The church's spiritual and architectural importance is celebrated in the poem The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot, who wrote, "the walls of Magnus Martyr hold/Inexplicable splendour of Ionian white and gold".

[19] However, in the mid-19th century the prominent Danish archaeologist Professor Jens Jacob Asmussen Worsaae (1821–85) instead promoted the association with Magnus of Orkney, during his visit to the British Isles in 1846–47, when he was formulating the concept of the "Viking Age",[20] and then in his Account of the Danes and Norwegians in England, Scotland, and Ireland of 1852.

[13] It is possible that the dedication was influenced by Cnut's journey to Rome in 1027 or by the translation to Canterbury in 1023 of the remains of Alphage, Bishop and Martyr, from St Paul's Cathedral, where a cult had rapidly developed at his tomb.

It was included in an "Almanack" attached to Miles Coverdale's translation of the Bible[37] and in the Preces Privitae of 1564 (authorised by Elizabeth I for private devotion), but was excluded from the Book of Common Prayer.

[40] A metropolitan bishop of London attended the Council of Arles in 314, which indicates that there must have been a Christian community in Londinium by this date, and it has been suggested that a large aisled building excavated in 1993 near Tower Hill can be compared with the 4th-century Cathedral of St Tecla in Milan.

Thames Street appeared in the second half of the 11th century immediately behind (north of) the old Roman riverside wall and in 1931 a piling from this was discovered during the excavation of the foundations of a nearby building.

Until 1831 the bridge was aligned with Fish Street Hill, so the main entrance into the City from the south passed the West door of St Magnus on the north bank of the river.

[71] In 1276 it was recorded that "the church of St. Magnus the Martyr is worth £15 yearly and Master Geoffrey de la Wade now holds it by the grant of the prior of Bermundeseie and the abbot of Westminster to whom King Henry conferred the advowson by his charter.

In The General Prologue of Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales the five guildsmen "were clothed alle in o lyveree of a solempne and a greet fraternitee"[82] and may be thought of as belonging to the guild in the parish of St Magnus, or one like it.

[87] For example, Henry Crane, citizen and fletcher, requested burial in the cloister of St Magnus Martyr and left 3s 4d to the parish clerks' brotherhood to pray for his soul in his will of 18 July, proved 4 August 1486.

Sir William Garrard, Master of the Haberdashers' Company, Alderman, Sheriff of London in 1553/53, Lord Mayor in 1555/56 and a Member of Parliament was born in the parish and buried at St Magnus in 1571.

[98]Simon Lowe was a Member of Parliament and Master of the Merchant Taylors' Company during the reign of Queen Mary and one of the jurors who acquitted Sir Nicholas Throckmorton in 1554.

[99] According to the martyrologist John Foxe, a woman was imprisoned in the 'cage' on London Bridge in April 1555 and told to "cool herself there" for refusing to pray at St Magnus for the recently deceased Pope Julius III.

A later edition of Stow's Survey records that "On the 13th day of February, between eleven and twelve at night, there happened in the house of one Briggs, a Needle-maker near St Magnus Church, at the North end of the Bridge, by the carelessness of a Maid-Servant setting a tub of hot sea-coal ashes under a pair of stairs, a sad and lamentable fire, which consumed all the buildings before eight of the clock the next morning, from the North end of the Bridge to the first vacancy on both sides, containing forty-two houses; water then being very scarce, the Thames being almost frozen over.

Glass painters such as Baptista Sutton, who had previously installed "Laudian innovations", found new employment by repairing and replacing these to meet increasingly strict Protestant standards.

[132] The Spectator announced that "Whereas Mr Abraham Jordan, senior and junior, have, with their own hands, joinery excepted, made and erected a very large organ in St Magnus' Church, at the foot of London Bridge, consisting of four sets of keys, one of which is adapted to the art of emitting sounds by swelling notes, which never was in any organ before; this instrument will be publicly opened on Sunday next [14 February 1712], the performance by Mr John Robinson.

[164] Unfortunately, as a contemporary writer records, "On the night of the 31st of July, 1827, [the church's] safety was threatened by the great fire which consumed the adjacent warehouses, and it is perhaps owing to the strenuous and praiseworthy exertions of the firemen, that the structure exists at present.

[171] This prospect was affected in 1924 by the building of Adelaide House to a design by John James Burnet,[172] The Times commenting that "the new 'architectural Matterhorn' ... conceals all but the tip of the church spire".

[182] The New Fresh Wharf warehouse to the east of the church, built in 1939, was demolished in 1973-4 following the collapse of commercial traffic in the Pool of London[183] and, after an archaeological excavation,[184] St Magnus House was constructed on the site in 1978 to a design by R. Seifert & Partners.

The Revd Alexander McCaul Sr[200] was a Christian missionary to the Polish Jews, who (having declined an offer to become the first Anglican bishop in Jerusalem)[201] was appointed professor of Hebrew and rabbinical literature at King's College London in 1841.

The loss of these towers, to meet the eye down a grimy lane, and of these empty naves, to receive the solitary visitor at noon from the dust and tumult of Lombard Street, will be irreparable and unforgotten.

"[215] The London County Council published a report concluding that St Magnus was "one of the most beautiful of all Wren's works" and "certainly one of the churches which should not be demolished without specially good reasons and after very full consideration.

[219] A further attempt to implement the recommendations of the Phillimore Report in 1926[220] was resisted by the Earl of Crawford in a debate in the House of Lords on 15 July 1926[221] who quoted "to your Lordships the list of these condemned churches.

[247] A bomb which fell on London Bridge in 1940 during the Blitz of World War II blew out all the windows and damaged the plasterwork and the roof of the north aisle.

[276] Martin Travers restored the 17th century high altar reredos, including the paintings of Moses and Aaron and the Ten Commandments, and reconstructed the upper storey.

[157] In the centre of the reredos there is a carved gilded pelican (an early Christian symbol of self-sacrifice) and a Baroque-style roundel with a nimbus and dove descending, attended by cherubim.

[281] One of the windows in the north wall dates from 1671 and came from Plumbers' Hall in Chequer Yard, Bush Lane, which was demolished in 1863 to make way for Cannon Street railway station.

These show the arms of the Plumbers', Fishmongers' and Coopers' Companies together with those of William Wand when Bishop of London and Geoffrey Fisher when Archbishop of Canterbury and (as noted above) the badge of the Fraternity of Our Lady de Salve Regina.

[299] The bells are named (in order smallest to largest) Michael, Margaret, Thomas of Canterbury, Mary, Cedd, Edward the Confessor, Dunstan, John the Baptist, Erkenwald, Paul, Mellitus and Magnus.

Following the announcement on 9 April 2021 of the death of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh the tenor bell was tolled 99 times and the flag of St George was lowered to half mast.