Patrick Comerford
There are two Church of England churches in Hampstead that are named Saint John: Saint John-at-Hampstead which is dedicated to Saint John the Evangelist, and Saint John’s Downshire Hill.
Saint John-at-Hampstead is the ancient parish church on Church Row, and I was writing about yesterday. Saint John’s Downshire Hill is not actually a parish church but a proprietary chapel.
The two Saint John’s in Hampstead have very different histories, styles of worship and values. To add to the confusion, but there is also a debate about the patronage of Saint John-at-Hampstead: was the saint in question Saint John the Baptist or Saint John the Evangelist?
I decided to visit both churches – or the church and the chapel – when I was in Hampstead last week.
Saint John’s Downshire Hill, Hampstead, is a proprietary chapel rather than a parish church in the Diocese of London. It is in the Parish of Saint Stephen with All Hallows, and, although most people refer to it as Saint John’s Church, it is legally and formally a chapel. Nor should it be confused with Saint John-at-Hampstead, on Church Row.
As much of the area was being developed in the early 19th century, a new church was considered an essential for the new houses and their residents. Downshire Hill was laid out at the beginning of the 19th century and the street was probably named after Wills Hill (1718-1793), 1st Marquess of Downshire. He was Secretary of State for the Colonies in 1768-1772, the period leading up to the American War of Independence, and his Irish estates included Hillsborough Castle, Co Down, now the official government residence in Northern Ireland, and Blessington House, Co Wicklow, which was burned down in 1798.
Later residents of Downshire Hill included the artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti, the actress Peggy Ashcroft and the Irish-born scientist John Desmond Bernal.
A site on Downshire Hill was bought from the Manor of Belsize in 1812 by a group who handed the site on in 1817 to a three people: the Revd James Curry, who financed the project; Edward Carlisle, a lawyer; and William Woods, a speculative builder who was involved in developments in Hampstead and other parts of London.
Curry offered to pay the cost of the building if he was appointed the minister. The new chapel was dedicated to Saint John, indicating, perhaps, that it was originally planned as a chapel of ease for the parish church of Saint John-at-Hampstead.
The building was completed in 1823, but Curry had fallen ill by the time the first service held on 26 October 1823. Instead, the first minister was the Revd William Harness (1790-1869), a classical scholar and a friend from school days of the poet Lord Byron.
Curry died soon after the opening, Woods gave up his interest in the building in January 1824, and Harness left in 1825 when his popularity as a preacher brought him an invitation to become the incumbent of Saint Peter’s Church, Regent Square (1826-1844). The four ministers who succeeded Harness each remained for only a short period.
The property was bought in 1832 by the Revd John Wilcox (1780-1835), who admired George Whitefield, a key figure in the revival in Britain and America in the 18th century. Wilcox saw Downshire Hill as the ideal place to carry on Whitefield’s evangelical legacy and put the evangelical tradition associated with the chapel on a firm footing.
Wilcox immediately met strong opposition from the Revd Samuel White, who had been the Vicar of Saint John-at-Hampstead since 1807 and who disagreed strongly with the Calvinist teachings of Wilcox. White’s permission was needed to hold services and to preach sermons in the parish, and Downshire Hill was in his parish.
White accused Wilcox of neglecting the two churches where he already ministered and charged him with illegally officiating in a private chapel without the consent of the local incumbent. Wilcox threatened that without White’s approval he would preach as a dissenter. But, when Wilcox ignored White’s demands, White began formal proceedings against him.
The consistory court ruled in favour of White, but local feeling was on the side of Wilcox. The poet John Keats, who was living nearby in what is now Keats House, referred to White as ‘the Person of Hampstead quarrelling with all the world.’ A petition was signed by influential local people including the then Lord of the Manor of Belsize, Lord Galloway, and the writer Sara Coleridge, a daughter of the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge
The court ruling stood, and the chapel stayed closed until 1835. The chapel remained controversial in church circles in the years that followed, and Wilcox remained in the area, teaching local children at Saint John’s Church School, which he founded on Downshire Hill at his own expense.
When Wilcox died in December 1835, the trustees of Saint John’s Downshire Hill were able to appoint an alternative minister who had White’s approval. The Revd John Ayre was the minister for 20 years there, from 1835 and 1855, and was the longest-standing minister there for many years after. In 1851, 1,370 people attended a service at which the Archbishop of Canterbury preached.
Meanwhile, Samuel White had died in 1841, the area was growing rapidly, and there was a need for a new parish church. Saint John’s was proposed as the new parish church in 1863, but this was rejected on the grounds that the church was too small and the site too small to build a larger church.
Instead, a new parish church, Saint Stephen’s Church, was built nearby at Rosslyn Hill and the Revd Joshua Kirkman of Saint John’s Downshire Hill became the first Vicar of Saint Stephen’s.
Canon Henry Wright (1833-1880), was secretary of the Church Missionary Society (CMS) was the minister of Saint John’s from 1872 until he drowned in Coniston Lake. The Revd Robert Baker Girdlestone (1836-1922), the first Principal of Wycliffe Hall, Oxford (1877-1889), was at Downshire Hill in 1889-1903.
Saint John’s faced financial difficulties during World War I, and in 1916 the freehold was bought by Henry Wright’s son, Albert Leslie Wright, who then leased the church to the congregation at a nominal rent. When he died in 1938, he appointed the Church Pastoral Aid Society (CPAS) as trustees to ensure the church continued to maintain an evangelical traditions.
Later ministers included: the Revd Jakób Jocz (1947-1956), who was born in Tsarist Lithuania, became President of the International Hebrew Christian Alliance and then was Professor of Systematic Theology at Wycliffe College, Toronto; Canon Douglas Butcher (1957-1960), a canon of Cairo Cathedral; the Revd Douglas Paterson (1962-1965), who later joined the Rwanda Mission; and Bishop Kenneth Howell (1972-1979), a former Bishop of Chile, Bolivia and Peru.
The Grade I listed building, with its Regency stuccoed and cream painted façade, looks more like a church typical of its period in New England. It has a Doric porch, portico and cupola. The distinctive black and gold clock below the bellcote was made by John Moore of Clerkenwell in 1823, its simple bold design typical of that period.
Inside, the vestibule has a double staircase. The main part of the church has a five-bay nave with galleries on three sides and no chancel. During restoration work in the 1960s, a frieze of biblical texts that had been obliterated in 1923 was rediscovered decorating the gallery and reredos and repainted in the original gold lettering.
The original wooden box pews have been moved to the sides of the church, below the galleries, or to the church hall. The Bevington organ in the west gallery was built in 1873 and installed in 1880.
The East Window, dating from 1882, depicts the eagle of Saint John the Evangelist. Under it, the reredos frames the Ten Commandments, the Lord’s Prayer and the Apostles’ Creed, although these are obscured by a large drop-down screen. When I visited last week, there was no communion table and no pulpit. Perhaps they were moved during renovations in 2003-2004, and instead there is a raised stage with a small, fold-away table and two comfortable chairs.
During the 19th century, there were up to 50 proprietary chapels in London. Today, Saint John’s Downshire Hill is the only proprietary chapel remaining in the Diocese of London, one of only a handful in the whole of England. The running costs are met entirely by the congregation. It is financially separate from the Church of England, and does not contribute to or receive from funds in the Diocese of London.
The chapel is in the conservative evangelical tradition, and has passed resolutions rejecting both the leadership and the the ordination of women. Alongside Saint Luke’s Church, Hampstead, and churches such as All Souls’ Church, Langham Place, it looks for alternative episcopal oversight to the Bishop of Ebbsfleet, Rob Munro.
The church website refers to the church as the people ‘who have received forgiveness and new life through the death and resurrection of Jesus’ and says the building is ‘a place for God’s people to meet to pray, sing, encourage each other and hear teaching from His word, the Bible.’
Article 19 of the 39 Articles, ‘Of the Church’, says: ‘The visible Church of Christ is a congregation of faithful men, in which the pure Word of God is preached, and the Sacraments be duly ministered according to Christ's ordinance …’
It is difficult to see how this chapel fits in with this understanding of the Church, to see or find out where ‘the Sacraments be duly ministered’ or to see where the ‘Word of God is preached’ in a way that distinguishes a sermon from a television interview or a cosy fireside chat on a stage that gives priority to space for a performance with modern musical instruments.
The Revd Tom Watts has been the senior minister of Saint John’s since 2018. The ‘Church Staff’ include David Rue, Associate Minister for Families, Corinne Brixton, Associate Minister for Women, and Aaron Ku, Assistant Minister. But there is nothing on the noticeboards or the website to indicate whether they are ordained or lay ministers.
The congregation has owned the building since 2003, when it bought it from the Wright family trustees who had owned it and leased it since World War I. The present trustees, who have legal oversight of the governance of Saint John’s Downshire Hill, are Daniel Barlow, Gareth Burns, Abi Naidu and Christopher Onaka.
The website refers to meetings, and says members of the congregation ‘meet together twice on Sundays’, at 10:30 and 6 pm, with both ‘meetings’ involving ‘music, prayer and the reading and teaching of the Bible’ and with the ‘focus on learning more about the God of the Bible, His Son Jesus Christ and what His word has to say about Him and our lives in relation to Him.’
But I could not find out anywhere when the Holy Communion or the Eucharist is celebrated at Saint John’s Downshire Hill, Hampstead. I wondered whether it is a mere conincidence that the only was rediscovered decorating the gallery and reredos that have been partly obscured are those relating to the need to celebrate the Eucharist or the Holy Communion.
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