Newington (St. Mary), or Newington-Butts
The living is a rectory, valued in the king's books at £16; net income, £1300; patron, the Bishop of Worcester. The church is a modern edifice of brick, with a small cupola and campanile turret, surmounted by a dome; the interior is well arranged, and there are several handsome mural tablets. The churchyard, which is spacious, contains numerous ancient tombs and some interesting monuments. Two district churches were erected in the parish, in 1824 and 1825, by aid of the Parliamentary Commissioners, who granted one moiety of the expense, and lent the other for eight years without interest, to be repaid by a rate on the inhabitants. The church dedicated to the Holy Trinity, in Trinity-square, is a handsome edifice in the Grecian style, with a portico of six fluted Corinthian columns, and a square tower ornamented with pillars of the Doric order, and surmounted by a campanile turret surrounded with pillars of the Corinthian order: the cost of its erection was £13,316. The other church, dedicated to St. Peter, is in the hamlet of Walworth, which see. The livings are perpetual curacies, in the patronage of the Rector. There are places of worship for Baptists, Independents, Wesleyans, and the followers of Joanna Southcott. The southern quadrangle of the Fishmongers' almshouses, consisting of 20 additional tenements founded in 1721 by James Hulbert, whose statue is placed on a pedestal in the centre of the area, is within the parish; the older portion of the almshouses, erected by the Fishmongers' Company about a century before, in the parish of St. George the Martyr, consists of an outer and an inner quadrangle, comprising 23 tenements, of two rooms each. There are also some almshouses in Cross-street, connected with the Drapers' Company. Under the Poor-Law Amendment act, the parish has a board of guardians of its own. Of the hospital of Our Lady and St. Katherine, which existed here till the middle of the sixteenth century, no vestiges remain.
Transcribed from A Topographical Dictionary of England, by Samuel Lewis, seventh edition, published 1858.