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London Facts Part I


Image © Will Pearson

How St Mary Axe got its name

The City of London is full of strange street names. St Mary Axe has now given its name to one of London’s most famous buildings, ‘the Gherkin’, but how did the street and the building become so named? Legend has it that an English King sent his daughter and 11,000 of her handmaidens on a journey. Whilst on this journey, they had the misfortune to meet a certain Attila the Hun, who couldn’t miss an opportunity for death and destruction and thus slaughtered all 11,001 women with three axes. One of these axes was apparently stored in the church here, which was catchily called ‘St Mary the Virgin and St Ursula and the Eleven Thousand Virgins’.

Please click here to view the St Mary Axe virtual tour.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 18th, 2009 at 10:51 am and is filed under London Facts, London History & Information, London Landmarks, London Virtual Tours, The Gherkin. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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This website and its contents are owned by W. Pearson. The website, its design and its content including each and every photograph and virtual tour are protected by copyright and trademark law and other related intellectual property rights. Copyright in the photographs is owned by W. Pearson. W. Pearson's photographs are also protected by moral rights. W. Pearson asserts his moral right to be identified as the author whenever his photographs are copied or distributed by any means. All works on this website may not be reproduced without the permission of W. Pearson.