WEST END CHURCH OF ENGLAND CHURCHES

All Saints Margaret Street

A deist chapel was opened on Margaret Street in the mid-18^thC. Subsequently, the building was used as a proprietary chapel. During the 1840s it became a centre of the Tractarian Movement. The architect William Butterfield was commissioned to design a Gothic Revival style church on the site that was in accord with the congregation s High Church beliefs. As a young man, the architect had embraced Augustus Pugin's injunction to study the Gothic design. Initially, his work had been derivative, however, with time he had gone on to create his own individualistic style. With the design of All Saint s, Butterfield succeeded in freeing the Gothic Revival from the limiting confines that had been laid down by the historical English Gothic. He did this both by importing approaches that had been used in European Gothic and through his free use of colour. The process of construction proved to be highly fraught both for the architect and for his clients. The building was consecrated in 1859. Butterfield found that some of the views that were expressed within All Saints were doctrinally worrying to him. As a result, he did not worship there although, as the edifice's architect, he remained involved with it until his death.¹

Location: 7 Margaret Street, W1W 8JG (blue, red)

4 Adam Street, WC2N 6AA. Butterfield's office. (brown, brown)

Website: https://asms.uk

¹. Butterfield's other London churches include St Matthias Stoke Newington (1853) and St Alban the Martyr Holborn (1862).

All Souls Langham Place

In 1950 John Stott was appointed the Rector of All Souls Langham Place. Over the following 25 years he turned it into the foremost Evangelical Anglican church in London.

Location: 2 All Souls Place, W1B 3DA (red, purple)

Website: www.allsouls.org

The Grosvenor Chapel

The Grosvenor Chapel (1730) was built in order to try to meet the religious needs of the growing population of Anglicans who lived upon the Grosvenors newly developed Mayfair estate. The building was a private undertaking. Its design was the model for numerous churches in New England.

The corpse of the 18^thC politician and controversialist John Wilkes was interred in the Chapel.

In 1829 the original 99-year lease on the site expired. The proprietary chapel became a chapel of ease for the parish of St George's Hanover Square.

Location: South Audley Street, W1K 2PA (orange, blue)

See Also: GROSVENOR ESTATES Mayfair

Website: www.grosvenorchapel.org.uk

St Anne Soho

The Church of St Anne's Soho (1686) was destroyed by aerial bombing in 1940. The building's tower (1717) survived.

The church's garden, formerly its graveyard, is several feet above street level. This is because many thousands of parishioners have been buried in it since the church was built in the late 17thC.

The detective fiction writer Dorothy L. Sayers was a churchwarden of St Anne s. Her corpse was cremated and her ashes were then scattered in the churchyard.

Paul Simon wrote the song Blessed in St Anne's Soho.

Location: 55 Dean Street, W1D 6AF (turquoise, blue)

Website: www.stannes-soho.org.uk

St Clement Danes

The Church of St Clement Danes survived the Great Fire of 1666 unscathed. However, its structural infirmity led to all of the building, except the tower, being demolished. The new church (1680) was designed by Sir Christopher Wren. An extension (1720) to the tower was devised by James Gibbs.

Location: Strand, WC2R 1DH (blue, black)

Website: https://stclementdanesraf.org

The Royal Air Force

From 1919 to 1955 the Royal Air Force's administrative headquarters was located in Adastral House, which was on the corner of Aldwych and Kingsway. St Clement Danes was severely damaged by aerial bombing during the Second World War. The church was reconstructed in 1958. The armed service contributed 150,000 towards the cost of the rebuilding work. The R.A.F. holds commemoration services in the church. The building is also frequently used for the weddings of the service s officers.

See Also: BOMBER COMMAND

Website: www.raf.mod.uk/our-organisation/units/st-clement-danes-church

St George's Bloomsbury Way

The Church of St George's Bloomsbury Way (1731) was built under the Fifty New Churches Act of 1711. The building was designed by Nicholas Hawksmoor. In large part, it was constructed because the respectable parishioners, who inhabited the newer, northern part of the parish of St Giles-in-the-Fields, disliked having to pass through a notorious, thief-infested rookery, on their way to and from St Giles s.¹

The statue of King George I that tops the steeple of St George's Bloomsbury was paid for by the brewer and M.P. William Hucks (pre-1678-1740). His brewery was in Duke Street Bloomsbury.²

Location: Bloomsbury Way, WC1A 2SA (purple, red)

Website: www.stgeorgesbloomsbury.org.uk

¹. The rookery was the setting for William Hogarth's print Gin Lane (1751.) The construction of New Oxford Street (1849) destroyed it.

². Hogarth's print Beer Street was a counterpoint to Gin Lane. It displayed the benefits that were to be had from drinking beer.

St James's Piccadilly

St James's Piccadilly (1684) was erected to serve the neighbourhood that the Earl of St Albans had developed on the St James's Fields estate. Although Sir Christopher Wren-designed and constructed dozens of churches, St James's was the only one that he ever built on a new site.

In the early 18^thC St James's was the most fashionable church in London; three of its vicars went on to serve as Archbishops of Canterbury.

Location: 197 Piccadilly, W1J 9LL (purple, yellow)

Website: www.sjp.org.uk

St Martin's-in-the-Fields

With St Margaret's Westminster, St Martin's-in-the-Fields was one of the two parishes of which Westminster was composed.

St Martin's-in-the-Fields was not rebuilt under the Fifty New Churches Act of 1711. Its parishioners secured a Parliamentary Act to authorise its construction. The James Gibbs-designed structure was completed in 1726, having cost 33,000. At the time, his combination of a steeple and Classical portico - the former rising out of the roof of the latter in an unprecedented manner - was highly controversial. King George I's response to the innovative design was to endorse it by choosing to become one of St Martin s churchwardens. Subsequently, the arrangement of the elements became a commonplace feature of ecclesiastical architecture.

Royal births are recorded in the register of St Martin's-in-the-Fields.

On the northern side of the chancel was the Royal Box. Opposite it sat the Lords of the Admiralty.

In 1829 the churchyard was cleared away to make way for Duncannon Street to be constructed. Among those whose corpses had been buried at St Martin's were the orange vendor and royal mistress Nell Gwynne, the highwayman Jack Sheppard, the painter William Hogarth, the painter Sir Joshua Reynolds, and the furniture maker Thomas Chippendale.

Pat McCormick was the Vicar of St Martin's-in-the-Fields from 1927 until his death thirteen years later. It was he who associated the church with homeless people. This is an identification that it actively maintains.

One past incumbent¹ has pointed out the way in which St Martin s possesses a number of paradoxes. It is called in-the-Fields but is patently in the middle of the metropolis; it is the royal family's parish church yet it furnishes aid for the drifting homeless; it is the Admiralty's official church, however, it is where the Peace Pledge Union was founded in 1934; it is named after one of the patron saints of France but is located by Trafalgar Square, which takes its name from the naval battle at which Napoleon's fleet was defeated decisively.

Location: 6 St Martin's Place, WC2N 4JH (red, turquoise)

Website: www.stmartin-in-the-fields.org

¹. The Rev Nicholas Holtam, who in 2011 was appointed to the Bishop of Salisbury.

St Mary-le-Strand

A church stood on the site of the Church of St Mary-le-Strand as far back as 1147. The Church of the Nativity of Our Lady & The Innocents was pulled down by the 1^st Duke of Somerset (d.1552) the Lord Protector and its stone was used to help build his mansion Somerset House. The churchless parishioners were allowed to use the Savoy Chapel.

St Mary-le-Strand (1717) was the initial church to be built under the Fifty New Churches Act of 1711; it was the first public building that James Gibbs had designed. (The architect was a Roman Catholic but kept quiet about the fact in view of the prevailing sectarianism that then existed in some strata of contemporary society.)

Location: Strand, WC2R 1ES (orange, yellow)

Website: https://stmarylestrand.com

St Paul's Covent Garden

The 4^th Earl of Bedford developed the suburb of Covent Garden. He disliked the expense of having to construct a church for the new district's inhabitants. St Paul's (1633) was the first new Anglican church to have been built in London since the Reformation. The peer commissioned Inigo Jones to design the building. The earl wished to keep down the cost of its erection. Therefore, he instructed the architect to make sure that it was plain as a barn, to which Jones replied that his lordship would have The handsomest barn in England . The church was consecrated in 1638 and given its own parish in 1645.

The renowned comedy producer Denis Main Wilson's funeral service was held at St Paul's Covent Garden. The eulogy was delivered by Alan Simpson (1929-2017) of the writing team Galton & Simpson.¹ The congregation anticipated that what was about to be delivered would be insightful and funny. It was n t. It was bland and corny. The congregants were silent throughout. The writer, having finished, addressed the head of the coffin, I told you once you re dead, there's not laugh in it.

St Paul's has long had a close association with the acting profession.

Location: Bedford Street, WC2E 9ED (blue, pink)

Website: https://actorschurch.org

¹. Simpson was 6ft. 4in.-tall and had a lugubrious manner. Spike Milligan dubbed him He who blocks out the Sun .

David Backhouse 2024