The Mansion House occupies the sites of Stocks Market and St. Mary Woolchurch Haw.
ST. MARY WOOLCHURCH HAW
This church was situated on the eastern side of the market. It probably derived its name “Woolchurch” from the fact that a beam was erected in the churchyard for the weighing of wool. It was probably built about the time of William I. by one Hubert de Ria, founder of the Abbey of St. John in Colchester. His son Eudo Dapifer, Steward to the Conqueror, endowed his newly-built Abbey and Convent of St. John, Colchester, with it. The charter of foundation (1096) calls it St. Mary de Westcheping, or Newchurch, and states that Ailward Gross the priest held the living by gift of Hubert de Ria. The exact words are these, and constitute the earliest mention of the church:
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THE MANSION HOUSE AND CHEAPSIDE
Et ecclesiam S. Mariae de Westcheping, London, quae vocatur Niewecherche, concedente Ailwardo Grosso, presbytero qui in eadem ecclesia et donatione antecessoris mei Huberti de Ria personatum consecutus fuerat (Newcourt 1. p. 459).
In the “Taxatio Ecclesiastica” of Pope Nicholas IV. (1291) occurs reference to ecclesia Sancte Marie de Wolchurche hawe, indicating that the names of St. Mary de Westcheping and Niewecherche had alike disappeared to give place to a title in some way derived from the wool staple and market. This is Stow’s etymology of the name. Mr. J. H. Round doubts the theory; he suggests that this St. Mary’s was a daughter-church to St. Mary Woolnoth (Athenæum, August 17, 1889, p. 223) (Woollen-hithe-hatch, or haw). This would give as the full and new name of our “Niewecherche” St. Mary-in-Woollenhaw, Church-Haw, and by contraction St. Mary Woolchurch Haw. It is actually styled St. Mary Wolmaricherch in 1280-81, which certainly appears to support Mr. Round’s theory.
The first rector given by Newcourt is John Dyne, who resigned in 1382. By licence granted 1442 (20 Henry VI.), the church was rebuilt; the new building stood farther south than the old, in accordance with a condition imposed by the licence, which ordained it to be 15 feet from the Stocks Market “for sparing of light to the same.” The foundation stone of this new building was discovered when digging the foundations of the Mansion House in 1739.
The stone was drawn by R. West, engraved by Toms, and relegated to an obscurity from which it has never since emerged: its whereabouts is unknown. The new church, whose foundation was laid on May 4, 1442, is described by Stow as “reasonably fair and large.”
The church was destroyed in the Great Fire and not rebuilt, its parish being annexed to the neighbouring one of St. Mary Woolnoth. The earliest date of an incumbent is 1349.