The Church of St Margaret, Westminster Abbey is an Anglican parish church in the grounds of Westminster Abbey on Parliament Square, London, England. It is dedicated to Margaret of Antioch, and forms part of a single World Heritage Site with the Palace of Westminster and Westminster Abbey.
History and description The church was founded in the twelfth century by Benedictine monks, so that local people who lived in the area around the Abbey could worship separately at their own simpler parish church, and historically it was within the hundred of Ossulstone in the county of Middlesex. In 1914, in a preface to Memorials of St. Margaret's Church, Westminster, a former Rector of St Margaret's, Hensley Henson, reported a mediaeval tradition that the church was as old as Westminster Abbey, owing its origins to the same royal saint, Edward the Confessor, and that "The two churches, conventual and parochial, have stood side by side for more than eight centuries – not, of course, the existing fabrics, but older churches of which the existing fabrics are successors on the same site."From "Memorials of St. Margaret's church, Westminister, comprising the parish registers, 1539-1660, and other churchwardens' accounts, 1460-1603", reported in Notes and Queries (1914), p. 518.
St Margaret's was rebuilt from 1486 to 1523, at the instigation of King Henry VII, and the new church, which largely still stands today, was consecrated on 9 April 1523. It has been called "the last church in London decorated in the Catholic tradition before the Reformation", and on each side of a large rood cross there stood richly painted statues of St Mary and St John, while the building had several internal chapels. In the 1540s, the new church came near to demolition, when Edward Seymour, 1st Duke of Somerset, planned to take it down to provide good-quality materials for Somerset House, his own new palace in the Strand. He was only kept from carrying out his plan by the resistance of armed parishioners.Richardson, John, The Annals of London: a Year-by-year Record of a Thousand Years of History (University of California Press, 2000), p. 81.
In 1614, St Margaret's became the parish church of the Palace of Westminster, when the Puritans of the seventeenth century, unhappy with the highly liturgical Abbey, chose to hold their Parliamentary services in a church they found more suitable: a practice that has continued since that time. An additional detached burial ground was added in 1625 at what is now Christchurch Gardens.
Between 1734 and 1738, the north-west tower was rebuilt to designs by John James; at the same time, the whole structure was encased in Portland stone. Both the eastern and the western porch were added later, with J. L. Pearson as architect. In 1878, the church's interior was greatly restored and altered to its current appearance by Sir George Gilbert Scott, although many Tudor features were retained.
In 1863, during preliminary explorations preparing for this restoration, Scott found several doors overlaid with what was believed to be human skin. After doctors had examined this skin, Victorian historians theorized that the skin might have been that of William the Sacrist, who organized a gang that, in 1303, robbed the King of the equivalent of, in modern currency, $100 million (see Richard of Pudlicott). It was a complex scheme, involving several gang members disguised as monks planting bushes on the palace. After the stealthy burglary six months later, the loot was concealed in these bushes. The historians believed that William the Sacrist was flayed alive as punishment and his skin was used to make these royal doors, perhaps situated initially at nearby Westminster Palace.Arnold, Catharine, Underworld London, Crime and Punishment in the Capital City, Simon & Schuster, 2012, p. 15. Subsequent study revealed that the skins were bovine in origin, not human.
By the 1970s, the number of people living nearby was in the hundreds. Ecclesiastical responsibility for the parish was reallocated to neighbouring parishes by the Westminster Abbey and Saint Margaret Westminster Act 1972, and the church was brought under the authority of the Dean and Chapter of Westminster Abbey, ceasing to be a parish church.
In July 2020, it was announced, without any consultation, that regular Sunday worship at the church would cease, and the choir was disbanded. Members of the disbanded congregation launched a petition, which garnered more than 1700 signatures, and the regular community felt that The Abbey's services are not intimate, nor do they invite participation, being quite formal. The Abbey, lacking a regular congregation and is mostly made up of tourists was felt to be profoundly different in spirit to the worshiping community at St Margaret's, which consisted of 60-120 regular worshipers. The cessation of regular worship was lamented in the press, As of 2025, a weekly sung eucharist has been restarted on Sunday evenings.
An annual new year service for the Coptic Orthodox Church in Britain takes place in the church in October, and in 2016 Bishop Angaelos gave the sermon.Messages from Prince of Wales, politicians, church leaders at Coptic New Year Service, Westminster Abbey dated 24 October 2016, at indcatholicnews.com. Retrieved 12 January 2018.
The Rector of St Margaret's is often a canon of Westminster Abbey.
Commemorative windows
Notable windows include the east window of 1509 of Flemish stained glass, created to commemorate the betrothal of Catherine of Aragon to Henry VIII. This has had a chequered history. It was given by Henry VII to Waltham Abbey in Essex, and at the Dissolution of the Monasteries the last Abbot sent it to a private chapel at New Hall, Essex. That came into the possession of Thomas Boleyn, 1st Earl of Wiltshire, the father of Anne Boleyn, then Thomas Radclyffe, 3rd Earl of Sussex, next George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham, after him Oliver Cromwell, from whom it reverted to the second Duke of Buckingham, next General Monk, Duke of Albemarle, and after him John Olmius, then Mr Conyers of Copt Hall, Essex, whose son sold the window to the parish of St Margaret's in 1758, for 400 guineas. The money came from a grant of £4,000, which parliament had made to the parish that year for the renovation of the church and the rebuilding of the chancel.Wheatley, H. B., and Peter Cunningham, London Past and Present: Its History, Associations, and Traditions, p. 467.
Other windows commemorate William Caxton, England's first printer, who was buried at the church in 1491, Sir Walter Raleigh, executed in Old Palace Yard and then also buried in the church in 1618, the poet John Milton, a parishioner of the church, and Admiral Robert Blake.
The Victorian glass that once filled the eight bays of the south aisle was destroyed by enemy action during the Second World War. In 1966, all eight windows were provided with new glass designed by John Piper and made by his longtime collaborator Patrick Reyntiens. Piper's unified scheme filled each window with an uncompromisingly modern abstract design, intended to create a "total impression of living radiance, in shades of silvery grey predominantly with splashes of pale greens, yellows and blues in varied density, to filter the daylight." The new windows were dedicated on 15 January 1967 in memory of Canon Carnegie and his wife, Peter Kemp-Welch, Clarence Fletcher and Richard Costain.
Weddings As well as marrying its own parishioners, the church has long been a popular venue for society weddings, as Members of Parliament, peers, and officers of the House of Lords and House of Commons can choose to be married in it. Notable weddings include:
5 July 1631: Edmund Waller and Anne Banks, who was an heiress and a ward of the Court of Aldermen, were married at the church in defiance of orders of the Court and the Privy Council of England. Waller had previously carried the bride off and been forced to return her. On a complaint being made to the Star Chamber, Waller was pardoned by King Charles I.R. E. C. Waters, Genealogical memoirs of the extinct family of Chester of Chicheley p. 91 13 May 1654: Lady Mary Springett (William Penn's mother-in-law) and Isaac Pennington 1 December 1655: Samuel Pepys and Elisabeth Marchant de St. Michel 12 November 1656: John Milton and Katherine Woodcock'Milton, John', in Journal of the Society of Arts dated 8 November 1867, p. 755 12 June 1895: William Hicks and Grace Lynn Joynson 12 September 1908: Winston Churchill and Clementine Hozier 21 April 1920: Harold Macmillan, and Lady Dorothy Cavendish 18 July 1922: Lord Louis Mountbatten, and Edwina Ashley 8 October 1993: David Armstrong-Jones, Viscount Linley, and the Hon. Serena Stanhope
Other notable weddings include some of the Bright Young People. (American ed.: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, New York, 2009)
Baptisms Charles Weston, 3rd Earl of Portland, 19 May 1639Robert Edmond Chester Waters, Genealogical memoirs of the extinct family of Chester of Chicheley (1878), p. 105 Barbara Villiers, only child of Lord Grandison and a future royal mistress of King Charles II, was christened in the church on 27 November 1640.Maurice Petherick, Restoration Rogues (1951), p. 327 Charles Montagu, 1st Earl of Halifax, was christened in the church on 12 May 1661The Gentleman's Magazine, Volume 189 (1850), pp. 367, 368 Charles FitzRoy, 2nd Duke of Cleveland, eldest son of Barbara Villiers, was christened in the church on 16 June 1662, when the father's name was given as her husband, Lord Castlemaine, instead of as the King, who later acknowledged the child as his. In October 1850 The Gentleman's Magazine reported this entry and claimed it as "an untruth" and "a new fact in the secret history of Charles II". Thomas Pelham-Clinton, 3rd Duke of Newcastle, 28 July 1752William Coxe, Memoirs of the Administration of the Right Honourable Henry Pelham Volume 1 (London: Longman, Brown, Rees, Orme & Green, 1829), p. xxx Olaudah Equiano, a slave who bought his freedom, becoming a key abolitionist, was christened as Gustavus on 9 February 1759, when he was described in the parish register as "Gustavus Vassa a Black born in Carolina 12 years old".Felicity Nussbaum, ed., The Global Eighteenth Century (2005), p. 232
Burials William Caxton, 1491 John Sutton, 3rd Baron Dudley, "Lord Quondam", 18 September 1553; and his wife Lady Cicely Grey, 28 April 1554 Nicholas Ludford, 1557 John Sheppard, December 1558, composer Blanche Parry, 1590 Thomas Churchyard, 1604, Elizabethan poet, soldier and courtier Sir Walter Raleigh, 1618 William Murray, 2nd Earl of Tullibardine, 30 July 1627 Edward Grimeston, 14 December 1640 Following the Restoration of the Monarchy, in 1661 several Parliamentarians who had been buried in Westminster Abbey, Admiral Robert Blake, Denis Bond, Nicholas Boscawen, Mary Bradshaw, Sir William Constable, Admiral Richard Deane, Isaac Dorislaus, Anne Fleetwood, Thomas Hesilrige, Humphrey Mackworth, Stephen Marshall, Thomas May, John Meldrum, Admiral Edward Popham, John Pym, Humphrey Salwey, William Strong, William Strode, and William Twisse, were all disinterred from there and reburied in an unmarked pit in St Margaret's churchyard, on the orders of King Charles II. A memorial to them is set into the external wall to the left of the main west entrance.Oliver Cromwell Westminster Abbey Mary [Davies] [Born 1675] Widow of Sir Thomas Grosvenor, 3rd Baronet; she is buried in the courtyard close to the north porch of the church Wenceslas Hollar, March 1677 Thomas Blood, 1680 John West, 6th Baron De La Warr, 1723 Bishop Nicholas Clagett, 1746 Elizabeth Elstob, scholar and early feminist, 1756.John Chambers, Biographical Illustrations of Worcestershire (1820), p. 347 Ignatius Sancho, composer, writer, slavery abolitionist, 1780 Henry Constantine Jennings, 1819E. Angelicoussis, "Jennings, Henry Constantine (1731–1819)" in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004,