"I walked over the fields to Southwark..., and I spent half an hour in Mary Overy's Church, where are fine monuments of great antiquity, I believe, and has been a fine church." Samuel Pepys - 3 July 1663
The Cathedral and Collegiate Church of St Saviour and St Mary Overie stands at the oldest crossing-point of the River Thames at what was for many centuries the only entrance to the City of London situated across the river. A verbal tradition passed on to the Elizabethan historian John Stow suggests that the first Christian establishment was a community of nuns in the 7th century, but the first written reference is the mention of a 'minster' in the Domesday Book of 1086.