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, the ancient parish church on Church Row, is said to be dedicated to Saint John the Evangelist, although this was only clarified by the Bishop of London in 1917.
Saint John’s Downshire Hill is not actually a parish church but a proprietary chapel. It is the only proprietary chapel remaining in the Diocese of London, and one of only a handful of proprietary chapels in the Church of England.
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-at-Hampstead traces its history back to the year 986, when Hampstead was granted by charter to the Benedictine monks of Westminster Abbey. The charter is of uncertain authenticity; nevertheless, Saint John-at-Hampstead celebrated 1,000 years of its history in 1986.
The Domesday Book makes no reference to monks, chapels or churches in Hampstead, although it acknowledges the link with Westminster Abbey.
Christopher Wade, in Hampstead Past suggests the old church in Hampstead illustrated in an engraving by John Goldar may have been built ca 1220-1240, with a surviving Romanesque two-light East Window.
The Benedictine monks may have built a church or chapel in Hampstead, but there is no record of one until 1312, when John de Neuport was the priest in Hampstead, and 1333, when there is a reference to a chapel dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary. Hampstead and the parish of Hendon were linked and sometimes only one priest served both.
Hampstead was on the pilgrim route to St Albans and the Knights Templar held land in Hampstead in the mid-13th century, while the Knights Hospitallers leased the manor for 100 years until 1535.
At the dissolution of the monastic houses during the Tudor reformation, the Benedictine foundation of Westminster Abbey was replaced by the short-lived Diocese of Westminster, with Thomas Thirlby as the first and only Bishop of Westminster (1540-1550).
Thirlby was also the rector of Hampstead, and appointed Thomas Chapelyne as vicar in 1545. But Chapelyne only stayed a year; he was replaced in 1546 by Richard Gardener, who may have stayed in Hampstead until 1558.
Edward VI suppressed the Diocese of Westminster in 1551 and granted the manor and benefice of Hampstead to Sir Thomas Wrothe. The church at that time was partly stone and partly timber, with a wooden tower. Wrothe lived in exile during Queen Mary’s reign. The manor passed to his son in 1606.
Baptist Hickes, later Lord Campden, on his death in 1629, re-endowed the church ‘for a preacher not for a priest.’ During the late 17th century the manor changed hands several times. It was held by the Hickes family, who had the titles of Lord Campden and Earl of Gainsborough until it was sold in 1707 to Sir William Langhorne, a former Governor of Madras. His father-in-law, the Revd Robert Warren, later became the Vicar of Hampstead in 1735.
Hampstead expanded and grew in popularity in the 18th century, with people visiting for its clean air and fresh waters. The church became inadequate for the needs of the growing population. It was in such a dangerous condition that it was declared unusable by 1744.
A new church was designed by John Sanderson, with a steeple at the east end as part of a cheaper plan as the land fell away sharply to the west. The central door did not exist then, and the congregation used two doors on either side of the main altar, while the area under the tower served as the vestry. The west door was intended as the main entrance but was largely unused except by the Lords of the Manor.
The church was consecrated on 8 October 1747 by the Bishop of Llandaff, John Gilbert, as commissary of the Bishop of London, Edmund Gibson, with a dedication to Saint John. It seems no one at the time specified which Saint John, and the parish continues to celebrate its Dedication Festival on 8 October rather than celebrating a patronal festival.
The copper spire was added ca 1783. An additional burial ground was bought across the street on Church Row in 1811 and consecrated on 26 June 1812.
Saint John’s Downshire Hill opened on 26 October 1823. William Harness was the first minister there, but he left in 1825 and was followed by four ministers in succession, each staying only a short time.
John Wilcox arrived in 1832 and established the evangelical traditions of the church. But he faced stern opposition from Samuel White, the Vicar of Saint John-at-Hampstead. The new chapel was in White’s parish and his permission was needed for services and sermons in the parish.
White strongly opposed Wilcox’s Calvinist positions and took legal action to stop Wilcox officiating without his permission. But local feeling was on the side of Wilcox and the poet John Keats, who was living in Hampstead, described White as ‘the Person of Hampstead quarrelling with all the world.’
The decision of the court prevailed, and the new chapel closed until 1835, when Wilcox died and an alternative minister was found who had White’s approval: John Ayre remained there for 20 years until 1855.
Meanwhile, Saint John-at-Hampstead had become too small for the growing population of a burgeoning suburb and the building also needed extensive repairs. A plan was drawn up by Robert Hesketh in 1843 to extend the church 30 ft westwards, adding transepts and providing 524 extra seats.
The first Willis organ was built in the church in 1853, with Henry Willis himself as the organist.
Plans in 1871 proposed ‘beautifying and improving’ the church and demolishing the tower. But the plans were shelved following protests from leading artistic and literary figures of the day, including William Morris, Edward Burne-Jones, Holman Hunt, Ford Madox Brown, Anthony Trollope, George du Maurier, Coventry Patmore, FT Palgrave, George Gilbert Scott jr and others.
The trustees conceded, and instead the church was extended westwards in 1877-1878 under plans drawn by FP Cockerell. The inside was realigned and the altar was moved to the geographical west end. It could be said the church had been saved by the Pre-Raphaelites and the leading writers and architects of the day. The rebuilt church was consecrated by the Bishop of London on 1 June 1878.
The Irish-born architect Temple Lushington Moore, who was born in Tullamore, Co Offaly, and who also the architect of Pusey House, Oxford.
Temple Moore redesigned the vestries in 1911-1912 and added a morning chapel, now the Sacrament Chapel, dedicated to Saint Mary and Saint John.
Saint John-at-Hampstead is said to be dedicated to Saint John the Evangelist, although this was only clarified in 1917 by the Bishop of London, Arthur Foley Winnington-Ingram.
The cast iron gates and railings around the church came from Canons Park, Edgware, the home of the Duke of Chandos home and where Handel was the organist.
Inside, the church is oriented west/east rather than the traditional east/west alignment. The dark Victorian interior scheme was removed in 1958 and the original lighter scheme was reinstated.
The stained-glass windows over the altar at the west end (liturgical east) indicate the church’s ambivalence about which Saint John is named in the dedication: the windows show ‘Christ in Glory’ flanked by Saint John the Baptist and Saint John the Evangelist. They were designed by Ellis Wooldridge in 1884 and executed by Powells at a time when Powells were associated with the architect TG Jackson, who designed the choir stalls and the organ case. Many of the altar frontals in use today are the work of Barbara Thomson.
The pulpit is from the 1745 church. It was relocated in 1878, when it was lowered and the sounding board removed, with its pillars used to form part of the reredos behind the high altar.
The font incorporates the bowl of the 1745 font. Part of it was being removed to form the piscina in the Sacrament Chapel as a dedication to George Augustus Selwyn, first Bishop of New Zealand and later Bishop of Lichfield.
The altar piece in the Sacrament Chapel was painted by Donald Towner of Church Row, in memory of his mother. Towner used a local resident as the model for Mary, his nephew for John and his own mirror image for Christ.
Alfred Bell of Clayton and Bell was a parishioner and was a churchwarden for 16 years. He designed the windows in the north and south aisles, most of them in memory of his children, in the 1870s and 1880s. The Virgin and Child in the north transept was used by Clayton and Bell to illustrate their trade brochure.
The window over the entrance doors depicting the Road to Emmaus was designed by Mary Temple Moore and was installed by Reginald Bell in 1929.
The memorials in the church include a bust of the poet John Keats, who lived in Hampstead before going to Rome where he died. The painter John Constable and John Harrison, inventor of the marine chronometer, are buried in the old churchyard.
The writers and literary figures buried in Hampstead include: Eliza Acton, George Atherton Aitken, Walter Besant, Elizabeth Rundle Charles, Eleanor Farjeon and Evelyn Underhill; Penelope Fitzgerald, her father EV Knox, editor of Punch, and her mother Mary Knox, illustrator of the Mary Poppins stories by PL Travers; the Llewelyn Davies family whose children Jack and Peter inspired JM Barrie’s Peter Pan stories; and members of the du Maurier family.
Architects buried there include Temple Moore, George Gilbert Scott jr and Richard Norman Shaw. From the world of theatre, television and film are Peter Cook, Kay Kendall and Herbert Beerbohm Tree.
Among the political figures buried there are Hugh Gaitskell, Labour Party leader from 1955 until 1963, and his wife Dora, and the Irish-born suffragist and pacifist Eva Gore-Booth, who was born at Lissadell House, Co Sligo, and a sister of Constance Gore-Booth, Countess Markievicz.
The Revd Carol Barrett Ford is the Vicar of Hampstead and the Area Dean of Camden. She is a former chaplain and acting dean of Saint John’s College, Cambridge.
The Revd Graham Dunn, the assistant curate in Hampstead since 2021, has been appointed the chaplain of Saint John’s College, Cambridge, from next month (October 2024).
Saint John-in-Hampstead aims to be an active, inclusive and growing community which worships, welcomes, learns and serves. Its vision statement is ‘Building an inclusive community of Christian love, faith, witness and action.’ The church is open daily from 9 am to 5 pm.
• The Sunday services are: Holy Communion (BCP), 8 am; Choral Holy Communion, 10:30 am; Choral Evensong, 5 pm. There is a mid-week Holy Communion on Wednesdays at 10:15.
Tomorrow: Saint John’s Downshire Hill
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