This Wren church is at the back of the Bank of England on a short street called Lothbury (hence the name). Lothbury is an extension of Gresham Street, in the heart of London’s financial district. Stow says the church is ‘upon the water-course of the Walbrook’, so there is a possibility that the name ‘Lothbury’ is connected with the river in some way.
St Margaret’s is now a parish church, with a new parish created by the City Churches Reorganization Measure of 1954. It is a good example of how the residential population of the City has shrunk over the centuries, as it combines the former parishes of eight churches as follows: St Stephen’s, Coleman Street; St Christopher-le-Stocks; St Bartholomew-by-the-Exchange; St Olave, Jewry; St Martin Pomeroy; St Mildred Poultry; St Mary Colechurch; and, of course, St Margaret’s itself.
Because all of these churches (and others nearby as well) have been destroyed in one way or another, the interior of St Margaret’s is graced by many of their fine furnishings and memorials. The best of these is the magnificent screen, which came from All Hallows the Great, Upper Thames Street, when that church was demolished in 1894. St Margaret’s former graveyard is now a small court with a fountain. In the eighteenth century there were small shops against the front of the church (as at St Peter, Cornhill, today), but these have been removed.