St Alfege (Alphege) Church, Greenwich, London

Follow the 2012 pilgrim route along the Thames from Southwark Cathedral to St Alphege's Church

Highlights

• Site of St Alphege’s martyrdom

St Alphege, the first Archbishop of Canterbury to be violently martyred, was killed in Greenwich. The parish church stands on the site of his exemplary act of witness.

Some of Europe’s most striking religious buildings are built on the site of a holy person’s death, including St Peter’s in Rome, St Albans in England, and the picturesque Church of the Spilled Blood in St Petersburg. The church in Greenwich may seem too small for such comparisons, and the archbishop’s body was in fact buried in St Paul’s Cathedral, but it is a holy place of martyrdom even so.

St Alphege is London’s foremost martyr, his millennium anniversary on 19 April 2012 marked by a pilgrimage along the Thames Path South Bank route, with a service led by Archbishop Rowan Williams.

The city, however, lost possession of his saintly body after just 11 years when King Canute translated the relics to Canterbury. The church in Greenwich has an engraved slab on the floor marking the saint’s death. The inscription on it reads: “He who dies for justice dies for Christ”, the epitaph given to the saint by St Anselm.

A shrine church was presumably built on the site of his death as soon as the Danish pirates left. It was considered so important that the Pope intervened to claim direct ownership of the shrine in 1150. The church was rebuilt in the 13th century, and again in 1714 by the architect Nicholas Hawksmoor, a pupil of Sir Christopher Wren. It was restored after severe bomb damage in the second world war. Only the constant stream of traffic outside now detracts from this handsome historical building.

St Alphege was originally captured at Canterbury in 1011 by Danish raiders and carried up the coast while they attempted to extort an enormous ransom of £3,000. St Alphege refused to allow his people to pay, telling his captors: “The gold I give you is the word of God.” He was later beaten with axe handles and ox bones by the Vikings during a drunken feast on Easter day, until one killed him outright with his axe.

St Alphege’s witness resonated strongly with Christians in the Middle Ages. St Thomas Becket is said to have prayed to St Alphege just before he was martyred himself at Canterbury. There is a stained-glass image of his martyrdom in Canterbury Cathedral.

Directions

St Alfege Church, St Alfege Passage, off Church Street, Greenwich SE10 9JS

www.st-alfege.org

W3W: smooth.porch.region GPS: 51.4805N 0.0094W

Cutty Sark DLR station 100m

The church is open Mon–Fri 11 am–4 pm, Sat 10 am–4 pm, Sun 8 am and 10 am Eucharist services then open 12 pm–4 pm.

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