They are at this very moment
pulling down another, the poor old church of St. Mary Magdalen. The
tower is down, the roof is off the windows are all broken, in a week
or two the church will be razed to the ground, and in a year or two
its very memory will have perished. Why, we vainly ask, do they pull
it down? What harm has the old church done? To be sure its
congregation numbered less than a dozen, but then we must not estimate
an old church by a modern congregation. There has been a church here
from time immemorial. It is mentioned in the year 1120. It was,
therefore, certainly a Saxon church. Edward the Confessor probably
worshipped here--perhaps King Alfred himself. One of its Rectors was
John Carpenter, executor of Whittington, and founder of the City of
London School; another was Barham, author of the 'Ingoldsby Legends.'
The loss of St. Mary Magdalen is one more link with the past
absolutely destroyed, never to be replaced. These destroyers, for
instance, are the kind of people who pulled down Sion College. As
often as I pass the spot where that place once stood I mourn and
lament its loss more and more. It was the college of the City clergy,
they were its guardians, it was their library, it contained their
reading hall; formerly it held their garden, and it had their
almshouses.
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