Daily prayer in Ordinary Time 2026: 76, Wednesday 22 July 2026, Saint Mary Magdalene

A modern icon of Aghia Magdalini or Saint Mary Magdalene by Alexandra Kaouki in Rethymnon (Icon © Alexandra Kaouki)

Patrick Comerford

We are in Ordinary Time in the Church Calendar; this week began with the Seventh Sunday after Trinity (Trinity VII, 19 July 2026), and today is the Feast of Saint Mary Magdalene (22 July 2026).

Later this evening, I hope to rehearse with the choir in Saint Mary Magdalene Church, Stony Stratford, our last rehearsal before the summer recess. Meanwhile, before the day begins, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, to reflect, to pray and to read in these ways:

1, reading today’s Gospel reading;

2, a short reflection;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;

4, the Collects and Post-Communion prayer of the day.

Saint Mary Magdalene depicted in a statue in Saint Mary Magdalene Church, Comerford Road, in Brockley, south London (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

John 20: 1-2, 11-18 (NRSVA):

1 Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb. 2 So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, ‘They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.’

11 But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. As she wept, she bent over to look[a] into the tomb; 12 and she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying, one at the head and the other at the feet. 13 They said to her, ‘Woman, why are you weeping?’ She said to them, ‘They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.’ 14 When she had said this, she turned round and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus. 15 Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, why are you weeping? For whom are you looking?’ Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, ‘Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.’ 16 Jesus said to her, ‘Mary!’ She turned and said to him in Hebrew, ‘Rabbouni!’ (which means Teacher). 17 Jesus said to her, ‘Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, “I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.”’ 18 Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, ‘I have seen the Lord’; and she told them that he had said these things to her.

Μη μου άπτου, ‘Noli me Tangere,’ an icon by Mikhail Damaskinos in the Museum of Christian Art in the former church of Saint Catherine of Sinai in Iraklion (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Reflections:

When I was visiting Comerford Road in Brockley, South London, two weeks ago, I also visited Saint Mary Magdalene Church, the Roman Catholic parish church on Comerford Road. The church has a statue of Mary Magdalene on the façade facing Howson Road, another statue of her on the steps of the sanctuary beside the baptismal font, and she is also depicted at the foot of the cross in the reredos above the High Altar.

At times on my way back down the mountains from the Monastery of Arkadi to the coast of Rethymnon in Crete, I have stopped briefly to see the small church in Nea Magnesia that is dedicated to Aghia Magdalini or Saint Mary Magdalene.

This is one of only two churches dedicated to Saint Mary Magdalene on the island of Crete.

Nea Magnesia is 12 km east of Rethymnon, near Skaleta and off the road to Panormos. Today it is fast becoming part of the resort facilities building up east of Rethymnon. But in the 1920s, this village was first settled by Greek-speaking people who had been expelled from their homes in western Anatolia.

They arrived in Crete with their Greek language, traditions and culture and dedicated their church to Saint Mary Magdalene, whose feast in the Church calendar, east and west, falls today [22 July 2026].

The other church in Crete dedicated to Saint Mary Magdalene is an impressive Russian-style church on Dagli Street in Chania, with an onion dome and surrounded by a beautiful garden in the district of Chalepa. The church was built in 1901-1903 by Prince George, the High Commissioner of Crete before the island was incorporated into the modern Greek state.

The church was funded by Czarist Russia and was opened in 1903 in the presence of Queen Olga, Prince George, Bishop Evgenios of Crete and a small number of invited guests.

I often pass Chalepa on my way to the and from Chania Airport. With its imposing mansions and luxury villas, Chalepa is a beautiful part of Chania, east of the city on the coastal road to the airport and Akrotiri.

Chalepa was the venue for some of the most important political events in Crete in the 19th century. Here Prince George had his palace as the High Commissioner or governor of the semi-autonomous Cretan state in the closing days of Ottoman rule, and here too the Great Powers had their consulates.

Chalepa was also the home of Eleftherios Venizelos, who played a decisive role as Prime Minister of Greece during a critical time in Greek history in the early 20th century. The family house was built by his father, Kyriakos Venizelos, in 1877. Today, his family home houses the Eleftherios K Venizelos National Research and Study Foundation, which plans to turn the house into a museum.

An icon of Saint Mary Magdalene at the Resurrection, Μη μου άπτου (Noli me Tangere) by Mikhail Damaskinos, is one of the important exhibits at the Museum of Christian Art in the former church of Saint Catherine of Sinai in Iraklion. This icon dates from ca 1585-1591. Initially it was in the Monastery of Vrondissi and was transferred to old church of Saint Menas in Iraklion in 1800.

One of the most inspirational icons of Saint Mary Magdalene I have seen in Crete is an icon by Alexandra Kaouki when she had her old workshop near the Fortezza in Rethymnon.

According to Greek tradition, Saint Mary Magdalene evangelised the island of Zakynthos in the year 34 CE on her way to Rome with Saint Mary of Cleopas. The village of Maries on the island is said to be named after both Saint Mary Magdalene and Saint Mary of Cleopas. A relic of her left hand is said to be preserved in the monastery of Simonopetra on Mount Athos, where she is revered as a co-founder of the monastery.

During the Middle Ages, Saint Mary Magdalene was regarded in Western Christianity as a repentant prostitute or promiscuous woman, but these claims are not supported in any of the four Gospels. Instead, the Gospels tell us she travelled with Jesus as one of his followers, and that she was a witness to his Crucifixion and his Resurrection. Indeed, she is named at least 12 times in the four Gospels, more times than most of the apostles. Two Gospels specifically name her as the first person to see Christ after the Resurrection (see Mark 16: 9 and John 20).

Ten years ago, in 2016, the late Pope Francis recognised Saint Mary Magdalene and her role as the first to witness Christ’s resurrection and as a ‘true and authentic evangeliser’ and he raised her commemoration today [22 July] from a memorial to a feast in the liturgical calendar.

The Vatican’s Congregation for Divine Worship issued a decree formalising the decision, and both the decree and the article were titled Apostolorum Apostola (‘Apostle of the Apostles’).

Archbishop Arthur Roche, secretary of the congregation, said that in celebrating ‘an evangelist who proclaims the central joyous message of Easter,’ Saint Mary Magdalene’s feast day is a call for all Christians to ‘reflect more deeply on the dignity of women, the new evangelisation and the greatness of the mystery of divine mercy.’

Archbishop Roche said that in giving Saint Mary Magdalene the honour of being the first person to see the empty tomb and the first to listen to the truth of the resurrection, Christ ‘has a special consideration and mercy for this woman, who manifests her love for him, looking for him in the garden with anguish and suffering.’

The decision means Saint Mary Magdalene has the same level of feast as that given to the celebration of the apostles and makes her a ‘model for every woman in the church.’

The Church of Aghia Magdalini or Saint Mary Magdalene, in Nea Magnesia, near Rethymnon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayers (Wednesday 22 July 2026, Saint Mary Magadelene):

In Pray with the World Church, the prayer diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), the theme this week, from 19 to 25 July 2026 (pp 20-21), is ‘Flood Relief in Mozambique’. This theme was introduced on Sunday with a programme update from the Revd Mauricio S Mugunhe, Executive Director Anglican Social Action, Igreja Anglicana de Moçambique e Angola (the Anglican Church of Mozambique and Angola).

The USPG prayer diary today (Wednesday 22 July 2026, Saint Mary Magadelene) invites us to pray:

Faithful God, as you called Mary Magdalene to witness to the resurrection, bring hope and new life to communities in despair. Restore what has been broken and renew their strength.

The Collect of the Day:

Almighty God,
whose Son restored Mary Magdalene
to health of mind and body
and called her to be a witness to his resurrection:
forgive our sins and heal us by your grace,
that we may serve you in the power of his risen life;
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Post Communion Prayer:

God of life and love,
whose risen Son called Mary Magdalene by name
and sent her to tell of his resurrection to his apostles:
in your mercy, help us,
who have been united with him in this Eucharist,
to proclaim the good news
that he is alive and reigns, now and for ever.

Yesterday’s reflections

Continued tomorrow

Mary Magdalene at Easter … a sculpture by Mary Grant at the west door of Lichfield Cathedral (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org

Saint Hilda’s Church in Crofton Park is said to be ‘one of the best Edwardian churches in London’

Saint Hilda’s Church in the Crofton Park area of Brockley was designed by FH Greenaway and JE Newberry and built in 1905-1908 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Patrick Comerford

When I was I Brockley last week, visiting Comerford Road and Saint Mary Magdalen Church, I also visited the neighbouring Church of England parish church, Saint Hilda’s Church in the Crofton Park area of Brockley.

Saint Hilda’s Church was designed by FH Greenaway and JE Newberry and was built in 1905-1908. The Grade II listed church is built of Crowborough brick with Chilmark stone dressings and is seen as a fine example of Arts and Crafts ideas superimposed onto Gothic church design. The church has been listed as an ambitious example of an Arts and Crafts Gothic Edwardian suburban parish church, and as the most notable example of a church by Greenaway and Newberry.

In its listing, English Heritage describes Saint Hilda’s as one of the best Edwardian churches in London, interpreting traditional form and detail in an innovative manner. The architectural historian Gavin Stamp say it is one of two ‘remarkable and inventive buildings’ that distinguish this part of South London, the other being the Horniman Museum in Forest Hill.

The church dedication to Saint Hilda (614-680), the founding Abbess of Whitby in 657, a double monastery of monks and nuns, is unusual. She is depicted in a sculpture at top of the east façade, and inside the church in a stained-glass window, a statue, a banner and hangings.

Saint Hilda’s Church seen from the south-west corner (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Although Saint Hilda’s has been a separate parish since 1900, it is closely linked to over 1,000 years of church history in Lewisham. Saint Mary’s Church, Lewisham, from which Saint Hilda’s parish was formed, dates back to the year 918, when Elfrida, daughter of King Alfred the Great, bequeathed the Manor of Lewisham to the Abbot of Ghent, who may have built the first Saint Mary’s Church in Lewisham.

Originally Lewisham parish shared the same boundaries as the present borough, apart from the ancient parish of Lee, and for many centuries Saint Mary’s was the only church in the area. The 19th century brought many changes, and by the late 1880s the ancient parish of Lewisham was subdivided into 16 separate parishes to meet the needs of the growing population.

Crofton Park is part of Brockley, but it was not until the railway station was built and named Crofton Park that the district became known as Crofton Park. In the early 1890s, the Revd Samuel Bickersteth (1857-1937), who had become Vicar of Lewisham in 1891, embarked on providing the district with a church of its own. Bickersteth later became Vicar of Leeds and then a canon of Canterbury and a chaplain to George V.

With the support of the Morley Trustees, a site was secured to build the Mission Church, followed by a permanent church and a parsonage. Work on building a temporary church began by mid-1899, and it was opened by Bishop Edward Stuart Talbot of Rochester on 22 May 1900. The new parish of Saint Hilda, Crofton Park, was formed on 17 September 1900, with the Revd John Hartforth Jacques as the first vicar.

The Crucifix Gate at Saint Hilda’s Church … one of two ‘remarkable and inventive buildings’ that distinguish its part of South London (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Saint Hilda’s was the first of a group of churches built by Greenaway and Newberry for the new Diocese of Southwark and it is probably their most notable church, inspiring the later Saint Martin’s, Dagenham, by Newberry and Fowler and built in 1932.

The church is an example of Arts and Crafts ideas imposed on a Gothic form, and this produces a building that is a rich synthesis of later 19th century secular and church design. Saint Hilda’s was inspired by a wide range of architects and seminal buildings, such as the demolished Saint Agnes, Kennington (1874-1877), designed by GG Scott junior.

FH Greenaway (1869-1935) was articled to Sir Aston Webb, and JE Newberry (1862-1950) to Edward Hide. They went into partnership in 1904, and their work reflects the rich diversity in later 19th century church architecture.

Other early 20th century church works by Greenaway and Newberry include the church hall at Saint Faith, Herne Hill (1907), the enlarged mediaeval church of Saint Nicholas, Plumpstead (1907-1908), All Saints, Hampton (1908), Saint Peter’s, Wimbledon (1911-1912), and Saint John the Baptist, Sutton (1915). After Greenaway retired in 1927, Newberry entered into partnership with CW Fowler and retired in 1946.

Saint Hilda’s was built on a corner site beside the earlier mission church that is now the church hall. The new church was consecrated by Bishop Talbot, by then Bishop of the new Diocese of Southwark, on 3 June 1908. A new vicarage was built in 1911.

The robust tower set on the corner with Brockley Road has an octagonal base designed for an intended turret or spire (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Saint Hilda’s is built of brown Crowborough brick with Chilmark stone dressings, it has Welsh slate roofs, while the interior was originally of exposed yellow washed brick with Corsham Bathstone dressings, but has been painted, probably over limewash.

The church has a five-bay nave with broad aisles leading to a long chancel in the High Church manner. The Lady Chapel is in a shallow north transept that opens onto the chancel.

The church has a monumental east end and a tower set on the corner of the site overlooking Brockley Road. The robust square tower with polygonal battered buttress turrets has an octagonal base designed for an intended turret or spire, with flush chequer-work brick and limestone panels and horizontal stone bands.

The south face of the tower has three ground floor windows under recessed brick arches, between brick buttress shafts but linked by a deep stone cill. The lower stage is enriched by flush stone bands. Above is a tall tripartite window. The bell chamber has narrow louvred lights with traceried heads.

The tower was commissioned after a generous donation, but its height was determined by its position on the footings of the already planned south transept.

The figure of Saint Hilda on the east front is by the Scottish sculptor Albert Hemstock Hodge (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

The east end has battered angle buttresses linked at the head to the main building by a stone saddle. A shallow east window is set high on the elevation between tall, facetted shafts that run the full height of the building. Above it is a carved stone niche containing the figure of Saint Hilda, by the Scottish sculptor Albert Hemstock Hodge (1875-1918), under a gable cross. To each side, and set below the level of the east window, are narrow lancets under ogee stone heads with tall finials.

Under the easternmost window on the south side is an entrance set back under a shallow stone arch. The south-west gable porch fills a full bay and has a pair of doors on the east side.

The nave is strongly horizontal, under deep swept eaves without a clerestorey, which brings the roofline in scale with the neighbouring houses. Three triangular louvred roof lights are set at the junction of the nave and aisles.

The nave has five bays, with large windows each under a broad semicircular brick arch with a narrow tile hood. Each has five lights of panel tracery, in an early 20th century interpretation of a traditional form, with blind panels to each side, all with a continuous stone cill. They are set between battered brick buttresses with stone dressings at cill level.

In contrast to the tall, enriched east face, the west end is relatively sparse with brick battered buttresses with minimal stone dressings. The west window has panel tracery under a slightly pointed arch. The aisle windows are shallow under broad semicircular arches and similar to the nave windows.

Inside Saint Hilda’s Church, facing the Chancel, High Altar and east end (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Inside Saint Hilda’s, the nave arcade has tall simple octagonal arches with chamfers which die into the piers, between narrow shafts that rise to the wall plate.

The aisles are wide and lead to the north transept and the base of the tower to the south. The chancel arch is similarly treated and frames a wide but long chancel that was laid out in Anglo-Catholic tradition, with steps rising to the chancel and again to the sanctuary.

The chancel was enclosed by low stone screens to each side that have since been reduced, and gates that have been removed. There is a crypt beneath the chancel.

The chancel windows are small but have long deep sloping cills, said to reduce glare from the morning sun, and allow for a tall reredos in a timber frame under a shallow canopy and faced with fabric by William Morris, some of which survives.

The chancel floor is of Portland stone and green Westmorland slate; the sanctuary floor and steps are of Sicilian marble and green slate. The oak choir stalls by JE Newberry have carved front panels. The pulpit is also of oak and is set against the north chancel arch.

The font at the west end is octagonal with shafts and standing on a plain octagonal stepped base, and with a plain octagonal honey-coloured alabaster bowl. The nave, aisle and transept floors are of woodblock, parquet and large red tiles.

The stained glass in the chancel is by Henry Holliday. The organ loft is set above the south side of the chancel over a narrow ambulatory, and the organ is in the north transept. The fittings include an oak and aluminium altar cross and candlesticks designed by Newberry, made by the Artificers’ Guild. The nave chairs date from 1910.

Inside Saint Hilda’s Church, facing the font and the west end (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Saint Hilda’s parish suffered many losses during World War II (1939-1945). Both the vicarage and the assistant priest’s house were destroyed in September 1944 and the Parish Hall was badly damaged. The church suffered less severely, the church and parish hall were restored and the vicarage was rebuilt in 1951

The golden jubilee of the church was celebrated in 1958 by placing of the tester over the High Altar, and renewing the hangings and carpeting in the Sanctuary. Since then, coloured hangings that change with the seasons in the Church Calendar have been made to augment the red and gold hangings of 1958.

The crypt, the first part of the church to be built in 1905, housed vestries and a chapel.

The church was refurbished in the 1970s, and the internal brickwork and most of the stonework has been limewashed (1950s) and painted (1970s).

A children’s corner installed in memory of the dead of World War II was removed when parish rooms and a lobby were built inside the church in 1994. However, the statue of the Infant Christ was refurbished and placed in the new entrance lobby.

In the Lady Chapel in the north transept (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

During a serious burglary in 1996, the eagle lectern, statues of Saint Mary and Saint John that were part of the rood beam in the former Saint Cyprian’s Church, one of the large candle sticks before the High Altar and other items were stolen. The processional cross was later found snapped in two and thrown away on the railway bank at Crofton Park station.

A new statue of Saint Hilda was installed in 1998, and a new statue of Saint Mary placed in a shrine in the north aisle was a gift from Our Lady and Saint George Church, Walthamstow. A new banner of Saint Hilda was acquired in 2000.

The church hall beside the church was originally built as a temporary mission church in 1899-1900. It too was designed by JE Newberry in the Arts and Crafts style it is also Grade II listed.

The war memorial in front of the church is in the form of a granite Celtic cross and is inscribed with 141 names of the war dead. It was unveiled on 29 May 1920 by General Sir Ian Hamilton and dedicated by William Hough, Bishop of Woolwich, who had once been in charge of the Corpus Christi College Cambridge Mission on the Old Kent Road and was then Vicar of Lewisham. One woman’s name included in the list is that of Rosabelle Stanley, a nursing sister.

The war memorial in front of the church was unveiled in 1920 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

• Saint Hilda’s is in Diocese of Southwark and the Revd Canon Julian Sampson has been the Parish Priest and Vicar since September 2025. The worship and liturgy in Saint Hilda’s in the modern Catholic tradition of the Church of England. The Sunday Masses are at 8:30 (Said Mass) at 10:15 am (Solemn Mass, followed by refreshments, tea and coffee at 12 noon). During the week, there is a Said Mass at 10 am on Tuesdays and 7 pm on Thursdays.

Saint Hilda and the Northumbrian poet Cædmon depicted in a window in the narrow ambulatory on the south side of the chancel (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Saint Mary Magdalen Church on Comerford Road began as a mission in Brockley in 1895

Saint Mary Magdalen Church, on the corner of Comerford Road and Howson Road, Brockley, was designed by Young Bolton and built in 1898-1899 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Patrick Comerford

When I was visiting Comerford Road in Brockley, south-east London, earlier this week, I visited Saint Mary Magdalen Church, which stands on the corner of Comerford Road and Howson Road. Saint Mary Magdalen is a much-altered Italianate church built in 1898-1899 and designed by the little-known architect Young Bolton, who died in 1903.

The mission at Brockley began in 1895 and a plot measuring 1,321 square yards was bought. A school was opened that year, with an upper floor that was used as a temporary chapel. This was soon inadequate and Bishop Francis Bourne sanctioned building an inexpensive church, for which he advanced £2,000. Bishop Bourne was Bishop of Southwark (1897-1903) and Archbishop of Westminster (1903-1935), and in 1911 he was made a cardinal.

At the time, about 370 Catholics were living in the area, and the church was built to seat 300 people. Bishop Bourne blessed and laid the foundation stone on 9 July 1898. The new church was blessed and solemnly opened by Bishop Bourne on 16 March 1899.

Inside Saint Mary Magdalen Church, Comerford Road (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

A new Angelus bell was blessed and hung in one of the towers in 1900 and was rung for the first time on Easter Sunday 1900.

The stone pulpit was blessed and used for the first time on 24 July 1904, the patronal feast. It was presented to the mission priest, Father James Hayes by parishioners from his previous parish in Sutton.

When two new missions were opened in Nunhead and Forest Hill in 1905 and 1906, they took away parishioners from Brockley. Subsequently, the Bishop of Southwark, Bishop Peter Amigo, decided to place the Augustinians of the Assumption in charge of Saint Mary Magdalen. Bishop Amigo is often remembered as the bishop who imposed ‘minor excommunication; on the Modernist priest George Tyrrell and restricted the possibility of a full Catholic burial when Tyrrell died in 1909.

The Assumptionists, formally the Congregation of the Augustinians of the Assumption (AA), were founded in Nîmes, France, in 1845 by Father Emmanuel d’Alzon. In late 19th century France, the Assumptionists were controversial at the time of the Dreyfus Case as they actively promoted the conspiracy theory that unnamed Jews were destroying French institutions, in particular the army and the Catholic church.

The Assumptionists were suppressed throughout France in 1900, accused of accumulating a fund to support a royalist movement to overthrow the Republic. Many priests went abroad, including the Assumptionist priests who arrived on Comerford Road in 1906. They remained at Comerford Road for 91 years, until July 1997.

The first Assumptionist mission priest at Comerford Road was Father Marie-Louis Deydier, who spent three terms at Brockley.

The sanctuary and High Altar in Saint Mary Magdalen Church, Comerford Road (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

The richly decorative high altar is one of the few original furnishings to survive in the church. It was designed by Father Gregory Chedal, was blessed on 10 December 1911 and survives as the present high altar.

A Calvary designed by Joseph Dutton was unveiled as a war memorial in 1917, and it was completed a year later with the addition of a marble tablet in the form of an open book with the names of the war dead.

When Father Chedal returned from World War I in 1919, he began completing the four side altars dedicated to the Sacred Heart, Saint Vincent de Paul, Saint Peter and Saint Joseph. But, apart from their statues, nothing survives of these four side altars.

Father Chedal also began work on the Lady Chapel with a statue of Our Lady of Lourdes. By December 1919, the altars were in place, the sacristy was enlarged by removing a wall and inserting a door that connected the sacristy and the presbytery. The new altars were blessed at the silver jubilee service on 7 October 1920, and Brockley became an independent parish that year.

The Lady Chapel in Saint Mary Magdalen Church, Comerford Road (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

The presbytery on Comerford Road was refurbished, the church roof repaired in 1926, and a statue of Saint Theresa was blessed. The church was repaired in 1926-1927 and the Lady Chapel was decorated.

Two bells cast at the Paccard foundry at Annecy, France, were blessed and hung in the tower in 1929. Electricity was introduced to the church along with an electric organ blower by the end of 1930.

During the inter-war years, the Catholic community in the Comerford Road area and in wider Brockley grew to over 2,000 with the development of the Honor Oak Estate, rehousing people from Deptford, Rotherhithe and Bermondsey.

The organ was repaired and overhauled about 1937, and repairs were also made to the west front, towers, and the wall along Comerford Road.

Inside Saint Mary Magdalen Church, Comerford Road, facing the west end, entrance and organ (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

During World War II, a time bomb fell nearby on 16 September 1940 and the parish priest removed the Blessed Sacrament and the Lady Chapel’s altar stone before the bomb exploded the next day. The Lady Chapel was completely destroyed, the north wall pushed inwards and the sanctuary furnishings were severely damaged. Only the high altar and Saint Peter’s altar remained intact. Although the presbytery was rendered uninhabitable, the priests returned to the house by late 1940.

A school room served as a temporary chapel until the church reopened on Easter Sunday 1943 while repairs were continued.

The second phase of restoration began in late 1948, the sanctuary roof and the Lady Chapel were rebuilt and the smashed pulpit was reconstructed. New coloured glass was inserted in all the windows and an upper room was added to the sacristy. The restoration was almost complete by 1950. A new floor was planned, as well as refurbishing seats and kneelers, repairing the organ, and works to the lighting and cleaning.

Bishop Cyril Cowderoy blessed the new Lady Chapel and the new altar in December 1951.

Father Patrick O’Neil repositioned the west doors in the tower in the 1950s, creating a central large door in place of a row of five windows, and the two side doors were replaced by windows. The former south-west porch inside became a baptistery but is now a toilet.

The organ choir gallery in Saint Mary Magdalen Church, Comerford Road (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

There were plans to demolish the presbytery and three adjoining houses to build a larger church, but these came to nothing. The parish bought Saint Cyprian’s Hall from the Anglican parish of Saint Hilda, Crofton Park. There were renewed plans to build a new church in 1968, but once again these plans were not realised. The font was moved closer to the sanctuary in 1980. A new hall was built behind Saint Cyprian’s Hall in 1981 and opened in 1982.

The organ was overhauled in 1985 and alterations involved raising the sanctuary floor, removing the altar rails and the pulpit, and inserting a sound-proof confessional.

The Lady Chapel altar was brought forward and a reconciliation room was created. When the Lady Chapel was renovated in 1996, its small tabernacle was removed.

The high altar survives largely as it was designed by Father Gregory Chedal in 1911. It is made from Bath and Portland stone and marble. The frontal depicts the Last Supper and is flanked by statues of the four evangelists. The reredos includes a Calvary with a kneeling Saint Mary Magdalen. On either side are niches with the patron saints of the Assumptionists, Saint Monica and Saint Augustine of Hippo, mother and son.

The west façade of the church facing Howson Road has a second floor niche with a statue of Saint Mary Magdalen. The side elevation now facing Comerford Road has five large round-headed nave windows separated by shallow wall strips.

The World War I memorial in the ground of sSaint Mary Magdalen Church, Comerford Road (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

The World War I memorial in the church grounds has a wooden cross with a sculpture of the Crucified Christ, set on a brick plinth with plaque. It has been designated with a Grade II listing because of its design and ‘as an eloquent witness to the tragic impact of world events on the local community’ during World War I. The memorial was the idea of Father Marie-Louis Deydier, who had been a military chaplain. It was unveiled on 7 July 1917 at a ceremony attended by the Mayor of Lewisham, Sir John and Lady Knill, the Assumptionist Provincial, the Lord Mayor of London, and relatives of the dead. The marble tablet designed by Joseph Dutton was added the following year.

The Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart, or the Cabrini Sisters, opened a day and boarding school in Wickham Road in 1902, and stayed until 1922, when their lease expired. Three years after they left, the Oblate Sisters started a new school in Wickham Road. Saint Cyprian’s Hall was sold in 2009, and the school hall is now used as a church hall.

The Assumptionist Fathers left Comerford Road in 1997 due to a fall in vocations, although they continue to run communities in Bethnal Green, London, and Hitchin, Hertfordshire. The parish is now under the care of the Congregation of the Holy Spirit or Spiritans, known to many as the Holy Ghost Fathers. In Ireland, they are associated with places such as Kimmage Manor, Blackrock College, Saint Mary’s College, Rathmines, and Saint Michael’s in Dublin and Rockwell College, near Cashel, Co Tipperary.

• The parish priest is Father Nathaniel Ewusi; Father Christian Enechukwu is the assistant parish priest; and the Revd Willian Dunphy is the parish deacon. Weekend Masses: Saturday, 6:30 pm Vigil Mass, Sunday, 8:30, 10 and 11:30 am; weekday Mass: Monday to Saturday 9.30 am; Holy Day Masses: 9:30 am and 8 pm.

Saint Mary Magdalen Church, Comerford Road, is under the care of the Congregation of the Holy Spirit or Spiritans, once known as the Holy Ghost Fathers (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Comerford Road is typical of the Victorian and Edwardian terraces and streets throughout Brockley

Comerford Road in Brockley is a Victorian and Edwardian developmnt of terrached housing in the London Borough of Lewisham (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Patrick Comerford

There was a time in the 1970s and 1980s when I seemed to know the area around Lewisham in south London quite well, staying occasionally with family connections in Catford at a time when I was very active in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) and speaking at some of the large anti-war demonstrations in London.

Catford was only half an hour’s walk, at most, from Comerford Road in Brockley, and both are in the London Borough of Lewisham. Yet, in all those years, I never visited Comerford Road until yesterday afternoon.

I caught a bus from Waterloo to the junction of Brockley Road and Comerford Road at lunch time on Tuesday afternoon, and in the summer sunshine enjoyed the opportunity to explore a part of London I had never known before.

Brockley Jack is one the earliest and best-known buildings in Brockley (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Comerford Road is in the SE4 postal code area and is immediately off Brockley Road, facing the main entrance to a large local cemetery. The area developed rapidly from market gardens, pear orchards and brickfields into a built-up residential shopping hub during the Victorian suburban boom.

Brockley may mean ‘Broca’s clearing in the woods’ or perhaps ‘the clearing by the brook’. Brockley was once in Kent, but it has been part of London from 1900 on. It first developed as a small settlement on the Lewisham side of the boundary between Lewisham and Deptford. Today, it stretches from Lewisham Way to Forest Hill.

Before the rapid Victorian expansion, the land sat within the ancient Manor of Brockley, created in 1189. It lay near the path of the Croydon Canal, which opened in 1809, and historic agricultural routes.

The area was built up in the later 19th and early 20th centuries. Until that time the principal buildings were Brockley Farm, Manor Farm, Brockley Hall, the home of the Noakes family of brewers, and the Brockley Jack public house, then a picturesque timber-framed building owned by the Noakes family and said to have been a favourite haunt of highwaymen. The old Brockley Jack was once one of the most photographed pubs in south-east London.

The area around Brockley Road was built up and developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

The London and Croydon Railway, which runs through Brockley, opened in 1839, but Brockley Station was not built until 1871. Brockley Lane station, now closed, followed in 1872, and Crofton Park station in 1892.

The area of the original Brockley is now called Crofton Park, after the railway station which in turn was named after a building estate. The central focus of Brockley has since become the junction of Drakefell, Shardeloes, Brockley and Upper Brockley Roads, which is known as Brockley Cross.

The north part of Brockley was owned by the Tyrwhitt-Drake family who developed the estate – previously used for market gardening – from the late 1840s. They built substantial three- or four-storeyed houses for the professional classes, though many were later divided into flats.

The building on the corner of Comerford Road and Brockley Road dates from 1840 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Comerford Road was developed and named during the late Victorian expansion of the area in the 1870s to 1880s. However, I have been unable to find sources that confirm suggestions that Comerford Road in Brockley was named after Maurice Comerford (1853-1920), who was involved in establishing The Stage newspaper. Maurice Comerford was the business manager and co-founded the entertainment trade paper The Stage in 1880 with the founding editor Charles Lionel Carson.

There are certainly other possibilities for the origins of the name of Comerford Road, and there were Comerford families in nearby Deptford from the early 19th century.

For example, Michael Comerford (1814-1867). He was born ca 1814 in Deptford, then in Kent but now part of the East End of London. He was the immediate ancestor the Comerford family of music hall artists and actors. They were also descended from some of the most interesting Sephardic families of Seville, Venice, Amsterdam and the East End of London.

Comerford Road was developed and named during the late Victorian expansion of Brockley in the 1870s to 1880s (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

The building on the corner of Comerford Road and Brockley Road dates from 1840, and by 1900 the junction of Comerford Road and Brockley Road had been firmly established as a local parade. Old postcards from the time show the junction as a central shopping parade, overlooked in the distance by Saint Andrew’s Presbyterian Church, built in 1882.

Saint Mary Magdalen Church was built at the corner of Comerford Road and Howson Road in 1898-1899, and was designed by the architect Young Bolton.

Many parts of Brockley and Crofton Park were damaged during World War II, particularly by V1 flying bombs and V2 rockets, and the area north of Crofton Park Station on Brockley Road suffering many strikes.

Comerford Road suffered bomb damage on the first day of the Blitz, 7 September 1940, when houses at 46-48 and 41-53 Comerford Road were damaged. An incendiary bomb fell on enclosed ground at rear of 75 Comerford Road, and a time bomb damaged Saint Mary Magdalene Church on 16 September 1940.

Saint Mary Magdalen Church was built on Comerford Road in 1898-1899 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

At its west end, beside Saint Mary Magdalen Church, Comerford Road is crossed by Howson Road, where the poet and painter David Jones (1895-1974) lived for much of his life. Other famous residents of Brockley have included the Irish socialist Jim Connell (1852-1929), author of the anthem ‘The Red Flag’, the actress Lillie Langtry (1853-1929), the radio and music hall comedian Will Hay (1888-1949) and the comedian Spike Milligan (1918-2002).

Brockley was named in 2021 as the best area of London to live in. In many ways, By and large, Comerford Road is typical of a part of south-east London that remains rich in Victorian and Edwardian domestic architecture, historic trees and original lanes and mews.

The outstanding feature on Comerford Road is Saint Mary Magdalen Church at 73 Comerford Road with a War Memorial in the church grounds that has a Grade II listing of its own.

But more about the church on Comerford Road and its war memorial in the days to come, hopefully.

Comerford Road is typical of a part of south-east London that remains rich in Victorian and Edwardian domestic architecture (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)