Patrick Comerford
I have passed through Luton in Bedfordshire on several occasions in recent year, catching flights at Luton Airport. But when I visited Luton recently, I spent much of the day visiting the synagogue and Jewish sites in the town and a few mosques.
I have to return to Luton soon to visit its many churches. But the one church I took notice of during a recent visit was Bury Park United Reformed Church on the corne of Bury Park Road Waldeck Road, a former Congregational and United Reformed church that closed recently and a Grade II listed building.
Bury Park Church was built as a Congregational church. The initiative to build the new chapel came from the King Street Congregational Chapel in Luton. The foundation stone of a temporary church that later became a schoolroom was laid on 3 June 1895 and the opening service in the new temporary building was held on 9 October 1895.
It took some time to raise the funds needed to build a permanent church building. The foundation stone of the new church was laid on 7 April 1903 and the church opened for worship on 18 November 1903. It was built in the perpendicular Gothic style to designs by the architect George Baines (1851-1934), who is known for his many non-conformist chapels and churches.
George Baines was born in 1851 in Kimbolton, Huntingdon, the son of Joseph Baines (1825-1854), a draper, and Eleanor Constin (1819-1915). He married Alice Maria Palmer of Great Yarmouth in the Congregational Church, Stratford, London, in 1875 and they were the parents of four children, three daughters and a son born between 1871 and 1891.
Baines was articled to Jonathan Tobbs Bottle and Henry Olley in Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, from 1867 to 1870 and then an assistant to William Gilbee Habershorn and Alfred Robert Pite. He established his own independent practice in Accrington, Lancashire, in 1871, but had moved to London by 1875. He became a Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects (FRIBA )in 1892.
His works include numerous Baptist chapels and churches, as well as Methodist, Congregational and Presbyterian churches and chapels, and one Roman Catholic church, Our Lady Star of the See Church in Lowestoft (1900-1902). His other works include the Liberal Club in Lowestoft and the gymnasium in Durham Grammar School. Baines formed a partnership with his son Reginald Palmer Baines as G & RP Baines in 1901. He retired in 1929, and died in 1934.
Bury Park Church was built on a prominent corner site in Luton and the schoolroom to the east was built first, followed by the cruciform church. Baines designed the church in a neo-decorated and perpendicular style, and it was built in fine light red brick, with Costessey stone dressings and slate roofs.
There is a cambered tower on the corner, with a short spire and weathervane, and short diagonal angle buttresses; a moulded parapet and plain corner turrets; a cornice band with rosettes and gargoyles on buttresses; four-light louvred window in each face; and lancet windows, plain stone bands, and a door on west side.
The west front has a large gable with a decorated apex over a large seven-light window. A single-storey porch on a half hexagonal plan has a gabled parapet over the main door. The four buttresses have empty niches. A small turret on the south echoes the main tower.
The north side has a similar large gabled window and two two-light square headed windows underneath. It is flanked by two small turrets. The was a single-storey link to the schoolroom at the east, with three lancet windows in a coped gable over the porch entrance.
I did not get inside the closed church, but I understand that inside it had four large pointed arches springing from foliated capitals on square marble columns, a ribbed ceiling, and a semi-circular pew arrangement. The panelling behind the organ had the same ogee motif as that in the window tracery. The church also had some plain Art Nouveau-style glass and a two-manual 13-stop pipe organ by Norman and Beard.
One of the foundation stones of the church was laid on 3 June in 1895 by Cyril Flower (1843-1907), 1st Baron Battersea, a former Liberal MP for Luton, a patron of the arts. He was the third of 18 children of Philip William Flower, a property developer, of Streatham. He was educated at Harrow and Trinity College, Cambridge, and was called to the bar at the Inner Temple in 1870.
Like his father, Cyril Flower also became involved in property development, primarily in Battersea. He was first elected to Parliament in 1880 as the MP for Brecon, and then sat for Luton from 1885 until 1892. He was a Junior Lord of the Treasury in Gladstone’s third Liberal administration. When his constituency in Luton was abolished in 1892, Gladstone put Flower in the House of Lords as Baron Battersea of Battersea. A year later, he turned down the offer to become the Governor of New South Wales in Australia. Flower was also a great art collector and a patron of James McNeill Whistler and also supported members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.
Flower married Constance de Rothschild in 1877. She was a daughter of Sir Anthony de Rothschild, and they met in 1864 through his friendship with her cousin, Leopold de Rothschild. However, Battersea was gay and a close friend and possible lover of Frederic WH Myers. His other friends included Henry James and Sir Edward Burne-Jones.
Battersea’s sexuality became a public scandal in 1902. One man and two underage teenagers from landed families were jailed after a trial in Norwich, but he was secretly granted immunity from prosecution by Arthur Balfour’s government, saving the rich Liberal peer and other prominent public figures from disgrace. He died of pneumonia in November 1907 at the age of 64. Lady Battersea died in November 1931.
The Presbyterian Church of England and the Congregational Church in England and Wales came together in 1972 and formed the United Reformed Church and from then the church in Luton was known as Bury Park United Reformed Church.
Due to changing demographics in the area and dwindling numbers of churcgoers, the congregation amalgamated with the other United Reformed Churches in Luton and the church closed 2½ years ago after holding its last service on 9 July 2023. A sign outside still proclaims ‘Jesus Welcomes All’.
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