Vestry and
Tower
SAINT MARY MAGDALENE
THE PARISH CHURCH
OF EAST HAM
THE building stands on an ancient site. There was a Roman cemetery close
by, near what is now called Roman Road, which runs about a quarter of a
mile to the South West. This cemetery was discovered in 1864, and Roman
coffins from it are now in the British Museum.
The present church was built about 1130. The plan of a nave with a
semi-circular apse at the East end is based on that of a Roman basilica:
many churches of this type were built at the time of the Emperor
Constantine in the fourth century A.D. This Roman (or Romanesque)
style came to England through the French invasion and is therefore called
Norman. The Chancel (Latin cancelli - railing) is for the choir or for ritual
and stands between the sanctuary (with the altar and apse) and the nave
(for the congregation). The tower was added in the thirteenth century,
though what is seen today dates mainly from the sixteenth century.
A walk round the outside gives a fascinating glimpse of the building
materials used. Kentish rag, flints and chalk from Purley, Caen stone from
Normandy, pudding-stone from Norfolk together with some ancient
Roman tiles are all easy to see on the surface of the thick rubble walls held
together with Norman mortar. The twelfth century church consisted only
of sanctuary, chancel and nave, and it is easy to see that the tower was
added later, the South porch later still and the West door in Victorian times.
There is also some very good eighteenth century brick work.
In the postal district of London this is the only complete Norman
building which was built as a parish church and is still used as such. Inside,
the semicircular arch in front of the apse, the very thick walls, the very
small windows (one on the North and one on the South of the nave with
three in the apse) with deeply-splayed sides and the zig-zag ornament on
the blind arcades in the chancel are all typical of the Norman period.
The doorway between the tower and the nave is especially fine. Its
mouldings show the introduction of the round into the square which
creates greys shading into black shadows and into white areas where light
falls. This was a new discovery at the time, and artists will be reminded that
something of the same development came some three hundred years later
in the history of painting. Originally it was the main outer door to the
nave and was exposed to the weather. The protection given to it by the
building of the tower must be thanked for its good condition.
The spiral metal staircase and the first floor of the tower date from 1908.
The second floor is that of the belfry, which is reached by a sixteenth
century spiral stone staircase with an external door. There was once a ring
of five bells, of which only one remains. This is the heaviest bell with the
deepest tone, known as the Tenor. It was cast in 1380 with this
inscription in Lombardic capitals:
DULCIS SISTO MELIS VOCOR CAMPADA GABRIELIS
"A bell of sweetest tone, Gabriel's name I own". To be named after the
Archangel Gabriel is very fitting for a bell rung thrice daily for the Angelus,
which begins Angelus domini nuntiavit Mariae . . . ("The angel of the Lord
announced to Mary . . . ")