Patrick Comerford
As I was walking around Soho Square recently, in search of Soho’s Jewish history and of local architectural landmarks, I also visited the two churches on the square: Saint Patrick’s Roman Catholic Church and the French Protestant Church.
Saint Patrick’s on Soho Square is one of the oldest post-Reformation Catholic parishes in London, and the original church on the site was the first Catholic place of worship to open in London after the Roman Catholic Relief Acts were passed in 1778 and 1791 and the first post-Reformation church in England dedicated to Saint Patrick.
The first church on the site was in a building behind Carlisle House and was consecrated in 1792. The present church, built in 1891-1893, is a Grade II* listed building designed by the Leeds architect John Kelly.
Catholic martyrs on their way to execution at Tyburn in the 16th and 17th centuries, were given their last drink in Saint Giles’s and were buried in the churchyard of Saint Giles-in-the-Fields. The last of these martyrs, Saint Oliver Plunkett, Archbishop of Armagh, was executed at Tyburn in 1681.
Several embassies were in Soho in the 18th century, and they had private chapels where Catholics attended Mass. The French Embassy and chapel were in Greek Street in the 1730s; the Neapolitan Embassy and chapel were at 13 Soho Square for a time; and 21 Soho Square housed the Spanish Embassy and chapel in the 1770s, although it later became the White House, an unsavoury hotel and high-class brothel.
Carlisle House was built in 1690 as the town house of the Earl of Carlisle. It was leased in the 1760s by Teresa Cornelys, a Venetian adventuress and sometime opera singer, whose former lovers included Casanova. The house was a venue for masquerade balls, operas and recitals until she was fined for staging operas without a licence. The old mansion was demolished in 1788 and two houses, 21a and 21b Soho Square, were built on the site.
The number of Catholics living in the area rose significantly in the 18th century, with thousands of Irish immigrants living around the Rookery, a squalid slum on the edge of Soho often called ‘Little Ireland’ or ‘Little Dublin’. In response to their plight, the Confraternity of Saint Patrick was founded in October 1791 by a group of prosperous Irish Catholics who wanted to acquire Carlisle House and convert it into a chapel.
Father Arthur O’Leary (1729-1802), a celebrated Irish Capuchin preacher and controversialist who was staying at Wardour Street, raised the funds to lease Carlisle House. He was born in Fanlobbus, Dunmanway, Co Cork. He was educated by the Capuchins in Saint Malo, where he was ordained and spent 24 years as a prison chaplain. He returned to Cork in 1777 and his preaching soon attracted large numbers. He played a key role in the ‘Paper War’, arguing for Catholic Emancipation, and later supported the Act of Union as a means to Catholic emancipation.
Father O’Leary moved to London and he was a chaplain at the Spanish Embassy from 1789 until he died. His social circle included Edmund Burke, Richard Brinsley Sheridan and Charles James Fox.
O’Leary acquired a 62-year lease on the property on Soho Square, and the chapel was solemnly opened on 29 September 1792. Bishop John Douglass (1743-1812) presided at the Mass and Father O’Leary preached the sermon.
Father Daniel Gaffey became the chaplain of the new church, but for many years it continued to be known as ‘Father O’Leary’s Chapel’. Its fittings included a painting of the Crucifixion by Van Dyck or a pupil. The organ was built by Robert and William Gray in 1793 and the early organists included Vincent Novello, the musician, composer and music publisher.
When Pope Pius VI died in captivity in France in 1799 a prisoner of Napoleon, the papal envoy in London, Cardinal Charles Erskine (1739-1811), chose Saint Patrick’s for the official papal requiem. The Mass began at 10 in the morning and finished at 3:30 in the afternoon, with Father O’Leary preaching. O’Leary died a few years later in January 1802, aged 72, and was buried in Old Saint Pancras Churchyard.
The most densely crowded part of Saint Giles’s Rookery was demolished in the 1840s to make way for New Oxford Street. The number of very poor Catholics then numbered about 10,000 people. Most lived in the part of the Rookery that remained, south of New Oxford Street around Church Lane, until this too was demolished later in the 19th century.
The original Saint Patrick’s Chapel was in an unsafe conditions when it was demolished in 1889. The present church, designed by John Kelly of Leeds, was built on the site in 1891-1893.
John Kelly (1840-1904) and Edward Birchall (1839-1903) were partners in Kelly and Birchall, an architectural practice in Leeds from 1886 to 1904, specialising in churches in the Italianate and Gothic Revival styles. Kelly’s other churches include Saint Alban and Saint Stephen in St Albans, Hertfordshire (1903).
Kelly made the fullest use of the available space on a narrow site as he skilfully planned the interior, and his church transformed the site.
The church was built in the Italian Renaissance style with small-gauge dark red brick, with rubbed brick detail. It has a west campanile tower, vestibule, antechapel, aisled, apsidal sanctuary and south chapel. The main entrance has a Roman-style porch with Corinthian columns. Above the entrance is the inscription: Ut Christiani ita et Romani sitis (‘Be ye Christians as those of the Roman Church’), a quotation from the writings of Saint Patrick.
The main entrance has a portico in Portland stone, with Corinthian columns and pilasters, and the Papal tiara and keys set into the pediment. This forms the base of the imposing 125 ft high campanile that rises in arcaded stages. A niche in the tower has a statue of Saint Patrick by Boulton and Sons.
The tower, the main body of the church and the narthex are built in red brick. A blind arcade forms the north wall of the nave along Sutton Street (now Sutton Row) with a clerestory and another blind arcade above. The octagonal vestibule at the bottom of the campanile, and the antechapel beyond it, occupy the entire width of the old presbytery.
Inside, the church has an elegant, light and airy nave without aisles. The round-headed arches are separated by tall Corinthian pilasters that form shallow recesses along the sides. These bays accommodate a series of side chapels, shrines and the confessionals.
A plain-glassed clerestory runs along the north and south sides of the nave and along the west end wall over the gallery, and the west wall has a large, round window. The barrel-vaulted ceiling is coffered. The nave ends in an apsidal sanctuary, the two separated by marble altar rails with intricately carved, pierced panels.
The high altar is built of white marble with amber marble panels. The two tiers of the apse wall, above and below the cornice, are ornamented with Corinthian pilasters. The arch and domed ceiling of the sanctuary are ribbed and panelled, in the same manner as the nave.
The iron and brass tabernacle from the old chapel was adapted to the new high altar. The Gray organ had been rebuilt by Hill in 1882 and was installed on the left of the sanctuary.
The Stations of the Cross from the old chapel were re-erected in the nave. The former high altar was used in Our Lady of Sorrows Chapel, with the altarpiece of the Crucifixion. Phyffers’s Pietà and the Mater Dolorosa attributed to Dolci were in the same chapel, along with a relic of Saint Oliver Plunkett.
The elaborate, neo-Renaissance Carrara marble altar in Our Lady of Lourdes Chapel, at the west end of the nave on the south side, was donated to the church in 1892.
The 18th-century Carrara marble Pietà in the vestibule features an angel holding the body of Christ. A large mural memorial commemorating Father O’Leary, with his portrait carved in relief, was re-erected in the antechapel on the right. I also noticed a copy of Murillo’s ‘Mater Dolorosa’ at the back of the church, below the gallery.
The church holds several old pre-Reformation vestments, including chasubles once used in the private chapel of Catherine of Aragon, the first wife of Henry VIII. Their original embroidery and orphreys have been restored and, 500 years later, they are still worn on special occasions.
During the Blitz, a German bomb penetrated the church roof on 19 November 1940, struck a pier on the south side of the nave and hit the floor, but failed to detonate.
Many alterations have been made to Kelly’s church since it was built. The old Stations of the Cross were replaced by ones in cast relief, the former high altar was moved to the Our Lady of Sorrows Chapel, and the altar to Saint Anthony of Padua in the antechapel dates from the 1920s.
Archbishop Fulton Sheen, the first Catholic television evangelist, was a regular preacher in Saint Patrick’s from the 1920s to the 1960s. He once described himself as the ‘unappointed curate of the Parish’ and often stayed in the parish house.
In the 1960s, in response to the reforms following the Second Vatican Council, the high altar was adapted from the mensa of the original and brought forward to a lower position, leaving the reredos in situ.
Saint Patrick’s Church was renovated and refurbished at a cost of £4 million in 2010-2011. During the renovations, Mass was celebrated nearby in the Chapel of Saint Barnabas, at the House of Saint Barnabas.
Today, only a handful of resident Catholics remains in the parish. Hundreds of people continue to attend Saint Patrick’s Church, but they are mostly visitors, tourists and people working in the area. The church continues to attract immigrants and migrant workers from across London, and Mass is regularly celebrated in both Spanish and Portuguese.
