AGM Time

It will soon be time for the Society’s Annual General Meeting. This will take place at St Magnus the Martyr, Lower Thames Street, London EC3R 6DN. The church is only a few yards from Monument Tube Station.

The meeting will commence at 7pm, and will be followed by a lecture at 7.30pm on Anglo-Catholicism and the Arts, 1918-1970. The speaker will be Dr Peter Webster, the editorial controller of British History Online. This will be followed by drinks and the opportunity to socialise.

Travers’s statue of St Magnus sports rather a fine pair of horns and a smart red cloak.

Some thoughts on this church

Many people have heard of St Magnus through the line in T.S.Eliot’s Waste Land referring to the “inexplicable splendour of Ionian white and gold.” I have always assumed this refers to the Travers refurnishing of the church, rather than Wren’s architecture. but have never felt moved to check, since I developed an extreme aversion to the works of Mr Eliot when I was doing my A Levels. In fact the poem predates the Travers restoration by a couple of years, and this made me speculate as to what the church was like before the Fynes-Clinton incumbency. It seems that it had a very conventional interior, since G.B.Besant wrote in his City Churches and their Memories (1926) 'As to the interior of St. Magnus, up to a year ago it was worth visiting. Spacious and severe - rather bare, as a matter of fact - with high pews and a three-decker pulpit, it was thoroughly representative of the architect and the period. But now all has changed. The three-decker pulpit and high pews are gone by the board. In the place of the one simple altar there are now three, with candles to burn, and a heavy smell of incense, all in the Roman manner - hopelessly and absolutely out of keeping. That is how it strikes me.'

The church has long been considered to be the most ultramontane place of worship in the City of London. Fr Fynes-Clinton certainly used Latin for some devotions, although I am a little unclear whether he used it at Mass. It would have been rather hard to tell anyway in the days of the silent canon. There are various stories told of outraged Protestants coming to view the grave of Miles Coverdale and being told by the then incumbent that they had just finished a service in the language out of which Coverdale translated the Bible. As an aside, there are various stories of Bishop Coverdale haunting the church: it would be interesting to know what the poor ghost thinks of it, because it certainly bears little resemblance to Exeter Cathedral in the 1550s. Moving forward 450 years, I understand that this church has restored the use of the humeral veil at High Mass. Is it the first Anglican parish to do so since the Tridentine rite has been rehabilitated in the Roman Church? Maybe somebody would confirm or deny?

Here is a link to the church’s website http://www.stmagnusmartyr.org.uk/

John Hawes