ST MARY MAGDALENE’S, MAGDALEN STREET

The original church on the site was Saxon, and the patrons were the canons of St Frideswide’s. After the Norman conquest, the patron­age was transferred first to St George’s in the Castle and then to Osney Abbey.
In 1194, St Hugh of Avalon[1] enlarged the church, building aisles either side of the nave. About 1294, a chapel of St Catherine was established for the use of Balliol College in the north aisle. The Lady Chapel or south chapel was built by the Carmelites,[2] who owned a large area between St Mary Magdalene’s Church and Worcester College, covering the land called Brokenheys, now occupied by the bus station. The chapel, which was dedicated to Our Lady of Pity, was finished about 1320 and served as a choir for the friars. It was built against the existing south wall of the church over a crypt erected by St Hugh and had a west door of its own immediately opposite Friars’ Entry, a lane which still survives on the west side of Magdalen Street. It was through this alley that the friars came to church from their monastery. In the early sixteenth century, the wall between the chapel and the rest of the church was pulled down, and the porch belonging to it was turned to face south, the inner door being blocked at the same time. There are traces of this door in the west wall of the south chapel. In the south aisle was a chapel of St Thomas of Canterbury.
There is some thirteenth-century work at the east end of the chancel, in the south aisle, and in the west wall of the church south of the tower. The south wall is largely fourteenth-century. The tower, the piers of the nave and the west side of the porch are sixteenth-century. The walls of the north chapel are modern.

St Mary Magdalene is famous for its ‘high church’ tradition. See their site.

[1] Bishop of Lincoln 1186-1200.
[2] The Carmelites are first heard of in the twelfth century when they were expelled from the Holy Land by the Saracens. The rule is founded on that of St Basil (bishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia 370-379) and it was confirmed by Innocent IV (pope 1243-1254) in 1250. The tunic, scapular and capuce are brown, the cloak and the upper capuce are white. There were about forty English houses at the suppression.