St Mary Axe was a mediaeval church situated just north of Leadenhall Street on a site now occupied by Fitzwilliam House.
The full name of St Mary Axe was St Mary, St Ursula and her 11,000 Virgins. It was also sometimes referred to as St Mary Pellipar.
According to John Stow in ’A Survey of London’ in 1603, the name derived from "the signe of an Axe, over against the East end thereof". A document dated to the early reign of King Henry VIII describes a holy relic held in the church; "An axe, one of the two that the eleven thousand Virgins were beheaded with".
The church’s patron was the Skinners’ Company.
At the time of the Dissolution of the Monasteries it was already in decline, and was offered to Spanish Protestant refugees as a place of worship. It was pulled down not long afterwards and its parish was united with that of St Andrew Undershaft.
The church gave its name to a street of the same name.
