CHAPTER 13

Hail Holy River, Mother of Grace

There is a church of St. Mary the Virgin at Whitchurch-on-Thames. There is a church of St. Mary in Reading, founded by St. Birinus in the early years of the seventh century. In Wargrave there is a church of St. Mary, also of great antiquity. There is an ancient church of St. Mary in Cricklade; on its north wall was a half-length fresco of the Virgin and Child. The original dedication of the church of St. Lawrence in Lechlade was to St. Mary. The church of St. Mary the Virgin at Castle Eaton had a fresco of the Virgin. The most perfect Norman church in the country is that of St. Mary the Virgin perched above the river at Iffley. The parish church of Putney is dedicated to St. Mary the Virgin, as is the church at Bampton. The church of St. Mary the Virgin at Long Wittenham is erected at one end of the village. Among the warehouses of Rotherhithe, beside the Thames, still stands the church of St. Mary the Virgin.

The church in the market place at Wallingford is known as St. Mary-the-More, in distinction to the one of St. Mary-the-Less that was united with St. Peter in the fourteenth century. The ancient church of St. Mary at Eisey, or “island in the river,” was built on the summit of the hill; it was demolished in the last century for absence of worshippers. There was on the island of Sheppey, at the mouth of the Thames, an abbey dedicated to the Blessed Virgin; the abbey church of the Blessed Virgin Mary still stands there, at the highest point of the island. The church of St. Mary at Cholsey, or “Ceol’s island,” was originally built upon a dry place in a marshy area. There may have been some sanctity associated with these refuges from the river. In the centre of the island still known as the Isle of Dogs there was formerly a small chapel dedicated to St. Mary, founded for the purpose of offering up masses for the souls of mariners. It has long gone. London’s church of St. Mary at Hill was named because of its position on a steep bank above Billingsgate. St. Mary le Strand stands on an eminence where the Strand and Fleet Street now meet. The river was of course much closer to it, at the time of its erection, than it is now in its present embanked state.

John Stow records that on the marshy bank, opposite Greenwich, stood “the remains of a chapel built of stone” that had been dedicated to St. Mary; it seems to have been connected with the monastery of St. Mary of Graces that had stood near the Tower of London. At Kempsford, Horns Cross, Gravesend, Benfleet, Corringham, Datchet, Hambleden and Teddington are parish churches dedicated to St. Mary. The church of St. Mary at Sunbury lies on the site of a prehistoric settlement. The church of St. Mary the Virgin at Purley is close to that point on the river where a ferry once crossed to Mapledurham. The church of St. Mary at Streatley is also beside the river, as is the church of St. Mary at North Stoke. The ferry that ran between Cookham and Cliveden was known as “My Lady Ferry.” The university church of Oxford in the High Street is also that of St. Mary the Virgin. The parish church of Mortlake is dedicated to St. Mary, as are those of Hampton and of Barnes and of Twickenham, of Walton-upon-Thames and of Thame.

There is some dispute whether the parish church of Langford, near Kelmscott, is dedicated to St. Mary or St. Matthew but, as Fred Thacker wrote in The Stripling Thames, Mary “was certainly a very favourite dedication amongst these churches.” The church of Abingdon Abbey was originally dedicated to St. Mary the Virgin, but in the fifteenth century it was rededicated to All Saints. The church of North Stifford is named in honour of the Virgin. So is the church at Chadwell. These are little-known places, but they are part of a broad sweep of faith. The church of St. Mary at Buscot is beside the river, and contains stained-glass windows designed by Edward Burne-Jones. The little church by the river at Inglesham has a carving of the Virgin and Child, dated to the early eleventh century, on its south wall; the sculpted forms are taken from a Byzantine model. St. Mary’s at Staines is erected upon the site of a seventh-century church. The church of Lambeth is dedicated to St. Mary. A little further along the river, at Battersea, also stands the church of St. Mary.

The abbey at Eynsham, of which now only a few stones remain, was named in honour of the Virgin. The monastery at Hurley was dedicated to the Virgin, and was known as Lady Place. Grace’s Alley, by Wellclose Square in the East End, is the only memorial to the Cistercian Abbey of St. Mary of Graces that stood by the river. The nunnery at Godstow was dedicated “in honour of the Virgin Mary and St. John the Baptist.” The priory at Bisham was dedicated to Mary. The Bridgettine abbey at Syon was dedicated to the Virgin as well as to St. Bridget herself. Eton School, beside the river, was founded in the fifteenth century as “the College of the Blessed Mary of Eton, beside Windsor.” The cathedral of Southwark was originally known as St. Mary Overie, or St. Mary over the river.

From the downstream parapet of the bridge at Radcot a niche still projects; it once supported an image of the Virgin that was destroyed during the Civil War. One arch of the medieval London Bridge was known as “Mary Lock.” In the same period the records refer to “the Ymage of our Lady on the Brydge” and in the church beside the bridge, St. Magnus, a perpetual chantry was set up in honour of the Virgin where “Salve Regina” was sung every evening.

The ancient abbey at Barking harboured “the Lady Chapel of Berkyngechirche in London” which became the destination of Marian pilgrims; a statue of the Virgin here was reputed to possess miraculous powers. At Caversham there stands Our Lady of Caversham chapel, the only relic of a great shrine to the Virgin where was erected a jewel-encrusted image of Mary, again supposed to contain sacred powers, to which pilgrims travelled from all over the country. When Doctor London, an agent of the Crown, came to this holy place at the time of dissolution he reported in apparent disgust that “even at my being ther com in nott so few as a dosyn with imagies of waxe.”

When the Saxon kings were crowned at Kingston, the ceremony was conducted in the chapel of St. Mary; it was in this chapel that John Aubrey, in his Antiquities of the County of Surrey (1718), recorded the presence of five pictures of the Saxon monarchs. In the grounds of Culham Court, by the river, is a copy of Elizabeth Frink’s statue known as “Striding Madonna.”

This litany of names and places suggests that there is more than coincidence at work in the association of the Virgin and the Thames. From the churches of the Upper Thames to the churches of the estuary, the dedication to St. Mary far surpasses all others. It might in fact be claimed that the Thames is Mary’s river. From the seventh to the fourteenth centuries, the churches in her name sprang up on both banks of the river from the source to the sea. There are more than fifty churches, chapels and chantries devoted to the Mother of God, an astonishing number for a river that extends for only 215 miles.

The connection has not been noticed in books upon the Thames, but it is one of deep significance in the history of a river that has always been associated with the “great mother” of primaeval beliefs that predate those of Celtic myth. There are strange laws of association at work here. In Irish myth Bridget was the goddess of fertility—and also the Swan Goddess—and according to Robert Graves in The White Goddess (1948) “in medieval Irish poetry Mary was equally plainly identified with Brigit.” The great goddesses of the river in ancient and classical myth, Isis in particular, are thus associated with the Virgin Queen and Mother of God. Isis herself was once the Mother Goddess, the emblem of fertility and the womb of rebirth. It is not a great leap of faith from Isis to the Virgin. There is a strange reference in William Harrison’s The Description of Britaine (1587) to the church of St. Mary in Reading when he refers to those natives “which call the aforesaid church by the name of S. Marie Auderies, or S. Marie ouer Isis, or Ise.” The names become conflated, and substituted. Mary is simply the latest, and perhaps the most powerful, of all the water goddesses. The river was in legend and superstition also associated with the virgin. Virgins would bathe in the Thames so that they might become fertile. It is one of the oldest myths of the river. So who better to bless the water than the Virgin herself?