St Margaret's Church, Leicester, more formally the Prebendal Church of St Margaret's, Leicester, is a large late medieval Anglican parish church constructed on Anglo Saxon foundations in inner city Leicester, England. One of the five surviving medieval parish churches of Leicester Old Town, medieval tradition held it to be the mother church of the borough, its oldest place of Christian worship, perhaps dating back to 679. It is also the only one of the towns churches to be located extramurally (outside the now vanished Roman walls of Leicester). The large suburban and rural parish covered the territory of the Bishops Fee and was a prebendal peculiar of Lincoln between 1199 and 1879, retaining the title of prebendal church by convention since.
Reconstructed at least four times in its history, most notably in the 15th century, the present structure was described by the antiquarians John Leyland and John Nichols as "the fairest parish church in Leicester" while Nicholas Pevsner noted that its vaulted double height south porch and the towers stair turret are both unique in Leicestershire. Today, thanks both to its monumental perpendicular tower and its location opposite Leicester's busiest bus station, it is one of the city's most recognisable historic structures. It is also noted across Leicestershire and the wider East Midlands for its large peal of 14 bells, ten of which have been in the tower since the 17th century. It is a Grade I Listed Building and a member of the Major Churches Network.
History
St Margaret's has a long and complex history dating back perhaps as early the seventh century. The building is 12th, 13th, and mostly 15th century. Saxon foundations dating to the 9th or 10th century have also been uncovered. In medieval times it was venerated as the mother church of the Borough of Leicester, the oldest of its various Christian places of worship. It was also thought to be the former minster of its Anglo Saxon Bishops between 679 and the coming of the Vikings in the 870's. Because of this it became a focal point for all of Leicester's other parishes and monastic houses, the destination of the town's principal annual procession on Whit Monday.
After the Norman Conquest in 1110 it remained one of only two churches in Leicester in the hands of the Bishop of Lincoln. This was because it served as the parish church and administrative hub of a large estate known as the Bishops Fee owned by the Diocese of Lincoln. St Margaret's also maintained a chapel of ease at Knighton, today the parish church of St Mary Magdalene, Knighton, in the far reaches of that estate. From the late 12th century the parish became a prebend and the church a prebendal peculiar. This exempted St Margaret's from normal diocesan authority placing it under the personal rule of a senior clergyman called a prebendary. Because the eastern and northern suburbs of Leicester Old Town fell into the vast predominantly rural estate of the Bishops Fee, the Bishop of Lincoln could levy taxes on them helping to fund the elaborate construction and decoration of the church.
Unlike the parishes constrained by the town walls, the eastern suburb could expand into open countryside meaning an ever-expanding population to fill the congregation in the early 19th century. During the 19th- and 20th-century expansion of the town, many new daughter parishes were carved out of St Margaret's historic territory significantly reducing the area it served. Further to this 19th-century redrawing of the parish boundaries, in the 20th century it was expanded again, over the River Soar and into the territory within the old town walls, when the neighbouring parishes of St Leonard's and All Saints were amalgamated with St Margaret's. The prebend was abolished in 1879 ending the peculiarity of the parish and making the church's prebendal status purely honorary. Since the 1960s, the 19th century mix of industrial, commercial, and domestic buildings in the parish were cleared away when the inner ring road was constructed. This cut the historic old town in two and divided St Margaret's from its historic parochial hubs in the northern and eastern suburbs (the eastern suburb has become Leicester City Centre) as well as removing the resident population.
In its long history St Margaret's was associated with the names of many notable churchmen and Leicestrians. Of the churchmen these include possibly all the early bishops of Leicester, William of Blois, Jocelin of Wells, Robert Grosseteste, Thomas Wolsey, and many others. Of the locals the most notable would probably be Robert le Bossu, John Penny and Mary Linwood.
The site in Roman and medieval times
The site presently occupied by St Margaret's Church stood outside the northernmost corner of the city walls of the ancient settlement of Ratae Corieltauvorum. The two diverging walls are represented by Sanvey Gate, following the route of the north wall, and Church Gate (whose lower section became the southern end of St Margaret's Way after redevelopment in the 1960s), following the route of the east wall. These walls survived the Roman occupation and became the boundary of the ancient borough of Leicester. During Roman times the area was used as cemetery.
After the Roman occupation the areas outside the old northern and eastern city gates gradually became suburbs which the church of St Margaret would serve. The track skirting the northern wall opposite the church became the cities principal processional route known as Sanvey Gate, an early English derivative of Sacra Via or Holy Way.
Possible origins of the church Traditional origin account
In the Middle Ages evidence suggests St Margaret's was regarded as the mother church of the Borough of Leicester, the oldest Christian place of worship in the town, and the cathedral church of the ancient bishops of Leicester (679–874). This is backed up by records of pre-reformation religious tradition, the Whit Monday procession (see below) being always made the local mother church by a group of parishes. It was also upheld by John Leyland's report in his Itineraries of 1538, which assumed St Margaret's to have been the ancient cathedral. This account was quoted by John Nichols in his History and Antiquities of the County of Leicester of 1795. The 1860 architectural history of William Jackson in the Transactions of the Leicestershire Archaeological and Historical Society speaks of "a dim record of a cathedral which stood here in the seventh century." The dim record was maintained as a certitude in Mrs T Fielding Johnson's 1891 work Glimpses of Ancient Leicester, the first clear modern source of the mother church tradition.
There were almost certainly Christians in the Roman settlement of Ratae which preceded Leicester. However, mass conversion to the faith only occurred after the 6th and 7th centuries, in the aftermath of Saint Cedd's mission to the Mercian Middle Angles in 653. The mission returned with Prince Peada after he had made pilgrimage to Northumbria to receive instruction in the Christian faith and baptism. It was a late wave of the broader Hiberno-Scottish missions that had converted northern England and had its origins on the Holy Island of Lindisfarne and in the missionary efforts and teaching work of Saint Aidan and Saint Cuthbert. The tradition would suggest that the church was perhaps established as early as the 7th century, either early after the mission of 653 or sometime after 679 when the ancient See of Leicester was created for Cuthwine, and certainly before the flight of the last bishop Ceobred in 874. In modern times this traditional belief has fallen out of favour and St Nicholas Church is now commonly regarded as the earliest place of Christian worship in Leicester Old Town. This is perhaps because only foundations survive at St Margaret's while a complete 9th century nave and 11th century tower survive at St Nicholas. It is also because the mother church tradition has been increasingly forgotten in the aftermath of the reformation, most especially during the 20th century after its 19th-century recovery.
A saints shrine or Roman place of worship A modern hypothesis found in church guidebooks supposes that St Margaret's was constructed over the grave of a revered local Romano British Christian around whom a cult had developed. The theory is based on the fact that the church stands in a Romano British cemetery. This was the origin of many churches including the Basilicas of St Peter and St Paul in Rome and St Albans Abbey in England. It would also favour a very early dating. This hypothesis is speculative, not reflected by the dedication to Margaret of Antioch. There is also no mention of the cult of an ancient Saxon saint in records of parish devotional life from the later Middle Ages.
An earlier version of this theory hypothesised by Ernest Morris is that the site may have had surviving evidence of Romano British Christian practice. This might account for the medieval attribution of mother church status to St Margaret's. Again this is speculative since no evidence survives in the church fabric nor are there any historic accounts to support it.
A church for Leicester's Vikings The most recent and now widespread theory is that St Margaret's was built to serve the Norse speaking Viking population of Leicester which settled in around 874-7 AD following the invasion of the Great Heathen Army. For just over 40 years between 877 and 918 the Vikings had the ascendancy over the Anglo Saxons in the town and Leicester was one of the Five Boroughs of the Danelaw. In 917 Edward the Elder and Ethelfleda, the children of the Alfred the Great, reconquered Leicester and the rest of the Danelaw returning it to Anglo Saxon leadership. The Viking theory of St Margaret's origin assumes the Danish citizens either departed from the city walls following reconquest or had never chosen to settle within them and that they were responsible for developing the eastern and northern suburbs. This is plausible from the widespread use of the word gate instead of street (from the Old Norse word gata, meaning street) in the eastern and northern suburbs covered by St Margaret's historic parish. It would also assume the church was either founded by or resulted from the evangelisation efforts of Ethelfleda. Ethelfleda has been credited with the reconstruction of the town walls, the nave of St Nicholas, and the foundation of St Mary de Castro.
A Viking foundation would rule out the possibility of St Margaret's being Leicester's oldest Christian place of worship. Christianity arrived in the 7th century while the Vikings arrived in the 9th and only converted to Christianity in the 10th. However, if we assume that they reconstructed a church they had earlier desecrated following their conversion to Christianity then the two theories can be held in tandem. This appears to be the approach of some who have reviewed the recorded history.
Anglo Saxon church Whatever origin theory is preferred it is certainly the case that the church's history began before the Norman Conquest. This was confirmed by the excavation of a small section in the eastern part of the nave. It revealed the Saxon foundation stones and these are now visible through a glass window in the floor in the nave.
Earliest stone church
The few stones visible beneath the floor at the east end of the nave are part of a longer wall excavated in the early 20th century. They mark out a church similar in form to St Peter-on-the-Wall in Essex or St Laurence's, Bradford on Avon. The remains have been cautiously dated to 1010, just 50 years before the Norman Conquest and over 100 years after the nave of St Nicholas is thought to have been constructed. This dating is speculative given the marginal remains nor are those foundations certainly the earliest, merely the earliest thus far excavated.
Viking connection