St Mary Staining Explained

St. Mary Staining
Denomination:	Anglican
Years Built:	10th century
Demolished Date:	1666
Location:	Oat Lane, City of London
Country:	United Kingdom

St. Mary Staining was a parish church in Oat Lane,^[1] northeast of St. Paul's Cathedral, in the City of London. First recorded in the 12th century, it was destroyed in the Great Fire of London in 1666 and not rebuilt.

History

The first reference to it is to "Ecclesia de Staningehage" in 1189, probably deriving from a family from Staines holding land in the area of the church.^[2] It was destroyed in the Great Fire of London in 1666 and not rebuilt.^[3] Its parish was united to St. Michael Wood Street in 1670,^[4] and later to St. Alban Wood Street in 1894, and finally St. Vedast Foster Lane in 1954.

Nikolaus Pevsner found a "few battered tombstones" in nearby Oat Lane.^[5] Since 1965 its site has been a City of London Corporation garden, containing a historic tree; an adjacent office block was built semi-circular so as not to damage it.

Notes and References

1. "London:the City Churches” Pevsner,N/Bradley,S New Haven, Yale, 1998
2. Gordon Huelin in his "Vanished Churches of the City of London" (London, Guildhall Library Publishing,1996) gives two further possibilities: that it was named after the painter stainers who lived in the area in medieval times or that the name derives From the Saxon word for "stone".
3. Book: Cobb, G.. The Old Churches of London . 1942 . Batsford . London .
4. Book: The London Encyclopaedia. Hibbert,C . Weinreb,D . Keay,J . London. Pan Macmillan. 1983 . 2008 . Revised . 978-1-4050-4924-5.
5. Book: London:the City Churche. Pevsner, Nikolaus . Bradley, Simon . New Haven. Yale. 1998. 0-300-09655-0.