. His grandson, Sir Wilfred Peek Bt. DSO JP, presented a cousin, Richard Peek, as rector in 1904. Peek, an ardent Freemason, held the office of Grand Chaplain of England. The Times recorded that his memorial service in July 1920 "was of a semi-Masonic character, Mr Peek having been a prominent Freemason".[172] In June 1895 Peek had saved the life of a young French girl who jumped overboard from a ferry midway between Dinard and St Malo in Brittany and was awarded the bronze medal of the Royal Humane Society and the Gold Medal 1st Class of the Sociâetâe Nationale de Sauvetage de France.[173]

In November 1898 a memorial service was held at St Magnus for Sir Stuart Knill Bt. (1824–1898), head of the firm of John Knill and Co, wharfingers, and formerly Lord Mayor and Master of the Plumbers' Company.[174] This was the first such service for a Roman Catholic taken in an Anglican church.[175] Sir Stuart's son, Sir John Knill Bt. (1856-1934), also served as Alderman for the Ward of Bridge Within, Lord Mayor and Master of the Plumbers' Company.

 

Until 1922 the annual Fish Harvest Festival was celebrated at St Magnus.[176] The service moved in 1923 to St Dunstan in the East[177] and then to St Mary at Hill, but St Magnus retained close links with the local fish merchants until the closure of old Billingsgate Market. St Magnus, in the 1950s, was "buried in the stink of Billingsgate fish-market, against which incense was a welcome antidote".

 

A report in 1920 proposed the demolition of nineteen City churches, including St Magnus.[179] A general outcry from members of the public and parishioners alike prevented the execution of this plan.[180] The members of the City Livery Club passed a resolution that they regarded "with horror and indignation the proposed demolition of 19 City churches" and pledged the Club to do everything in its power to prevent such a catastrophe.[181] T. S. Eliot wrote that the threatened churches gave "to the business quarter of London a beauty which its hideous banks and commercial houses have not quite defaced. ... the least precious redeems some vulgar street ... The loss of these towers, to meet the eye down a grimy lane, and of these empty naves, to receive the solitary visitor at noon from the dust and tumult of Lombard Street, will be irreparable and unforgotten."[182] The London County Council published a report concluding that St Magnus was "one of the most beautiful of all Wren's works" and "certainly one of the churches which should not be demolished without specially good reasons and after very full consideration."[183] Due to the uncertainty about the church's future, the patron decided to defer action to fill the vacancy in the benefice and a curate-in-charge temporarily took responsibility for the parish.[184] However, on 23 April 1921 it was announced that the Revd Henry Joy Fynes-Clinton would be the new Rector. The Times concluded that the appointment, with the Bishop’s approval, meant that the proposed demolition would not be carried out.[185] Fr Fynes-Clinton was inducted on 31 May 1921.[186]

The rectory, built by Robert Smirke in 1833-5, was at 39 King William Street.[187] A decision was taken in 1909 to sell the property, the intention being to purchase a new rectory in the suburbs, but the sale fell through and at the time of the 1910 Land Tax Valuations the building was being let out to a number of tenants. The rectory was sold by the diocese on 30 May 1921 for £8,000 to Ridgways Limited, which owned the adjoining premises.[188] The Vestry House adjoining the south west of the church, replacing the one built in the 1760s, may also have been by Smirke. Part of the burial ground of St Michael Crooked Lane, located between Fish Street Hill and King William Street, survived as an open space until 1987 when it was compulsorily purchased to facilitate the extension of the Docklands Light Railway into the City.[189] The bodies were reburied at Brookwood Cemetery.

 

The interior of the church was restored by Martin Travers in 1924, in a neo-baroque style,[191] reflecting the Anglo-Catholic character of the congregation[192] following the appointment of Henry Joy Fynes-Clinton as Rector.[193] Fr Fynes, as he was often known, served as Rector of St Magnus from 31 May 1921 until his death on 4 December 1959 and substantially beautified the interior of the church.[194]

Fynes-Clinton held very strong Anglo-Catholic views, and proceeded to make St Magnus as much like a baroque Roman Catholic church as possible. However, "he was such a loveable character with an old-world courtesy which was irresistible, that it was difficult for anyone to be unpleasant to him, however much they might disapprove of his views".[195] He generally said the Roman Mass in Latin; and in personality was "grave, grand, well-connected and holy, with a laconic sense of humour".[196] To a Protestant who had come to see Coverdale's monument he is reported to have said "We have just had a service in the language out of which he translated the Bible".[197] The use of Latin in services was not, however, without grammatical danger. A response from his parishioners of "Ora pro nobis" after "Omnes sancti Angeli et Archangeli" in the Litany of the Saints would elicit a pause and the correction "No, Orate pro nobis."

 

In 1922 Fynes-Clinton refounded the Fraternity of Our Lady de Salve Regina.[198] The Fraternity's badge[199] is shown in the stained glass window at the east end of the north wall of the church above the reredos of the Lady Chapel altar. He also erected a statue of Our Lady of Walsingham and arranged pilgrimages to the Norfolk shrine, where he was one of the founding Guardians.[200] In 1928 the journal of the Catholic League reported that St Magnus had presented a votive candle to the Shrine at Walsingham "in token of our common Devotion and the mutual sympathy and prayers that are we hope a growing bond between the peaceful country shrine and the church in the heart of the hurrying City, from the Altar of which the Pilgrimages regularly start".[201]

Fynes-Clinton was General Secretary of the Anglican and Eastern Orthodox Churches Union and its successor, the Anglican and Eastern Churches Association, from 1906 to 1920 and served as Secretary to the Archbishop of Canterbury's Eastern Churches Committee from 1920 to around 1924. A Solemn Requiem was celebrated at St Magnus in September 1921 for the late King Peter of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes.

At the midday service on 1 March 1922, J.A. Kensit, leader of the Protestant Truth Society, got up and protested against the form of worship.[202] The proposed changes to the church in 1924 led to a hearing in the Consistory Court of the Chancellor of the Diocese of London and an appeal to the Court of Arches.[203] Judgement was given by the latter Court in October 1924. The advowson was purchased in 1931, without the knowledge of the Rector and Parochial Church Council, by the evangelical Sir Charles King-Harman.[204] A number of such cases, including the purchase of the advowsons of Clapham and Hampstead Parish Churches by Sir Charles, led to the passage of the Benefices (Purchase of Rights of Patronage) Measure 1933.[205] This allowed the parishioners of St Magnus to purchase the advowson from Sir Charles King-Harman for £1,300 in 1934 and transfer it to the Patronage Board.

 

St Magnus was one of the churches that held special services before the opening of the second Anglo-Catholic Congress in 1923.[207] Fynes-Clinton[208] was the first incumbent to hold lunchtime services for City workers.[209] Pathé News filmed the Palm Sunday procession at St Magnus in 1935.[210] In The Towers of Trebizond, the novel by Rose Macauley published in 1956, Fr Chantry-Pigg's church is described as being several feet higher than St Mary’s Bourne Street and some inches above even St Magnus the Martyr.[211]

In July 1937 Fr Fynes-Clinton, with two members of his congregation, travelled to Kirkwall to be present at the 800th anniversary celebrations of St Magnus Cathedral, Kirkwall. During their stay they visited Egilsay and were shown the spot where St Magnus had been slain. Later Fr Fynes-Clinton was present at a service held at the roofless church of St Magnus on Egilsay, where he suggested to his host Mr Fryer, the minister of the Cathedral, that the congregations of Kirkwall and London should unite to erect a permanent stone memorial on the traditional site where Earl Magnus had been murdered. In 1938 a cairn was built of local stone on Egilsay. It stands 12 feet high and is 6 feet broad at its base. The memorial was dedicated on 7 September 1938 and a bronze inscription on the monument reads "erected by the Rector and Congregation of St Magnus the Martyr by London Bridge and the Minister and Congregation of St Magnus Cathedral, Kirkwall to commemorate the traditional spot where Earl Magnus was slain, AD circa 1116 and to commemorate the Octocentenary of St Magnus Cathedral 1937"

 

A bomb which fell on London Bridge in 1940 during the Blitz of World War II blew out all the windows and damaged the plasterwork and the roof of the north aisle.[213] However, the church was designated a Grade I listed building on 4 January 1950[214] and repaired in 1951, being re-opened for worship in June of that year by the Bishop of London, William Wand.[215] The architect was Laurence King.[216] Restoration and redecoration work has subsequently been carried out several times, including after a fire in the early hours of 4 November 1995.[217] Cleaning of the exterior stonework was completed in 2010.

 

Some minor changes were made to the parish boundary in 1954, including the transfer to St Magnus of an area between Fish Street Hill and Pudding Lane. The site of St Leonard Eastcheap, a church that was not rebuilt after the Great Fire, is therefore now in the parish of St Magnus despite being united to St Edmund the King.

Fr Fynes-Clinton marked the 50th anniversary of his priesthood in May 1952 with High Mass at St Magnus and lunch at Fishmongers' Hall.[218] On 20 September 1956 a solemn Mass was sung in St Magnus to commence the celebration of the 25th anniversary of the restoration of the Holy House at Walsingham in 1931. In the evening of that day a reception was held in the large chamber of Caxton Hall, when between three and four hundred guests assembled.[219]

Fr Fynes-Clinton was succeeded as rector in 1960 by Fr Colin Gill,[220] who remained as incumbent until his death in 1983.[221] Fr Gill was also closely connected with Walsingham and served as a Guardian between 1953 and 1983, including nine years as Master of the College of Guardians.[222] He celebrated the Mass at the first National Pilgrimage in 1959[223] and presided over the Jubilee celebrations to mark the 50th anniversary of the Shrine in 1981, having been present at the Holy House's opening.[224] A number of the congregation of St Stephen's Lewisham moved to St Magnus around 1960, following temporary changes in the form of worship there.

 

In 1994 the Templeman Commission proposed a radical restructuring of the churches in the City Deanery. St Magnus was identified as one of the 12 churches that would remain as either a parish or an 'active' church.[226] However, the proposals were dropped following a public outcry and the consecration of a new Bishop of London.

The parish priest since 2003 has been Fr Philip Warner, who was previously priest-in-charge of St Mary's Church, Belgrade (Diocese in Europe) and Apokrisiarios for the Archbishop of Canterbury to the Serbian Orthodox Church. Since January 2004 there has been an annual Blessing of the Thames, with the congregations of St Magnus and Southwark Cathedral meeting in the middle of London Bridge.[227] On Sunday 3 July 2011, in anticipation of the feast of the translation of St Thomas Becket (7 July), a procession from St Magnus brought a relic of the saint to the middle of the bridge.[228]

David Pearson specially composed two new pieces, a communion anthem A Mhànais mo rùin (O Magnus of my love) and a hymn to St Magnus Nobilis, humilis, for performance at the church on the feast of St Magnus the Martyr, 16 April 2012.[229] St Magnus's organist, John Eady, has won composition competitions for new choral works at St Paul's Cathedral (a setting of Veni Sancte Spiritus first performed on 27 May 2012) and at Lincoln Cathedral (a setting of the Matin responsory for Advent first performed on 30 November 2013).[230]

In addition to liturgical music of a high standard, St Magnus is the venue for a wide range of musical events. The Clemens non Papa Consort, founded in 2005, performs in collaboration with the production team Concert Bites as the church's resident ensemble.[231] The church is used by The Esterhazy Singers for rehearsals and some concerts.[232] The band Mishaped Pearls performed at the church on 17 December 2011.[233] St Magnus featured in the television programme Jools Holland: London Calling, first broadcast on BBC2 on 9 June 2012.[234] The Platinum Consort made a promotional film at St Magnus for the release of their debut album In the Dark on 2 July 2012.[235]

The Friends of the City Churches had their office in the Vestry House of St Magnus until 2013.

 

Martin Travers modified the high altar reredos, adding paintings of Moses and Aaron and the Ten Commandments between the existing Corinthian columns and reconstructing the upper storey. Above the reredos Travers added a painted and gilded rood.[237] In the centre of the reredos there is a carved gilded pelican (an early Christian symbol of self-sacrifice) and a roundel with Baroque-style angels. The glazed east window, which can be seen in an early photograph of the church, appears to have been filled in at this time. A new altar with console tables was installed and the communion rails moved outwards to extend the size of the sanctuary. Two old door frames were used to construct side chapels and placed at an angle across the north-east and south-east corners of the church. One, the Lady Chapel, was dedicated to the Rector's parents in 1925 and the other was dedicated to Christ the King. Originally, a baroque aumbry was used for Reservation of the Blessed Sacrament, but later a tabernacle was installed on the Lady Chapel altar and the aumbry was used to house a relic of the True Cross.

The interior was made to look more European by the removal of the old box pews and the installation of new pews with cut-down ends. Two new columns were inserted in the nave to make the lines regular. The Wren-period pulpit by the joiner William Grey[238] was opened up and provided with a soundboard and crucifix. Travers also designed the statue of St Magnus of Orkney, which stands in the south aisle, and the statue of Our Lady of Walsingham.[239]

On the north wall there is a Russian Orthodox icon, painted in 1908. The modern stations of the cross in honey-coloured Japanese oak are the work of Robert Randall and Ashley Sands.[240] One of the windows in the north wall dates from 1671 and came from Plumbers' Hall in Chequer Yard, Bush Lane, which was demolished in 1863 to make way for Cannon Street Railway Station.[241] A fireplace from the Hall was re-erected in the Vestry House. The other windows on the north side are by Alfred Wilkinson and date from 1952 to 1960. These show the arms of the Plumbers’, Fishmongers’ and Coopers’ Companies together with those of William Wand when Bishop of London and Geoffrey Fisher when Archbishop of Canterbury and (as noted above) the badge of the Fraternity of Our Lady de Salve Regina.

The stained glass windows in the south wall, which are by Lawrence Lee and date from 1949 to 1955, represent lost churches associated with the parish: St Magnus and his ruined church of Egilsay, St Margaret of Antioch with her lost church in New Fish Street (where the Monument to the Great Fire now stands), St Michael with his lost church of Crooked Lane (demolished to make way for the present King William Street) and St Thomas Becket with his chapel on Old London Bridge.[242]

The church possesses a fine model of Old London Bridge. One of the tiny figures on the bridge appears out of place in the mediaeval setting, wearing a policeman's uniform. This is a representation of the model-maker, David T. Aggett, who is a Liveryman of the Worshipful Company of Plumbers and was formerly in the police service.[243]

The Mischiefs by Fire Act 1708 and the Fires Prevention (Metropolis) Act 1774 placed a requirement on every parish to keep equipment to fight fires. The church owns two historic fire engines that belonged to the parish of St Michael, Crooked Lane.[244] One of these is in storage at the Museum of London. The whereabouts of the other, which was misappropriated and sold at auction in 2003, is currently unknown.

In 1896 many bodies were disinterred from the crypt and reburied at the St Magnus's plot at Brookwood Cemetery, which remains the church's burial ground.

 

Prior to the Great Fire of 1666 the old tower had a ring of five bells, a small saints bell and a clock bell.[246] 47 cwt of bell metal was recovered[247] which suggests that the tenor was 13 or 14 cwt. The metal was used to cast three new bells, by William Eldridge of Chertsey in 1672,[248] with a further saints bell cast that year by Hodson.[249] In the absence of a tower, the tenor and saints bell were hung in a free standing timber structure, whilst the others remained unhung.[250]

A new tower was completed in 1704 and it is likely that these bells were transferred to it. However, the tenor became cracked in 1713 and it was decided to replace the bells with a new ring of eight.[251] The new bells, with a tenor of 21 cwt, were cast by Richard Phelps of the Whitechapel Bell Foundry. Between 1714 and 1718 (the exact date of which is unknown), the ring was increased to ten with the addition of two trebles given by two former ringing Societies, the Eastern Youths and the British Scholars.[252] The first peal was rung on 15 February 1724 of Grandsire Caters by the Society of College Youths. The second bell had to be recast in 1748 by Robert Catlin, and the tenor was recast in 1831 by Thomas Mears of Whitechapel,[253] just in time to ring for the opening of the new London Bridge. In 1843, the treble was said to be "worn out" and so was scrapped, together with the saints bell, while a new treble was cast by Thomas Mears.[254] A new clock bell was erected in the spire in 1846, provided by B R & J Moore, who had earlier purchased it from Thomas Mears.[255] This bell can still be seen in the tower from the street.

The 10 bells were removed for safe keeping in 1940 and stored in the churchyard. They were taken to Whitechapel Bell Foundry in 1951 whereupon it was discovered that four of them were cracked. After a long period of indecision, fuelled by lack of funds and interest, the bells were finally sold for scrap in 1976. The metal was used to cast many of the Bells of Congress that were then hung in the Old Post Office Tower in Washington, D.C.

A fund was set up on 19 September 2005, led by Dickon Love, a member of the Ancient Society of College Youths, with a view to installing a new ring of 12 bells in the tower in a new frame. This was the first of three new rings of bells he has installed in the City of London (the others being at St Dunstan-in-the-West and St James Garlickhythe). The money was raised and the bells were cast during 2008/9 by the Whitechapel Bell Foundry. The tenor weighed 26cwt 3qtr 9 lbs (1360 kg) and the new bells were designed to be in the same key as the former ring of ten. They were consecrated by the Bishop of London on 3 March 2009 in the presence of the Lord Mayor[256] and the ringing dedicated on 26 October 2009 by the Archdeacon of London.[257] The bells are named (in order smallest to largest) Michael, Margaret, Thomas of Canterbury, Mary, Cedd, Edward the Confessor, Dunstan, John the Baptist, Erkenwald, Paul, Mellitus and Magnus.[258] The bells project is recorded by an inscription in the vestibule of the church.

 

The first peal on the twelve was rung on 29 November 2009 of Cambridge Surprise Maximus.[260] Notable other recent peals include a peal of Stedman Cinques on 16 April 2011 to mark the 400th anniversary of the granting of a Royal Charter to the Plumbers' Company,[261] a peal of Cambridge Surprise Royal on 28 June 2011 when the Fishmongers' Company gave a dinner for Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh at their hall on the occasion of his 90th birthday[262] and a peal of Avon Delight Maximus on 24 July 2011 in solidarity with the people of Norway following the tragic massacre on Utoeya Island and in Oslo.[263] On the latter occasion the flag of the Orkney Islands was flown at half mast. In 2012 peals were rung during the Thames Diamond Jubilee Pageant on 3 June and during each of the three Olympic/Paralympic marathons, on 5 and 12 August and 9 September.

The BBC television programme, Still Ringing After All These Years: A Short History of Bells, broadcast on 14 December 2011, included an interview at St Magnus with the Tower Keeper, Dickon Love,[264] who was captain of the band that rang the "Royal Jubilee Bells" during the Thames Diamond Jubilee Pageant on 3 June 2012 to celebrate the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II.[265] Prior to this, he taught John Barrowman to handle a bell at St Magnus for the BBC coverage.

The bells are currently rung every Sunday around 12:15 (following the service) by the Guild of St Magnus.

 

Every other June, newly elected wardens of the Fishmongers' Company, accompanied by the Court, proceed on foot from Fishmongers' Hall[267] to St Magnus for an election service.[268] St Magnus is also the Guild Church of The Plumbers' Company. Two former rectors have served as master of the company,[269] which holds all its services at the church.[270] On 12 April 2011 a service was held to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the granting of the company's Royal Charter at which the Bishop of London, the Rt Revd and Rt Hon Richard Chartres KCVO, gave the sermon and blessed the original Royal Charter. For many years the Cloker Service was held at St Magnus, attended by the Coopers' Company and Grocers' Company, at which the clerk of the Coopers' Company read the will of Henry Cloker dated 10 March 1573.[271]

St Magnus is also the ward church for the Ward of Bridge and Bridge Without, which elects one of the city's aldermen. Between 1550 and 1978 there were separate aldermen for Bridge Within and Bridge Without, the former ward being north of the river and the latter representing the City's area of control in Southwark. The Bridge Ward Club was founded in 1930 to "promote social activities and discussion of topics of local and general interest and also to exchange Ward and parochial information" and holds its annual carol service at St Magnus.

 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Magnus-the-Martyr

North of Myersdale, PA

Nyhavn is a harbor district in Copenhagen , which is one of the city's most visited tourist destinations. The harbor was excavated from 1671 to 1673 by Danish soldiers and by Swedish prisoners of war from the Second Carl Gustav War as an alternative to the existing harbor . The "Nyhavnskanalen" was inaugurated by Christian V in the 1670s , but today it is simply called Nyhavn. Worth seeing are the over 300-year-old houses. The oldest house is Nyhavn no. 9 from 1681 . Today, Nyhavn is covered with sidewalk cafes and restaurants , especially on the north-east side, the sunny side.

 

For many years, Nyhavn was among the city's more sinister quarters, with sailors' taverns and the accompanying prostitutes. But in the 1980s, the area was thoroughly renovated, and Nyhavn today houses a number of nicer restaurants, cafes and bars. Among the best known are Nyhavn 17 and Cap Horn.

 

The poet HC Andersen lived in three of the houses over the course of twenty years. In 1834 he lived in no. 20, from 1848 to 1865 in no. 67 and from 1871 until his death in 1875 in no. 18.

 

The Nyhavnsbroen between Holbergsgade and Toldbodgade was originally built in 1874-1875 but was replaced by the current drawbridge in 1911-1912. The bridge divides Nyhavn into an inner part, where veteran ships are now located, and an outer part.

 

The memorial anchor at the end of Nyhavn was erected in 1951 in memory of the Danish sailors who perished during the Second World War .

 

Close to Nyhavn is the Inderhavnsbroen .

 

Copenhagen is Denmark's capital and with 1,363,296 inhabitants (2023) the country's largest urban area comprising 18 municipalities or parts thereof.

 

The inner city had 809,314 inhabitants on 1 July 2022 and is defined by Statistics Denmark as consisting of Copenhagen Municipality (area: 90.10 km 2 ; population: 647,509 1 July 2022 ), Frederiksberg Municipality (area: 8 .70 km 2 ; population: 104,094 1 July 2022), Tårnby Municipality (area: 66.10 km 2 ; population: 43,042 1 July 2022) and Dragør Municipality (area: 18.30 km 2 ; population: 14,669 1. July 2022.

 

Copenhagen is also the center of the Øresund region , which is the largest metropolitan area in the Nordic region . The Øresund region covers a total of 20,754.63 km 2 in eastern Denmark and Scania in Sweden and had a population of 4,136,082 on 1 July 2022, of which 2,711,554 lived in the Danish parts as of 1 January 2022.

 

The city is located on the east coast of the island of Zealand ; another part of the city extends to Amager and is separated by the Øresund from Malmö , Sweden. The Øresund connection connects the two cities via motorway and railway.

 

Copenhagen's history can be traced back to around the year 700, when there was a small fishing village where the city center is now. Copenhagen became Denmark's capital at the beginning of the 15th century. Originating in the 17th century, it consolidated its position as a regional power center with its institutions, defenses and troops. During the Renaissance, the city was the de facto capital of the Kalmar Union , being the seat of the royal house that ruled a majority of today's Nordic regions in a personal union with Sweden and Norway with the Danish monarch as head of state. The city flourished as a cultural and economic center in Scandinavia during the union for over 120 years, from the 15th century until the early 16th century, when the union was dissolved by Sweden's secession. After an outbreak of plague and fires in the 18th century, the city underwent a period of reconstruction. This included the construction of the exclusive Frederiksstaden neighborhood and the foundation of institutions such as the Royal Danish Theater and the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts . After further misfortunes in the 19th century, when Horatio Nelson attacked the Danish-Norwegian fleet and bombarded the city, the reconstruction during the Danish Golden Age brought a neoclassical touch to Copenhagen's architecture. Later, after the Second World War, the Fingerplan fostered urban development along five S-train lines with Copenhagen as the centre.

 

Since the turn of the millennium, Copenhagen has undergone strong urban and cultural development, facilitated by investments in its institutions and infrastructure. The city is Denmark's cultural, economic and administrative centre; it is one of the main financial centers in Northern Europe with the Copenhagen Stock Exchange . Copenhagen's economy has witnessed rapid development in the service sector, particularly through initiatives concerning information technology, pharmaceuticals and clean technology. Since the completion of the Øresund connection, Copenhagen has been increasingly integrated with the Swedish province of Skåne and its largest city Malmö, forming the Øresund region.

 

With a number of bridges connecting the different neighborhoods, the urban landscape is characterized by parks, promenades and waterfronts. Copenhagen's landmarks include Tivoli Gardens , The Little Mermaid , Amalienborg , Christiansborg , Rosenborg , the Marble Church , the Stock Exchange , the Glyptoteket , the National Museum , which are significant tourist attractions.

 

Copenhagen houses the University of Copenhagen , the Technical University of Denmark, CBS , the IT University of Copenhagen . Founded in 1479, the University of Copenhagen is Denmark's oldest university. Copenhagen is home to the football clubs FC Copenhagen and Brøndby IF . Copenhagen Marathon started in 1980. Copenhagen is one of the world's most bicycle-friendly cities.

 

The name

Elaborating Further article: Copenhagen's name

Before the Middle Ages , the name of the town was probably Havn. In the Middle Ages, the city was called Køpmannæhafn in Old Danish ; a name that translated into modern Danish means merchants' harbor and is an expression of the importance that merchants had for the city at this time.

 

A number of other names built over the original Danish name for the city are used in different languages. Examples include Swedish Copenhagen , German and Dutch Kopenhagen , English Copenhagen , Italian Copenaghen , French and Spanish Copenhague , Portuguese Copenhaga , Latin Hafnia , Czech Kodaň , Icelandic Kaupmannahöfn and Faroese Keypmannahavn .

 

In 1923 , the Latin version of the name became the basis for the naming of the newly discovered element hafnium , as the discovery took place at the current Niels Bohr Institute .

 

Nicknames

As befits big cities, Copenhagen also has nicknames and even several of this kind:

 

King's Copenhagen : over the centuries, changing kings have left their mark on the capital. This applies in particular to Christian IV , who, in addition to expanding the area within the city walls to three times the size, contributed buildings such as Rosenborg , Rundetårn and Børsen .

The city with beautiful towers : tourist slogan created by brewer Carl Jacobsen in 1910. It alludes to the many towers and spires that then and now leave their mark on Indre By in particular, and to which the generous brewer himself also contributed in the form of the spire at Nicholas Church .

Wonderful Copenhagen ("wonderful Copenhagen"): both a tourist slogan made famous by the actor Danny Kaye , who sang about the city in a 1952 film about HC Andersen , and the name of the city's official tourism organization, Wonderful Copenhagen .

The Paris of the North is also occasionally seen , but unlike the others, this flattering comparison with the City of Cities is not exclusive, as it is shared with both Norway's Tromsø and Denmark's Aalborg .

 

The name "Copenhagen" is used both for the city as a whole, which includes all or parts of 17 other municipalities, for the city without its suburbs (cf. the image of the road signs, according to which Copenhagen and Vanløse are two different places) and for Copenhagen Municipality . This article covers the city as a whole.

 

The total urban area is defined geographically by the Geodata Agency (with the so-called polygon method ), where water areas are deducted. The method follows the UN 's guidelines, where in order for an urban area to be considered integrated, there must not be more than 200 meters between the houses (parks and the like not included). However, the Geodata Agency still counts the entire municipalities of Copenhagen and Tårnby , despite the fact that this includes large completely undeveloped areas, e.g. on western Amager , Saltholm and Peberholm . The area occupies a little over 450 km 2 , but the city of Copenhagen itself occupies far from this geographical size. Statistics Denmark then obtains the number of inhabitants via CPR . It is also Statistics Denmark that presents the aggregated information. The extent of Copenhagen – the metropolitan area's urban area – appears from Statistics Denmark's map of urban areas and rural districts . (Zoom in, let the mouse slide over the dark blue areas and see where it says 'Capital area in ... Municipality'). The outermost parts of Copenhagen are thus Kastrup , Tårnby , Karlslunde , Albertslund , Ballerup , Hareskovby , Bagsværd , Holte , Øverød , Søllerød , Nærum and Klampenborg – but with green wedges in between that extend to e.g. Avedøre and Rødovre .

 

Although the urban area is clearly demarcated by the authorities, they use different designations for it. The Geodata Agency uses Copenhagen, while Statistics Denmark uses the metropolitan area , and on the road signs along the approach roads, the Road Directorate has chosen Greater Copenhagen . However, Copenhagen is the only one of the three designations authorized by the Place Names Committee . [However, in all cases the same area is meant.

 

Many residents of Copenhagen's suburbs, however, identify to a greater extent with the municipality they live in. This may be to distance themselves from Copenhagen Municipality , which, as by far the largest municipality, naturally often steals the picture. In practice, however, Copenhagen is so densely built-up that in many places it is difficult to see where the borders between the individual municipalities actually go. Outsiders, however, will typically consider the city as a whole, although here and there there is also a tendency to either limit it to the Municipality of Copenhagen or expand it to the entire Capital Region . Therefore, Copenhagen's population is given in some places as approx. 0.6 million (of the municipality) or approx. 2.0 million (of the metropolitan region), where the correct number is 1,363,296 ( as of 1 January 2020 ).

 

Furthermore, a number of administrative divisions have used Copenhagen or the capital in their name. For example , the Capital Region also includes Bornholm , regardless of the fact that this island is approx. 130 km away, and the former Copenhagen County, despite the name, did not include the Municipality of Copenhagen , although the county seat was located there for a number of years.

 

History

Elaborating In-depth article: Copenhagen's history

History up to the 12th century

A number of finds from prehistoric times have been made in the Copenhagen area. At the building of Amager Strandpark, one found e.g. remains of a coastal settlement from the Neolithic . Burial mounds in the suburbs indicate human activity in prehistoric times, and many of the town names in the vicinity of Copenhagen also bear witness to the founding of towns in the greater Copenhagen area in the Viking Age .

 

Until recently, the oldest traces of urban settlement in the Copenhagen area were within the ramparts from around the year 1000, where traces of a small fishing village were found where Copenhagen is today. Fiskerlejet was located just north of Copenhagen's Town Hall around Mikkel Bryggers Gade, which at the time lay by the sea. But in connection with the excavation of the Metro, traces of boat bridges at Gammel Strand have been found, dating all the way back to around the year 700. During the excavation of the metro station at Kongens Nytorv, traces of a farm from the Viking Age have also been found.

 

1043-1536: The Middle Ages

The first time the precursor to Copenhagen under the name "Havn" is mentioned in the sources, is in connection with a naval battle between Svend Estridsen and the Norwegian king Magnus the Good in 1043. After that, there is silence about the city's fate in the next approx. 120 years.

 

It is likely that during the 12th century the city was able to profit from its central location between the large cathedral cities of Lund and Roskilde and thus was an important point for traffic and trade between the two cities. The natural harbor and the small island of Slotsholmen , which was easy to defend, probably also gave the city great advantages. In the second half of the 12th century, the silence about the town is broken, when Saxo mentions that Pope Urban III in 1186 confirms that the small town "Hafn", together with a number of other towns that King Valdemar had previously given to Bishop Absalon, must continue belong to Absalom. The exact year of King Valdemar's gift is not known, as the deed of gift that Absalon received has disappeared. From around 1167-1171 , Absalon built a castle and a city wall on the site.

 

Under Absalon's leadership, the city began to grow. Especially in the 13th century, the city expanded, so that it gradually came to cover a larger part of the area between Kongens Nytorv and Rådhuspladsen . Gråbrødre Kloster and the churches Our Lady , St. Peder (now St. Petri) and St. Nikolai were all built in the first half of the 13th century. The 13th century was a turbulent time in Danish history , which was expressed in the fierce battle between successive bishops and kings for the right to the city. However, in 1251 Bishop Jakob Erlandsen was able to force the pressured King Abel to surrender the city to him, and in 1254 this bishop gave the city its first city court. Five years later, in 1259, the city was attacked and plundered by the Rygian prince Jaromar .

 

Gradually, the city began to grow into the kingdom's largest and most important, although it had not yet become the capital. Although the city was the largest, there were still less than 5,000 inhabitants, and thus only a few hundred fewer in cities such as Ribe and Århus. The location in the middle of the kingdom with a natural harbor on an important sea trade route was ideal. In 1419, a Danish king, Erik of Pomerania , finally managed to permanently take power over the city from the church, and in 1443 Christopher III made the city a royal residence. In 1479 the university was founded. Copenhagen was now the country's most important city.

 

Christian IV was of great importance to Copenhagen. Under him, the city's old walls, which had hitherto been along Gothersgade around 1647, were moved, so that they ran along the current railway line between Nørreport and Østerport, bypassing the Nyboder newly built by Christian IV . Copenhagen's ramparts were also expanded with defenses in the newly built area of ​​Christianshavn .

 

From 1658-1660 during the First Karl Gustav War, Copenhagen was the last area in the kingdom under Danish control, but under siege by the Swedish troops led by Karl X Gustav . In February 1659, the Swedes tried to take the town by storm , but a joint effort by soldiers and the townspeople held them back. After the unsuccessful storming, however, the Swedes kept the city besieged until 27 May 1660. As an offshoot of the Peace of Copenhagen, the monarchy was introduced in 1660 under Frederik III and Copenhagen became an even more important city in Denmark, because it was from here that the increasingly centralist Danish state was governed. As part of this process, in 1660, Copenhagen got a new form of management called the City's 32 men , which was a precursor to the current Citizens' Representation .

 

In 1711-1712, one of the worst plague epidemics in Copenhagen's history ravaged . The plague killed approximately 22,000 of the city's approximately 60,000 inhabitants. A few years later, things went wrong once again, when just over a quarter of the city's buildings went up in smoke during a city fire in 1728 .

 

Inspired by European ideas, Frederiksstaden was founded in 1748 north of Kongens Nytorv with Amalienborg as the most beautiful part. In the latter half of the 18th century, during the Florissant period, Copenhagen experienced an enormous boom as a result of the profitable trade with the warring powers, England and France. However, the boom period ended for a time when first Christiansborg burned in 1794 and then a town fire in 1795 ravaged the inner city, and then the British navy came to claim Denmark's navy, which triggered the Battle of the Nest in 1801 , as part of the Napoleonic Wars . Parts of the city were also damaged in that conflict. However, the damage was far from the extent of the damage caused by the landed British army during the English bombardment of the city in 1807 , where large areas of the city burned down, as the British military used rockets. The medieval Church of Our Lady also went up in flames. The challenges for Denmark and Copenhagen end with the state bankruptcy in 1813 and the loss of Norway, and the accompanying trade from Copenhagen to Norway, in 1814.

 

After the tumultuous events in the years up to 1814, Denmark and Copenhagen had ended up as a small, poor country. It was therefore not immediately possible to rebuild the public buildings that had been destroyed by the bombardment, such as Our Lady's Church and the university , until well into the 19th century. When the economy finally got going, this gave rise to enormous development and most of Copenhagen's inner city is characterized by the reconstructions after the fires and the bombing. Culturally, Copenhagen came to form the framework for one of the most rewarding cultural periods in Danish history, the Golden Age , which was characterized by, among other things, CF Hansen , Bertel Thorvaldsen and Søren Kierkegaard . This was followed by industrialization in the second half of the 19th century. After a major cholera epidemic in 1853, it was finally decided to take down the old ramparts.

 

It was now allowed to build permanent, foundation-walled new construction outside the ramparts. This release, in combination with very liberal building legislation, led to a building boom in the bridge districts and a significant increase in the population. Around 1800, approximately 100,000 people lived in the capital, and at the start of the 20th century there were almost 500,000.

 

The new districts became very different: Frederiksberg and Østerbro became neighborhoods of the bourgeoisie ; Nørrebro and Vesterbro, on the other hand, became workers' districts.

 

As a replacement for the old fortress, the Estrup government adopted the construction of the large fortifications , including the Vestvolden, from 1886 . It was Denmark's largest workplace and was only later surpassed by the Great Belt connection . The construction of large projects such as the Free Harbor (1894), the Town Hall (1905) and the Central Station (1911) also left their mark. Copenhagen had become an industrial metropolis, home to companies on an international scale such as Burmeister & Wain , Østasiatisk Kompagni and the Great Nordic Telegraph Company .

 

After a weak start ( the Battle of Fælleden ), the labor movement had its breakthrough in the capital of the 20th century, where the post of finance mayor was taken over in 1903 by trade unionist Jens Jensen . In 1901, the municipality incorporated a number of parishes, including Brønshøj and Valby , and in 1902 the municipality of Sundbyernes was incorporated . The municipality's area was thus tripled, leaving Frederiksberg as an enclave in Copenhagen Municipality.

 

From World War I to the present

This section describes the period from the start of World War I in 1914 to the present day. The policy of neutrality meant that Copenhagen was not particularly affected by the First World War. The so-called goulash barons made a lot of money from stock speculation and from exporting meat products to Germany . After the First World War, there was a shortage of most things, and a great deal of unemployment contributed to a lot of unrest, especially in Copenhagen's working-class neighborhoods. In 1922, the Copenhagen-based Landmandsbanken went bankrupt, dragging many people down with it.

 

From 1917, the Social Democrats had a majority in the municipality's board. This led to increased public welfare, municipal housing construction, etc. The construction of Fælledparken and other parks was another result of the municipality's new social and health policy programme, which, among other things, as a result of the housing crises of 1908 and 1916 focused on building housing that was not influenced by building speculation. As buildings were built on the lands outside the Søerne and on the areas around e.g. Brønshøj and Valby, which had been merged with Copenhagen Municipality in 1901, approached Copenhagen with surrounding towns such as Lyngby, Herlev and Rødovre. And gradually these became suburbs. Due to a lack of suitable land in the inner city, much of the urban development took place around these cities. This development was also helped by more public transport, i.a. the opening of the S train lines from 1934.

 

During World War II, Copenhagen, like the rest of Denmark , was occupied by German troops. Several buildings were destroyed during the occupation either by sabotage or by attacks from the allied forces. Among these can be mentioned that the Shell House , which was the headquarters of the Gestapo , was bombed by British planes on 21 March 1945 . During this attack , the French School in Frederiksberg was hit and many children were killed. Many industrial buildings in Copenhagen were also blown up by the Danish resistance movement . One of the biggest popular protests against the conditions under the German occupation was the People's Uprising in 1944

 

After the war, the increasing use of motor vehicles became increasingly important for the city's development, and this caused the master plan's ideas of a Copenhagen built around collective S-train traffic to become somewhat diluted. Some suburbs grew up away from the S-train network. In the 1960s, development in the Municipality of Copenhagen seemed to have almost come to a standstill, while in the suburban municipalities people were building on life. Gladsaxe Municipality under Erhard Jakobsen and Albertslund are examples of this development in Copenhagen's surrounding municipalities.

 

Inner Copenhagen, on the other hand, experienced a period of decline from the 1960s with the relocation of industry and residents. This development began to reverse around 1990. Especially with the urban renewal plans from 1991, many run-down neighborhoods slowly but surely became desirable. With the construction of the subway and housing along the harbor, the inner city has become better connected. The construction of the Øresund Bridge in 2000 has connected Copenhagen with western Scania, and the city thus strengthened its status as the center of the Øresund region .

 

While Ungdomshuset på Jagtvej existed, the Nørrebro area in particular was regularly characterized by violent demonstrations that emanated from here. This culminated in the demolition of the house in March 2007, and subsided in mid-2008, when a new house was built for the young people in North West. Since then, there have been no major demonstrations based on the movement around the Youth House.

 

During the period, the housing market in the city was approx. 2002–2007, along with the rest of the country, characterized by a housing bubble. This stopped, as in the rest of Denmark, in 2006/2007, when large price drops were experienced. However, Copenhagen recovered quickly and the Copenhagen housing market has been characterized by rising prices since 2009 and today ( 2021 ) prices are higher than prices were at their peak in 2006. At the beginning of the period, it was also possible to assess cooperative housing according to market price. This opened up the otherwise closed co-operative housing market, and instead of being traded through closed lists and sometimes money under the table, co-operative housing is now most often traded in free trade. During the bubble period it was popular to settle in Malmö in Sweden and work in Copenhagen. ​​In 2021, there have been large price increases again and some politicians spoke of further restrictions on the possibilities of borrowing, while others spoke of the fact that it was not necessary.

 

In 2020, Copenhagen, like the rest of Denmark and the rest of the world, was hit by the Coronavirus pandemic . The authorities recommended homework and shut down entertainment.

 

Future plans

Until around 2025, four major expansion areas are planned in the Municipality of Copenhagen, which will provide space for 45,000 new Copenhageners; Ørestad south of Field's and on Amager Fælled , Nordhavnen , Valby around New Ellebjerg Station and the Carlsberg plot north of Carlsberg Station are to be developed. Likewise, it is planned that the former freight railway area between Dybbølsbro Station and Hovedbanegården is to be developed, but primarily with business, i.a. hotels and Ikea . All the areas are either old industrial areas or land reclamation, except for Amager Fælled which is originally salt meadow. The municipality of Copenhagen is also planning a very large development in the north-eastern harbor area in the form of Lynetteholmen .

 

In the preliminary municipal plan 2021, Frederiksberg Municipality plans urban development around e.g. Nordens Plads and the Hospital grounds where Frederiksberg Hospital used to be located. In addition, the focus is on conservation and hollow filling with either new buildings or green areas.

 

In Rødovre there are three primary urban development areas Rødovre North, the City Core (around Rødovre Centrum ) and Rødovre South. At the City Center, among other things, the possibilities of making a metro stop by extending one of the existing metro lines.

 

A major challenge with the many additional residents will be to make room for the traffic in the city. The extension in 2019 of the metro with the City Ring and the construction of light rail along ring 3 from Lyngby to Ishøj should create even more coherence in Copenhagen's public transport. There has also been talk for many years about an Eastern Ring Road around the central parts of the city. One possibility is that the eastern ring road can go over Lynetteholmen .

 

Geography

Geographically, Copenhagen is located in north-eastern Zealand with part of the city on the island of Amager . Western Copenhagen stretches relatively flat further into Zealand, while to both north and south you can experience more hilly terrain. In north-western Copenhagen, e.g. around Søborg and Høje Gladsaxe a larger chain of hills with heights up to 50 meters above sea level. These hilly landscapes in northern Copenhagen are intersected by a number of lakes and Mølleåen . Due to height in the Gladsaxe area, the Gladsaxe transmitter and Copenhagen's water supply have been placed here . In the south-western part of Copenhagen, a calcareous landslide rises at the Carlsberg fault . The more central parts of Copenhagen consist primarily of flatter landscape, alternating in Valby and Brønshøj with less domed hills. Two valley systems follow these small hill ranges from northeast to southwest. In one valley you will find the lakes , in the other you will find Damhussøen . These smaller valleys are crossed by the rivers Harrestrup Å and Ladegårdsåen . Amager and most of the inner city is flat coastal land.

 

Geologically speaking, Copenhagen, like most of Denmark, rests on an Ice Age bedrock moraine landscape, which in turn rests on a harder subsoil of limestone . In certain places in the area, there is only ten meters down to the limestone layer, which caused considerable problems during the construction of the metro.

 

Religion

A majority (56.5%) of those who live in the Diocese of Copenhagen are members of the People's Church, and the number is decreasing. The national cathedral, Vor Frue Kirke, is one of numerous churches in Copenhagen. There are also several other Christian congregations in the city, the largest of which is Roman Catholic.

 

Foreign immigration to Copenhagen, which has increased over the past three decades, has contributed to increasing religious diversity; The Hamad Bin Khalifa Civilization Center opened in 2014. Islam is the second largest religion in Copenhagen, making up an estimated 10% of the population. Although there are no official statistics, it is estimated that a significant proportion of the estimated 175,000–200,000 Muslims in the country live in the Copenhagen area, with the highest concentration in Nørrebro and Vesteggen . There are also up to 7,000 Jews in Denmark, with most living in Copenhagen, where there are several synagogues. Jews have a long history in the city and the first synagogue in Copenhagen was built in 1684. Today, the history of Danish Jews can be experienced at the Danish Jewish Museum in Copenhagen.

 

Music, theater and opera

The oldest and most famous theater in the capital is the Royal Theater , founded in 1748 , located at the end of Kongens Nytorv. Since its foundation, the theater has been the national stage for theatre , plays , opera and ballet . The theater has a large stage called Gamle scene , which can accommodate approx. 1,600 spectators. Within the last few years, however, opera and plays have been given independent buildings. The opera house was built in 2005 on Holmen opposite Amalienborg and can accommodate up to 1,703 spectators. The theater was built in 2008 at Kvæsthusbroen near Nyhavn. The Royal Danish Ballet can still be found on the old stage of the Royal Danish Theatre. Since it was founded in 1748, it is one of the oldest ballet companies in Europe. It is the home of the Bournonville ballet style .

 

In addition to the more traditional offerings such as theatre, opera and ballet, which the Royal Theater can offer, there are a multitude of other theaters that offer reinterpretations of classic plays as well as completely new pieces and genres, such as Folketeatret and Nørrebro Teater .

 

Copenhagen has had a large jazz scene for many years . Jazz came to Copenhagen in the 1960s, when American jazz musicians such as Ben Webster , Thad Jones and Dexter Gordon moved to the city. Musically, they gathered at Jazzhus Montmartre , which in the 1960s was the European center for modern jazz. The jazz club closed in 1995, reopened in May 2010, but is expected to close again in 2020/2021 due to challenges arising in connection with the shutdown due to the corona epidemic. Every year in July, the Copenhagen Jazz Festival is celebrated , which fills venues and squares with jazz concerts.

 

The most important venue for rhythmic music in Copenhagen is Vega on Vesterbro, which was voted "best concert venue in Europe" by the international music magazine Live Pumpehuset and Den Grå Hal are also popular indoor concert venues. The largest indoor concerts are held in the Park , where there is room for up to 55,000 spectators. The biggest outdoor concerts are often arranged in Valbyparken , including Grøn Koncert , which has ended the tour in Copenhagen since 1985 and since 2017 has also started in Copenhagen.

 

For free entertainment, you can take a walk up Strøget, especially between Nytorv and Højbro Plads , which in the late afternoon and evening transforms into an improvised three-ring circus with musicians, magicians , jugglers and other street performances.

 

Museums

As Denmark's capital, Copenhagen contains some of the most important collections of Danish history and culture, but some museums also have collections of great international quality. The National Museum , founded in 1807, is the most important museum in Denmark for culture and history. The museum contains, among other things, a multitude of ancient finds with priceless objects such as The Sun Chariot . New Carlsberg Glyptotek also displays a wide collection of objects from prehistoric times to the present day. The museum has ancient collections from Mesopotamia , Egypt including a large collection of mummies , Ancient Greece with a piece from the Parthenon Frieze that is of international quality, and various artifacts from Ancient Rome . The Glyptotek is completely unique and the only one of its kind in the Nordic countries .

 

The Statens Museum for Kunst is the country's largest art museum with large collections and often exhibitions of recent art. Thorvaldsen's Museum from 1848 with Bertel Thorvaldsen's many figures was the city's first proper art museum. The Hirschsprung collection contains mostly paintings from the Golden Age and by the Skagen painters . The modern art is presented primarily in Arken in Ishøj and Louisiana in Humlebæk north of Copenhagen.

 

In addition to Danish art and handicrafts , David's Collection contains one of the ten most important collections of Islamic art in the Western world. The war museum from 1838 contains an enormous collection of military equipment from the Middle Ages until recent times.

 

The natural history museums are represented by the Botanical Garden , the Geological Museum and the Zoological Museum . The three museums have entered into a collaboration, the Statens Natural History Museum, and are expected to be united in a building at the Botanical Gardens in 2024 as a national natural history museum. Experimentarium and Planetarium deal with general physics and astronomy .

 

Copenhagen also contains more specialized museums such as the Arbejdermuseet , Frihedsmuseet , Copenhagen City Museum , Storm P Museum and Enigma (expected to open in 2022) which is a successor to the Post & Tele Museum .

 

Parks, forests, lakes and beaches

Copenhagen has a number of parks, the two largest being Valbyparken and Fælledparken , respectively. 64 and 58 ha. Valbyparken is also surrounded by football pitches and allotment gardens. A beach is being built ( as of 2021 ) at the water's edge facing the Port of Copenhagen. The large lawn in the park lays, among other things, place for Green Concert . The public park on Østerbro is among the most visited attractions in Denmark, with several million visitors a year. The third largest park in Copenhagen is Frederiksberg Have (32 ha). Here you can e.g. enjoy the view of Norman Foster's elephant house in the Zoo , which occupies the western part of the garden.

 

In addition to parks, the city has some very open natural areas, the largest of which is Amager Fælled at 223 ha. Amager Fælled consists of approx. one quarter original salt marsh and three quarters filled seabed. The community has been continuously reduced and has ceded areas to e.g. Ørestad and ball fields. There are currently being prepared to be built in the southern part. This construction creates ( as of 2021 ) a lot of debate, especially in the Copenhagen media and in Copenhagen politics. In addition, there is the Sydhavnstippen , which is a 40 ha natural area with plenty of wildlife and plant life.

 

Another very popular park is Kongens Have in central Copenhagen with Rosenborg Castle . The park has been open to the public since the beginning of the 18th century. Centrally in the city along the former ramparts are a number of parks, of which Tivoli is the best known.

 

Something special for Copenhagen is that several cemeteries also have a double function as parks, although only for quiet activities. Assistens Kirkegård , where HC Andersen is buried, among other things, is an important green breathing hole for Indre Nørrebro . It is official policy in Copenhagen that in 2015 all residents must be able to reach a park or beach on foot in less than 15 minutes.

 

In addition to parks, Copenhagen also has a number of forests, including Vestskoven (15 km²) in the western part and Hareskoven (9 km²) in the northwestern part. The animal park (11 km²) is located in the northern part and contains both forest, plain and a golf course.

 

Just west of the ring of parks from the old ramparts are Copenhagen's Indre Søer . Other significant lakes include Damhussøen and i.a. Utterslev Mose and Bagsværd Lake .

 

Copenhagen has a number of sandy beaches. The largest is Amager Strandpark , which opened in 2005 , which includes a 2 km long artificial island and a total of 4.6 km of sandy beach. In addition, there are e.g. beaches at Bellevue and Charlottenlund along the north coast and Brøndby along the south coast. The beaches are complemented by several harbor baths along the waterfront. The first and most popular of these is located at Islands Brygge .

 

Media and Film

Many Danish media companies have their headquarters in Copenhagen. The state-funded DR started its radio activities here in 1925. At the beginning of the 1950s, the company was also responsible for spreading television throughout the country. Today, the media company has several television and TV channels, which are controlled from DR Byen , built in 2006/07 in Ørestad . The Odense -based TV 2 has gathered its Copenhagen activities at Teglholmen .

 

Two of the three major national newspapers, Politiken and Berlingske , as well as the two major tabloid newspapers , Ekstra Bladet and BT, have their headquarters in Copenhagen. Furthermore, Jyllands-Posten has a newsroom in the city. In 2003 Politikens Hus merged with Morgenavisen Jyllands-Posten and formed the company JP/Politikens Hus . Berlingske , founded in 1749, is Denmark's oldest newspaper. Berlingske Media , which i.a. publisher Berlingske is owned by the London -based Mecom Group . In addition, there are a large number of local newspapers such as Vesterbro Avis . Other media companies include Aller Media , which is the largest publisher of weekly and monthly magazines in Scandinavia, Egmont , which, among others, is behind Nordisk Film , and Gyldendal , the largest Danish book publisher.

 

Copenhagen also has a relatively large film and television industry. Filmbyen , located on a disused military base in the suburb of Hvidovre , houses several film companies and studios. Among the film companies is Zentropa , in which the film director Lars von Trier is a co-owner, who is behind several international film productions and who was one of the founders of the dogma movement . Historically, Copenhagen, and especially the company Nordisk Film , was the center of the film industry in Northern Europe in the 1910s and 1920s, with hundreds of annual film productions. Nordisk Film in Valby still produces many films and today has 1,200 employees (as of 2006 ) and is the largest producer and distributor of electronic entertainment in the Nordics.

 

The largest concentration of cafes is in Indre By, Østerbro and Vesterbro. The first Copenhagen cafe opened in 1831 at the Hotel D'Angleterre , but it was only with the opening of Café Sommersko in 1976 that the cafe culture really came to Copenhagen, and there are now over 300 cafes spread across the city.

 

Copenhagen's nightlife is centered around Indre by, Nørrebro and Vesterbro, i.a. Laurits Betjent , Nasa , Rust and Vega .

 

Within the last decade, Copenhagen has really distinguished itself with restaurants that can measure up among the best. Most prominent is Noma , with 2 stars in the Michelin guide since 2007, which has also been named the best restaurant in the world. In addition to Noma, Copenhagen had 11 restaurants that have received one star in the Michelin guide per 2021. With 18 stars, Copenhagen is the Nordic city with the most stars, which has been the case for a number of years. In 2016, Restaurant Geranium was the first Danish restaurant ever to receive three Michelin stars (which is the highest score), which they have maintained ever since.

 

The sausage cart has traditionally been the favorite place to eat for the little hungry, but is now being challenged by burger bars, pizzerias , shawarma and sushi bars and the like. Smørrebrød restaurants are another type of lunch catering that is characteristic of Copenhagen.

 

Copenhagen is the capital in the world where organic food has the largest market share. One in ten purchases is organic in Copenhagen.

 

Sports

Copenhagen represents a wide range of sports and is often a leader in the field in Denmark . Larger sports facilities include The park , but also e.g. Brøndby Stadium , Farum Park and Gladsaxe Stadium for football, Østerbro Stadium for athletics, Ballerup Super Arena for track cycling , Rødovre Skøjte Arena for ice hockey , Brøndbyhallen for handball and Bagsværd Rostadion for rowing .

 

The largest Danish stadium Parken , located on Østerbro , is both the home ground for the Danish national football team and the football club FC Copenhagen . FC Copenhagen has for a number of years been very dominant in the Danish Superliga with thirteen championships since 2000 . In addition, Copenhagen is, among other things, hometown of football clubs Brøndby IF , AB , B.93 , Frem and Fremad Amager . In addition to the park, larger football stadiums include Brøndby Stadium (Denmark's second largest), Gladsaxe Stadium and Farum Park . Østerbro Stadium is the city's largest stadium for athletics .

 

Within handball , KIF Kolding København is the biggest Copenhagen team. However, they only have a men's team associated with the handball league . KIF Kolding Copenhagen is a partial continuation of AG Copenhagen , which merged with Kolding IF Handball . Despite great success in the Champions League in the spring of 2012 , AG Copenhagen suddenly fell into financial crisis in the summer of the same year , which led to the club filing for bankruptcy on 31 July 2012 .

 

Within athletics , it is the club Sparta in particular that has made a name for itself and the men's team has won the Danish athletics tournament 29 years in a row until 2014 and the women's team has won the Danish athletics tournament 17 years in a row until 2014. The Copenhagen Athletics Games were held in the period 2005 –2007, and before that the Copenhagen Games were held (1973-1986). Both aspired to display world-class athleticism.

 

The DM in ice hockey for men was won many times until the mid-1970s by the Copenhagen clubs KSF and Rungsted IK . Since then, the DM has primarily been won by Jutland clubs, while Rungsted Seier Capital and Rødovre Mighty Bulls have changed to being Copenhagen's best men's ice hockey team. On the women's side, Hvidovre Ishockey Klub has been very dominant in the DM with 8 championships in the 10 tournaments since 2011, often with Herlev IK as the closest competitor.

 

Copenhagen has a long tradition of rowing and has produced several national team rowers. DSR , which is Denmark's largest rowing club, and Kvik , both located in Svanemøllebugten , have rowed the traditional swan mill match every year since 1895 . In addition, there are a number of other clubs, e.g. Copenhagen Rowing Club and Bagsværd Rowing Club .

 

Copenhagen can display a number of golf courses , including Copenhagen Golf Club in Dyrehaven and Royal Golf Center in Ørestad . The Royal Golf Center has been built with a view to being able to hold PGA tournaments .

 

In the Municipality of Copenhagen, plans have been made to make Copenhagen the host of future international sporting events. In 2009 , Copenhagen hosted the World Outgames , which is an international gay sporting event. And the ambition of holding world championships in e.g. handball and ice hockey are currently being strengthened by the construction of the Copenhagen Arena .

 

For equestrian sports, the Charlottenlund Track , which opened in 1891 and is the oldest in the Nordic region , can be found in the northern suburbs . Likewise, to the north, there is also the Klampenborg Galopbane . From 1922 to 1976, the Amager Trotting Track also existed in Tårnby .

 

Copenhagen was one of the host cities at the European Football Championship 2020 , which took place in June and July 2021. Three group stage matches and a round of 16 final were played in Parken .

 

The 1st stage of the Tour de France 2022 was run as a single start in the city center on 1 July .

 

Economy

Elaborating In-depth article: Copenhagen's economy

As the country's largest urban area, the capital area is a natural economic powerhouse for the country, but also for southern Sweden, the urban area plays an important economic role.

 

Previously, Copenhagen was characterized by a number of large industrial companies such as Burmeister & Wain and Dansk Sojakagefabrik . Copenhagen was also the starting point for CF Tietgen's extensive network of companies ( Privatbanken , Det Store Nordiske Telegrafselskab , De Danske Spritfabrikker and others). However, since the end of the Second World War, in line with similar trends in the rest of Europe, heavy industry has moved outside the city or completely out of the country, and Copenhagen has increasingly become a city of knowledge.

 

Politically, most of the central administration is located in Copenhagen, where most ministries have offices on or in the area around Slotsholmen . Likewise, most agencies are located in the Copenhagen area, which together with the many private knowledge workplaces provides a highly specialized labor market with many knowledge-intensive jobs.

 

The Copenhagen area is home to a handful of strong business clusters in the areas of biotech , cleantech , IT and shipping . The clusters within biotech and cleantech have many overlaps, within e.g. biomass production. Both clusters are supported by cluster organizations for the growth and promotion of the industries. Within biotech, the cluster organization is Medicon Valley and within cleantech/environmental technology, it is the newly founded Copenhagen Cleantech Cluster . Clusters have received a greater focus from the regional political side, as clusters such as the cleantech cluster cover more than 350 companies and approx. 30,000 jobs.

 

Several of the largest Danish companies have their headquarters in the city area; especially companies within the pharmaceutical industry ( Novo Nordisk , Lundbeck , Ferring and others) and shipping ( AP Møller-Mærsk , Torm , D/S Norden , J. Lauritzen) are important for the area's economy. Likewise, several large financial groups together with the National Bank characterize central Copenhagen, including Danske Bank , Nordea Bank Danmark and Nykredit . Carlsberg , ISS and Skandinavisk Tobakskompagni are other large companies headquartered in the Copenhagen area.

 

Tourism

According to the tourist organization HORESTA, the number of hotel nights in the capital region in 2018 was approx. nine million, which is approx. 1 million more than in 2012. Most foreign tourists in Copenhagen continue to come from Sweden , Norway and Germany .

 

Hotels

Elaborating Detailed article: Copenhagen hotels

In Copenhagen, there are five 5-star hotels, which include counts Hotel Nimb in Tivoli and Hotel Skt. Petri in Indre By . An extensive renovation in 2012–2013 of the famous Hotel D'Angleterre on Kongens Nytorv has made the hotel Copenhagen's only 6-star hotel.

 

Copenhagen has a total of 12 hotels with more than 300 rooms and Europe's largest hostel, Danhostel Copenhagen City at Kalvebod Brygge , with a total of 1020 beds. The city's – and Scandinavia's – largest hotel is the 75 meter high Bella Sky Comwell in Ørestad with a total of 812 rooms spread over two towers. With its 86 meters and 26 floors , the Radisson Blu Scandinavia Hotel at Islands Brygge is Denmark's tallest hotel. 8 out of Copenhagen's 11 largest hotels were built in the 21st century , whereas the Admiral Hotel in Frederiksstaden , which opened in 1978 , is located in a building built in 1787 . The Radisson Blu Royal Hotel by Arne Jacobsen from 1960 is also worth mentioning. It is centrally located at Vesterport .

 

Cruise tourism

Since the 1990s, cruise tourism – like many other large port cities in Europe and the rest of the world – has seen significant growth in Copenhagen. In the period 2005-2012, the number of calls increased by over 100, and the number of passengers almost doubled as the tonnage increased. In the Port of Copenhagen, cruise ships dock in three different – ​​and from 2014 four – areas : Langeliniekaj , Nordre Toldbod , Frihavnen and Nordhavnen (opens in 2014). In 2012, a cruise ship docked in the Port of Copenhagen 372 times with a total of 840,000 passengers, which was the best season so far in both Copenhagen and the rest of Denmark. Copenhagen is thus Scandinavia's largest cruise port and Northern Europe's second largest, surpassed only by Southampton .

 

Business clusters

The Copenhagen area is home to a handful of strong business clusters in the areas of biotech , cleantech , IT and shipping . The clusters within biotech and cleantech have many overlaps, within e.g. biomass production. Both clusters are supported by cluster organizations for the growth and promotion of the industries. Within biotech, the cluster organization is Medicon Valley and within cleantech/environmental technology, it is the newly founded Copenhagen Cleantech Cluster . The latter is considered one of the strongest in the world, partly as a result of annual growth rates of over 10% within exports.

 

Within shipping, the activities are gathered in The Danish Maritime Cluster , which has its center in Copenhagen. It is one of the world's leading maritime clusters, and accounts for 24% of Denmark's exports and 10% of total Danish production. The cluster as a whole employs 80,000 people in the companies themselves and 35,000 in related occupations, the majority of which are found in the large shipping companies in Copenhagen. The cluster has a large number of partners in education and research, including among others CBS , the University of Copenhagen and DTU . The organization of the cluster is led by the Maritime Development Center and Europe , which is also located in the city.

 

Within financial IT, there is also a business cluster. While finance and IT make up 5% of Denmark's general employment, the figure is 14% for the Capital Region. Since 2009, the organization Copenhagen Finance IT Region has tried to develop and maintain the industry in the region. One of the challenges is that 50% of jobs in the sector are at risk in relation to outsourcing, compared to 25% for the service sector in general. The cluster organization has a number of partners, including CBS , the Swedish Financial Agency , Dansk Metal and DI ITEK .

 

Retail

Strøget and Købmagergade are the two biggest shopping streets with the biggest and most common shops, while many of the side streets have the more "quirky" shops. On Gammeltorv by Strøget is the Caritas well, which is considered one of the finest memorials from the Renaissance . [169] In the bridge districts, especially the main streets, such as Nørrebrogade , Amagerbrogade and Østerbrogade from the center, function as traditional shopping streets.

 

In central Copenhagen are the department stores Magasin du Nord , Illum and Illums Bolighus , while shopping centers are found in several different places in the city, with Fields in Ørestad, City 2 in Taastrup and Fisketorvet at Dybbølsbro being the largest. In the central districts, other centers include e.g. Amager Centre , Frederiksberg Centre , Nørrebro City Center and Spinderiet in Valby, as well as Copenhagen Central Station and Copenhagen Airport also contain a number of shops. In the suburban areas there are e.g. Lyngby Storcenter , Glostrup Storcenter and Rødovre Centrum .

 

Architecture and urban planning

Copenhagen is famous for having a balance between new and old architecture and a homogeneous building mass of 5-6 storeys in height. In 2008 , the Citizens' Representative Council decided that Indre By should be kept free of high-rise buildings . Thus, large parts of Indre By appear quite well preserved despite historic city fires and bombardments, although many of the famous towers and spires are of recent date. However, large city fires have meant that there are not very many buildings older than 1728 left. Contrary to e.g. Stockholm is Copenhagen, characterized by point-by-point renovations of the building stock rather than violent clearances of larger neighborhoods. At the same time, the economy has often put restrictions on the most ambitious projects, which is why knock-on solutions such as at the Statens Museum for Art are widespread. Large parts of Indre By are subject to building conservation .

 

Some of the oldest buildings in the inner city are Sankt Petri Church from the 15th century and the Consistory House from approx. 1420 . Christian IV occupies a special place in the city's history. Not only did he double the city's area and build Christianshavn and Nyboder, but he was also the capital's first urban planner. Of all the king's many magnificent buildings, Børsen (1619–25) in the Dutch Renaissance style stands out as a unique building in European architecture. Baroque Copenhagen is also represented by the famous twisted staircase spire on the tower of Our Saviour's Church .

 

The new district of Frederiksstaden , which was started in 1749, was characterized by the Rococo style. In the center, a large square, Amalienborg Palace Square , was built with four noble palaces surrounding the Equestrian Statue of Frederik 5. . The entire neighborhood is included in the Kulturkanonen .

 

After the city's fire in 1795 and the British bombardment in 1807, large parts of the city had to be rebuilt. It became a house, with corners cut off so that the fire escapes could get around the corners. Most of Indre By is characterized by this architecture.

 

The fall of the ramparts (1856) was the start of an unbridled era, where new neighborhoods quickly sprung up. In the bridge quarters and on Gammelholm , an abysmal difference arose between the decorated facades facing the street and the dark backyards and small apartments.

 

One of the greatest architects of the 20th century, Arne Jacobsen, introduced modernism to Denmark and marked the city with, among other things, Royal Hotel (1960) and Nationalbank (1978).

 

The post-war planning of the capital area was supported by the Finger plan (1947). The finger plan determined that the urban densification in the future should primarily be concentrated in corridors along the S-Bahn network, while the spaces in between should be kept free for green areas.

 

The 1970s and 1980s were characterized by international modular architecture with no distinctive character and a building zeal that was mainly concentrated around the suburban municipalities, most often in the form of prefabricated concrete construction . In the central parts of Copenhagen during the period, the focus was mostly on urban renovations , this time aimed at the miserable backyard carts in the bridge districts.

 

At the beginning of the 1990s, the Municipality of Copenhagen was in crisis, but there was still enough money to initiate large conservation urban renewal projects on Vesterbro and Amagerbro . The construction of Ørestad was supposed to help pull the capital out of the doldrums.

 

Towards the end of the century, a real flourishing in architecture began with the additions to the Statens Museum for Art and the Royal Library. Then followed significant buildings such as the Opera House , the Theater House and the Tietgen College in Ørestad Nord.

 

High-rises and towers

Copenhagen has long been a densely built-up but not very tall city. This is due, among other things, to a great respect for the city's historic towers and very strict local plans . In the past 100 years, the general maximum building height has been approx. 25 meters. This has meant that the tallest buildings in Indre By to date are the towers and spires of Copenhagen City Hall , Christiansborg , Our Saviour's Church and Nikolaj Kunsthal .

 

The tallest buildings in Copenhagen are Herlev Hospital at 120 m and the tower at Christiansborg at 106 m. [ source missing ] However, the tallest man-made structure in Copenhagen is the Gladsaxesenderen at 220 metres. With its 267 m (incl. 47 m natural height), the top of the Gladsaxesenderen is the third highest point in Denmark after two other transmitter masts. [ source missing ] Domus Vista in Frederiksberg was, until Turning Torso in Malmö was inaugurated in 2005, the tallest residential building in the Nordic region, but is now only the second tallest.

 

Famous Copenhageners

Frank Arnesen , soccer player, soccer coach and talent manager

Bille August , film director

Herman Bang , journalist and author

Niels Bohr , physicist and Nobel Prize winner

Aage Bohr , physicist and Nobel laureate (Niels Bohr's son)

Victor Borge , entertainer

August Bournonville , ballet choreographer

Georg Brandes , cultural and literary critic

Helena Christensen , supermodel

Tove Ditlevsen , author

Carl Th. Dreyer , film director

Rune Glifberg , skateboarder

Vilhelm Hammershøi , painter

Gus Hansen , poker player

Iben Hjejle , actor

Peter Høeg , author

Arne Jacobsen , architect and designer

JC Jacobsen , founder of the Carlsberg brewery

Robert Jacobsen artist

CV Jørgensen , singer and songwriter

Søren Kierkegaard , philosopher

Per Kirkeby , painter

Christen Købke , painter

Kim Larsen , singer, guitarist and songwriter

Michael Laudrup , footballer

Bjørn Lomborg , political scientist and author

Lauritz Melchior , opera singer

Mads Mikkelsen , actor

Andreas Mogensen , astronaut

Maersk Mc-Kinney Møller , shipowner

Verner Panton , architect

Dirch Passer , comedian and actor

Peter Schmeichel , soccer player

Julius Thomsen , chemist

Bertel Thorvaldsen , sculptor

Lars von Trier , film director

Dan Turèll , author

Lars Ulrich , drummer and songwriter for Metallica

Jørn Utzon , architect

Mads Dittmann Mikkelsen R. actor

Magnus Millang actor

Crews have excavated the entire width of US 101. Once the site is prepared, workers install a large concrete structure that will carry water and fish beneath the highway. To get the job done, this section of US 101 was temporarily closed just north of Hoquiam. This work is part of our ongoing efforts to remove barriers to fish under state highways.

 

The Downy's breeding habitat is forested areas, mainly deciduous, across most of North America to Central America. They nest in a tree cavity excavated by the nesting pair in a dead tree or limb. These birds are mostly permanent residents. Northern birds may migrate further south; birds in mountainous areas may move to lower elevations while roosting in tree cavities in the winter.

 

Adult Downy Woodpeckers are mainly black on the upperparts and wings, with a white back, throat and belly and white spotting on the wings. There is a white bar above the eye and one below. They have a black tail with white outer feathers that typically have a few black spots. Adult males have a red patch on the back of the head where as juvenile birds display a red cap. Females are identical to males in appearance and size except they lack the red patch on the head.

 

The Downy is the smallest woodpecker in North America with an average body length of 5.5 - 6.7 inches (14 - 17 cm) and a wing span of 9.8 - 11.8 inches (25 - 30 cm).

 

Downy Woodpeckers forage on trees, often turning over bark or excavating to uncover insects. They mainly eat insects, also fruits, berries and nuts, sometimes tree sap. They are also known to peck at wooden window frames and wood sided homes that may house bugs. In winter, Downy Woodpeckers can often be found in suburban backyards with trees and will feed on suet at feeders, and in my case, peanut butter filled knot holes.

 

Downy Woodpeckers hitch around tree limbs and trunks or drop into tall weeds to feed on galls, moving more acrobatically than larger woodpeckers. Their rising-and-falling flight style is distinctive of many woodpeckers. In spring and summer, Downy Woodpeckers make lots of noise, both with their shrill whinnying call and by "drumming" on trees.

 

Look for Downy Woodpeckers in open woodlands, particularly among deciduous trees, and brushy or weedy edges. They’re also at home in orchards, city parks, backyards and vacant lots.

 

ISO800, aperture f/5.6, exposure .003 seconds (1/320) focal length 420mm

   

Male Red-breasted Nuthatch excavating a nest hole. W. of Science Center, Wascana, Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada. 6 May 2025

There are numerous native bees living in the soil in our front garden. I am only now learning the names of native bees and am only decent at the bigger and most common types. This bee is absolutely tiny, not much bigger than a fruit fly and about a third of the size of a sugar bag bee (Tetragonula carbonaria). It's much smaller than a reed bee (though similar in colouring). I suspect we may have walked over her burrow entrance when watering the plants and she is rapidly trying to dig it back open (poor thing) with legs loaded with pollen.

I've ordered the most up-to-date guide to the Native Bees of Australia into my local bookshop but it is taking an age to arrive as it is undergoing a reprint. If anyone knows what bee this is, I'd be delighted if you could I.D. it for me! (Found in the Blue Mountains, NSW).