In olden times, long before Queen Victoria Street existed as such, there was a thoroughfare called Watling Street, which ran from the centre of London out to the northwest and was thought to be an original Roman road. The Church of St Mary Aldermary stands between Queen Victoria Street and what was once Watling Street. Its tower (which pre-dates Wren’s church by some sixty-two years) is a prominent landmark on Queen Victoria Street. The building was first mentioned in 1080 and was rebuilt at least once before the Great Fire. Wren erected the present structure in 1681–82.
The curious name, typically, is of uncertain origin. Stow says it is called ‘Aldermary’ (or ‘elder Mary’) ‘because the same was very old, and elder than any church of St Marie in the city...’ However, another possible source of the name is ‘altera’ or ‘the other’ Mary, indicating that while several churches are dedicated to the mother of our Lord, this church bears the name of St Mary Magdalene.
Several lord mayors were buried in the medieval church and one, Sir Henry Keble, was the benefactor of the building constructed in the early sixteenth century. St Henry had a prominent monument in the church, but Stow tells us that later lord mayors and other wealthy persons were buried in his vault, ‘whose bones were unkindly cast out, and his monument pulled down’. In 1835 a crypt measuring 50 x 10 feet and believed to be that of Keble’s church was discovered under some old houses on Wading Street.
The rebuilding after the Great Fire was underwritten by one Henry Rogers, and he is supposed to have stipulated that the new building be a faithful copy of the old. Apparently, this is why Wren designed it along Gothic instead of classical lines. In the Victorian era St Mary Aldermary was furnished with reredos, altar rails, organ screen, gallery front and pews in the dark wood fashionable during the period, and a screen was put up dividing the lobby from the nave. The ceiling is original from Wren’s design but, curiously, is wrought of plaster rather than stone. An unusual object taken from the Keble crypt and now on the north wall of the chancel is a fine monument by Francis Bacon—entirely blank. The unfounded story is that this was placed by a widow for her deceased husband, but the lady married again before she could think of a suitable epitaph.