Have you ever seen a picture of London Bridge? And I don’t mean the modern one that leads up to The Shard, I mean that fantastic medieval one that used to have a street full of houses on top.
If you’ve never seen a picture of it then try and imagine picking up a street and dropping it across the river, and then imagine it lined with overhanging houses, a big gatehouse in the middle, a stone tower at the Southwark end sporting bloody spikes and severed heads, and a raging, roaring torrent of water storming through the arches underneath. That, my friend, is what I’m talking about when I say London Bridge.
This bridge was one of the longest-standing structures in the city’s history, dating all the way back to 1176. But come the 1750s all the buildings got demolished to make the roadway wider (so it was just a normal flat bridge by then), and shortly before Queen Victoria took the throne somebody had the bright idea of knocking it down to build something worse.
We ended up selling this new one to a rich American who transported it brick by brick to a lake in Arizona, and the modern-day replacement dates from 1974. But it’s still incredible to think that the original one stood here for more than 650 years.
So why am I telling you all of this anyway, in a review about St. Magnus the Martyr church? That’s because the church marks the exact spot where the bridge came to an end on the City side. When you enter the church through the porch you are walking on the same patch of ground where the roadway used to be. It’s not quite as old as the original bridge though, because the first church got wiped out in the Great Fire of London. What you are looking at today is Christopher Wren’s rebuild in the 1670s, with a few modern adjustments courtesy of our German friends in the Luftwaffe.
But that’s not why I like this church so much… step inside…
Model of Old London Bridge
Just inside the door you’ll find a long box with a model of the original bridge. Have a good look at that, and then you’ll understand why I like the bridge so much. It’s like something out of a fairytale. How fantastic would it be if that structure still stood? But it doesn’t.
Ah well. St. Magnus the Martyr is quite nice though (I suppose I should say a few words about the church while I’m here because it’s actually quite beautiful). It’s got that lovely smoky incense smell like a perfumed fog this morning, and a hushed rumbling sound that’s on the very edge of hearing – the kind of quiet that you only seem to get inside religious buildings.
It’s just one big room really – there are no side chapels. They’ve got some smaller altars in the corners with purple curtains and candlesticks, and a model of a big ship all rigged up like it’s ready to set sail for Trafalgar. No explanation as to why it’s there – just another model for us to look at.
There are plenty of plaques and tombstones on the floor, but their names are getting rubbed out by the footsteps. There are probably more people under the floor than in the pews because it’s literally just me and a fidgety old lady in a tatty tartan coat. She’s doing that furious nodding thing that crazy people do and having an animated natter with somebody I can’t see, because as I look around I realise there’s nobody else here.
Is she talking to me? Maybe she’s talking to God. Or maybe she thinks I am God. (I think I’m God as well sometimes, so maybe we’re both crazy.) I’m guessing that she’s homeless by the way she’s dressed, but she’s probably thinking the same about me.
If you enjoy this then try All Hallows by the Tower (you can walk it in 6 mins) and St. Bartholomew-the-Great (walk it in 18 mins or catch a tube from Monument to Barbican). If you want to learn some more about Old London Bridge and see some paintings of it, then check out the Museum of London and Guildhall Art Gallery
