St. Mary Magdalene Church, Richmond, Surrey. North and south aisles altered and open timber roofs added by Sir Arthur Blomfield

St. Mary Magdalene Church

North and south aisles altered and open timber roofs added Sir Arthur Blomfield

1866.

Paradise Road

Richmond, Surrey

Built in the sixteenth century. Later additons by G. F. Bodley, 1903-4

Exterior view of front

Side view of exterior (photograph by Ingrid Brown)

Photographs and text by Jacqueline Banerjee

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This much-loved church with its appropriate address is rich in memorials. Amongst those from the nineteenth century is a portrait medallion of the actor Edmund Kean (d. 1833), erected in 1839. On an outer wall is a monument to Viscount Fitzwilliam (d. 1816), who founded the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge. Buried in Richmond cemetery, like Miss Braddon, is the song-composer Leslie Stuart (1863-1928), best remembered for his first big musical comedy "Floradora" (1899) at the Lyric, and later on Broadway. Songs such as "Soldiers of the Queen" and "Lily of Laguna" went "round the world and back again in his own day, but have been broadcast since his day to multitudes that no man can number," wrote Arthur Mee in 1936 (265).

Sources

Mee, Arthur. The King's England: Surrey, London's Southern Neighbour. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1938.

"Richmond: St Mary Magdalene." Viewed 24 May 2007.

Last modified 11 September 2011