St. Margaret Pattens

For our second stop on the tour, we will be visiting St. Margaret Pattens a church that was barely damaged in the war. The church gets its odd name to help tell it apart from all the other churches dedicated to St. Margaret. The church was destroyed in the Great Fire of London and rebuilt by Sir. Christopher Wren. Wren is credited with rebuilding 51 churches in London after the Great Fire, the most important one being St. Paul's Cathedral. The church took on the name Pattens after Wren redesigned it. Pattens were wooden undershoes which were worn beneath normal footwear and raised the wearer above the street, allowing them to walk across muddy roads and still arrive at their destination clean. This footwear was made and sold near the church was located. A notice in the church still "requests women to leave their Pattens before entering". If you look up you will see a 61-meter-high spire, Wren's third highest and the only one that he designed in a medieval style. This church serves as a rare example of those not damaged by the Germans during the Blitz. We are lucky that this church received little damage because we are still able to see and appreciate Sir Christopher Wren's unique architectural style. Because St. Margaret Pattens received almost no damage it was used as a place of worship for churches that had been destroyed: "For a year we managed in this accommodation with larger services – Empire Day, Harvest Festival and so forth – we held in the ruined nave. Then for a year we enjoyed the hospitality of St Margaret Pattens." St. Margaret Pattens has always been a source of religion in the heart of the corporate business of London. Even in 1882 it was described, "A few defects of the kind are now modestly redeemed by the decorations of' the chancel and altar, that designed to recall a very much more remote and perhaps more pious age. The ritual at St. Margaret's is in consonance with tendencies which in our time denote courage in invoking sensuous aids in reviving active religion; and truly they denote taste in preferring the aid even of sound and colour in their highest uses in religious art to that of militant Peripatetics whose co-operation in the same good work of spiritual revival is not wholly despised by evangelic". During World War II London saw a surge of refugees from Europe as we learned at St. Olave's. This caused a religious revival during the War, as London was filled with Catholic Poles, Jews, and many other faiths helping London become the center of multiculturalism that it is today.

This destination is the second stop on the London Blitz Cathedral Tour.