The place name ‘Malden’ is, we are told, derived from the Old English terms mael and dune, where mael refers to an image or picture, and dune to a hill. But in the devout country which England had become by the ninth or tenth centuries, one image above all was dominant: the image of Christ. So quite possibly the name Mael-dun was understood to mean not simply ‘The hill with the image’, but rather ‘The hill with the image of Christ’. And whatever form that image took, St. John’s church today presumably stands on its site.
On the day I visited, the church was closed and I was unable to go inside, which was a pity because I very much wanted to see how its interesting history expresses itself. This is a medieval church, significantly modified in the seventeenth century; and again in the 1860s in a spirit of medieval revivalism; and again in the 1870s when a whole new nave and chancel were built to the north of the originals, which were thereby relegated to the status of aisle and side-chapel.
And there were more changes in recent years when a further modern northern extension was added.
But despite all these transformations, it is just possible that a fragment of the original Saxon church has survived. On the outer south wall of the original chancel there is a rough arc of stones which seems to signal an old doorway, long blocked up. Its triangular head hints at Saxon work.
Pevsner, who is usually quick to pick up on tenuous traces such as this, has nothing to say about it; but absence of discussion does not mean that there is nothing to discuss.
For now, therefore, we should add St John the Baptist, Old Malden, to our select group of South London Domesday churches which might, perhaps, retain a thousand-year old scrap of Saxon fabric.
SOURCES:
Bridget Cherry & Nikolaus Pevsner, London 2: South, London, 1983.
H.E. Malden (ed.), A History of the County of Surrey: Volume 3, London, 1911. British History Online http://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/surrey/vol3/pp523-525 [accessed 26 January 2024].
Kenneth N. Ross, A History of Malden, Vizetelly & Co., New Malden, 1947.
St. John the Baptist church website
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