United Parishes: 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. In 1831, St. Michael Crooked Lane (also rebuilt by Wren after the Great Fire), fell to another great destroyer of City churches, urban redevelopment, being demolished to make way for King William Street during the rebuilding of London Bridge. The parish was united with that of St. Magnus, and its monuments translated; these include a headstone which now stands in the churchyard, commemorating Robert Preston d.1730, the teetotalling 'drawer' (barman) at the Boar's Head Tavern in Great Eastcheap (where Falstaff caroused with Prince Hal): "Tho' nurs'd among full Hogsheads, he defied the charms of Wine, and ev'ry vice beside. 0 Reader, if to Justice thou'rt inclin'd, keep Honest Preston daily in thy mind. He drew good Wine, took care to fill his Pots, had sundry virtues that outweigh'd his faults. You that on Bacchus have the like dependence, pray copy Bob in Measure and Attendance." (St. Michael's vestry met in the Boar's Head - which stood where the statue of William IV now looks down on King William Street -- and somehow thus acquired the 'Falstaff Cup', surely Elizabethan but hardly that with which the fat knight pledged his troth to Mistress Quickly; it is now on permanent loan to the Treasury of St. Paul's Cathedral.)

St. Margaret, New Fish Street

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.

The Chapel of St. Thomas Becket

In the centre of the medieval stone London Bridge stood the chapel dedicated to St. Thomas of Canterbury, facing downstream. The bridge was built between A.D. 1176 and 1209 under the supervision of Peter of Colechurch, Cheapside. Houses on the bridge are first shown in the records of 1201, and in 1205 they record the death, and burial, in the chapel of its builder. The building was two-storeys high and access to it was from both the bridge level and the river. The crypt (cellar) was vaulted and the upper chapel had a groined roof springing from 'clustered columns of great beauty'. Technically it was under the control of the Parish of St. Magnus, London Bridge but the chaplain and other members of the 'Brothers of the Bridge' enjoyed a certain amount of freedom from the parish priest. In 1483 the chaplain, after a disagreement with the parish priest, was granted the right to keep the alms collected during services for himself and his community with the proviso that he make a generous contribution to the finances of the parish. Fishermen from the South coast on their way to sell their fish at Billingsgate passing over the bridge were controlled by the times of the services in the chapel. To prevent forestalling, salt fish could not be sold until the Office of Prime, and freshwater fish had to wait for the end of the mass.

After the Reformation, the chapel was desecrated and turned into a house, and later a warehouse. In the second half of the 18th century both the chapel and the houses on the bridge were demolished, at which time the bones of Peter of Colechurch were unceremoniously dumped into the river.

St. Michael, Crooked Lane

The earliest mention of an ecclesiastical building on the site is 1271 with the founding of a detached chapel dedicated to the Holv Trinity in a burial ground here. It was replaced by a parish church built in the 14th century by John Lofkin or Lovekyn (Stock-Fishmonger and Mayor of London in 1348, 1358 and 1366). He provided a 'college with master and nine chaplains' to serve the church. On his death there was erected over his tomb, the epitaph: "Worthy John Lofkin, Stock-Fishmonger / Of London, here is lyed, / Four time of this City Lord Major hee / Was it Truth be seyd."

In 1380 Sir William Walworth (Mayor of London 1380-1381 and slayer of Wat Tyler the Rebel) rebuilt the choir and side chapel. When he died in 1385 he was 'buried in the choir, under a fair tomb, with images of him and wife in alabaster'. The tomb was described as being 'most conspicuous' with an epitaph that read: "Hereunder lyeth a man of Fame, / William Walworth called by name; / Fishmonger he was in life-time here, / And twice Lord Mayor, as in Books appere / With courage stout, and manly might / Slew Wat Tyier, in King Richard's sight."

There were two other inscriptions worth noting from the church: "Here lyeth wrapt in clay / The body of William Wray / I have no more to say." And a memorial to Queen Elizabeth I: "She ruled England yeeres 44 and more / And then return to God / At the age of 70 yeeres and somewhat od."

The medieval church survived until the Great Fire of 1666 when it perished in that fiery holocaust. After the fire it was rebuilt to the designs of Sir Christopher Wren between 1688 and 1698 at a cost of £4,541 5s. 11 d.

It was to the 17th-century church that John and Charles Wesley came on a number of occasions. John's Diary recalls "Sunday, December 31 1738 6(a.m.) singing, Crooked Lane, prayer and communion". His brother Charles in his Journal wrote "September 25, 1737 (of his sister Hetty), I met her at the sacrament in Crooked Lane". The composer William Shrubsole, sometime organist of St. Bartholomew the Less, Smithfield, and of Spa Fields Chapel, wrote the tune to All Hail the Power of Jesu's Name and named it the Miles Lane Tune after the Dissenting Meeting House in St. Michael's Lane. The Meeting House had been used by the parish while their church was being rebuilt after the Great Fire. The first Minister of the Chapel was the Reverend Matthew Barker who had been the Minister of St. James's Garlickhithe until 1641. He remained at the chapel until 1650 when he was appointed to St. Leonard Eastcheap, where he stayed until 1680 when he returned to the chapel until his death in 1698. In the early part of the 19th century, plans were made to build a new London bridge by the Corporation of the City of London. Part of the plan meant the building of new roadways around either end of the new bridge.

Robert Harrison in the Transactions of the Ancient Monuments Society for 1960 wrote "The Vestry strongly opposed the removal of St. Michael's Crooked Lane, in 1831, to assist the Corporation of London to further its plans for the approaches to London Bridge, and addressed the Committee for the New London Bridge an eloquent and moving plea for its retention. After much debate, however, the church was taken down." All the furniture and fittings were offered to the commissioners for building new churches, but there does not seem to be any record of its acceptance. With two exceptions the bells were recast and now hang in River (Kent) Parish Church, and a memorial stone to Mrs. Alcey Litster is now in St. Matthew's Parish Church in Brixton, South West London. The medieval church was one of the thirteen Peculiar Churches of London that were exempt from the jurisdiction of the Bishop of London and were responsible directly to the Archbishop of Canterbury.