Patrick Comerford
I often walk past Saint Paul’s Church on the corner of Hills Road and Saint Paul’s Road on my way between the train station and the centre of Cambridge. But I took some time to look at the church last week for the first time as I walking back to the train station after a day in Cambridge with a visiting friend from Ireland.
Saint Paul’s is a Grade II listed building less than a mile from the centre of Cambridge, and is known to all who are interested in the Gothic revival in church architecture because of the criticism it drew from AWN Pugin and the Cambridge Camden Society in The Ecclesiologist and because of its interesting links with the architects George Gilbert Scott and Temple Moore.
Saint Paul’s traces its origins to the mediaeval parish of Saint Andrew the Less on the Newmarket Road. This Augustinian community of Barnwell Priory took charge of the parish ca 1200, and the prior became the rector of the parish, with the right to receive its tithes, as well as its patron, with the right to appoint the clergy. In effect, the priors of Barnwell appointed vicars to look after ministry in the parish.
At the dissolution of the monastic houses during the Tudor Reformation, the priory was dissolved in 1538 and the prior’s rights passed to the crown and were then sold on.
The present church owes its origins to the work in the 1840s of the Revd Charles Perry (1807-1891), later the first Anglican Bishop of Melbourne, who was the first Vicar of Saint Paul’s.
Charles Perry was a fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1835 when he bought the advowson of the living of Saint Andrew-the-Less, with the right to appoint the clergy. He has been described as a ‘stout evangelical clergyman, equally opposed to ritualistic and rationalistic tendencies.’
As part of his evangelistic work among the railway workers and tradesmen who were beginning to settle in the Newtown area of Cambridge, Perry established a mission hall on Hills Road that became Saint Paul’s. He secured a district of its own, and was licensed by the Bishop of Ely as its first ‘perpetual curate’.
The parish was formed out of Saint Andrew the Less, with the addition of some land to the west of Hills Road that had previously been part of the parish of Saint Andrew the Great, near the Market Square in the centre of Cambridge. In his history of Saint Paul’s, Gerald Bray describes how Saint Paul’s became a separate district in the parish of Saint Andrew-the-Less in 1842, and became a new parish in its own right in 1845.
Perry began introducing extensive reforms, commissioned a new church that would became the centre of a new parish and also built Christ Church on Newmarket Road to replace Saint Andrew the Less as the parish church in 1846.
Perry became the first Anglican Bishop of Melbourne in 1847 and spent 29 years in Australia. When he retired, he returned to England and became one of the founders of Ridley Hall, the evangelical Anglican theological college in Cambridge, and of Wycliffe Hall, Oxford.
Saint Paul’s Church was designed by the architect Ambrose Poynter (1796-1886), a founding member of the Institute of British Architects. Poynter was born in London into a family of Huguenot origin. He worked with John Nash in 1814-1818, and then travelled through Italy, Sicily and the Ionian Islands (1819-1821).
Poynter lived in Paris between 1830 and 1832. Back in London, he began his own practice as an architect and became noted for his Palladian and Tudor Gothic fusion architecture. He was secretary of the Institute of British Architects in 1840, 1841, and 1844, and also its vice-president, and in the mid-1840s he became Professor of Fine Arts at King’s College London. When Poynter went blind, some of his commissions were taken over by William Burges.
Poynter designed three churches in Cambridge: Christ Church, Newmarket Road (1837-1839), Saint Paul’s, Hills Road (1841), and Saint Andrew the Great, Saint Andrew’s Street (1842-1843). The nave and the west tower of Saint Paul’s were built in 1841.
Saint Paul’s was criticised by the Cambridge Camden Society in the first issue of its journal, The Ecclesiologist (November 1841), in an attack that was supported by AWN Pugin. The Cambridge Camden Society was established in 1839 to study ‘ecclesiastical antiquities.’ The society published The Ecclesiologist from 1841 to 1868, arguing that architects should adopt a religious stance in their work.
The issue was withdrawn, but an offer then to review another of the Poynter churches was not conciliatory. Saint Paul’s had been called a ‘cheap church’, and in 1843 Saint Andrew’s was called ‘miserable and meagre’.
Historic England designates Saint Paul’s as a Grade II Listed Building, pointing to its historically significance as one of the new churches harshly criticised in the Ecclesiologist, ‘an important publication of the Gothic Revival but which possesses visual interest in its own right.’
Poynter intended the exterior of Saint Paul’s to be an interpretation of Great Saint Mary’s in the Market Place, Cambridge, but in brick. However, the Ecclesiologist vilified Poynter’s original design for not having a chancel, for its use of brick instead of stone, and for its unornamented, late 16th or early 17th century style. The design was criticised because its ‘style of architecture and plan of internal arrangement should have been after some approved ancient model.’
The critique was toned down in the second edition, following objections from senior church leaders to the first edition. Still, it said ‘there are many arrangements and details in this church which are on every other ground quite indefensible, even on the ground of cheapness. Such are the huge clock; the disproportionate octagonal turrets; the great four-centred belfry windows without cusping or mouldings; the figures 1841 in the spandrils of the clock; the square clerestory-windows; the enormous windows in the aisles; the mullions made to stand on the same plane as the wall; the square heads; the want of foliation; the jambs without mouldings; the graduated parapet of the nave; the thin mullions and tracery of the east windows; the difference between the supports of the western and the other galleries; the startling contrast of the red brick and the white quoins of dressed ashlar; the trellis-work of black bricks; and many other things which time forbids us to notice.’
Pugin reprinted the original critique in his Present State of Ecclesiastical Architecture (1842-1843), and suggested it should be circulated as a warning to be ‘hung up in terrorem in every church-competing architect’s office.’ At the time, Pugin was working on Saint Andrew’s Church, a few steps further north along Hills Road, on the corner of Lensfield Road, and the first post-Reformation Roman Catholic church in Cambridge. A few years later, Pugin would play an important role in the restoration, decoration and furnishing of the mediaeval fabric of the chapel of Jesus College in 1846-1849.
The chancel and vestry of Saint Paul’s were added in 1864, perhaps by HG Elborne. The north and south transepts were added in 1893 to designs by the Tullamore-born architect Temple Lushington Moore (1856-1920). Despite later reordering and change, the interior of Saint Paul’s retains spatial interest and some fixtures of note, including the work in the 1890s by Temple Moore (1856-1920) and the stained glass windows.
Temple Moore also designed the east range and south part of Westcott House, Cambridge, in 1914 and was the architect of Pusey House, Oxford. His only son, Richard Temple Moore (1891-1918), was killed when the RMS Leinster was torpedoed and sunk off Dublin a mere month before the end of World War I.
Temple Moore has been described as ‘England’s leading ecclesiastical architect from the mid-Edwardian years’. The architectural historian Sir Nikolaus Pevsner said that he was ‘always sensitive in his designs and often interesting.’ His designs reflect his Anglo-Catholic practice and values. His work can be seen across England; he is known for a series of fine Gothic Revival churches built about 1890 and 1917 and he also restored many churches and designed church fittings.
The stained glass windows in Saint Paul’s include: the chancel north window, after Holman Hunt, by Heaton, Butler and Bayne (1906); the south transept east window by Heaton, Butler and Bayne (1920); and the east window, ‘The Conversion of Saint Paul’, by Alfred Wilkinson (1960).
Charles Perry was succeeded at Saint Paul’s from 1847 to 1860 by the Revd John Scott, a brother of the architect George Gilbert Scott. The former parsonage built in Saint Paul’s Road behind the church in 1853-1854 was designed by George Gilbert Scott for his brother and is now the Cambridge Muslim College.
Perry’s immediate successors were styled ‘perpetual curates’ but in 1891 Canon Henry Paine Stokes (1849-1931) became the first vicar (1891-1917). Stokes came from an Irish family and was a former chaplain and a fellow of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. He was President of the Cambridge Antiquarian Society (1909-1911) and President of the Jewish Historical Society (1914-1916). He moved to Little Wilbraham in 1917, and died in 1931.
Meanwhile, the original parish was subdivided in the late 19th and early 20th century with the creation of Saint Barnabas (1888) and Saint Philip (1902).
The Revd Mark Ruston, who was a curate at Saint Paul’s in 1954-1955, later became the vicar of the Round Church (Holy Sepulchre) in the centre of Cambridge. There he developed a student ministry that continues to this day, though it is now located in the Saint Andrew the Great.
The Revd Herbert Moore Carson (1922-2003) was a controversial Vicar of Saint Paul’s in 1958 to 1964. He graduated from Trinity College Dublin and was ordained in the Church of Ireland by the Bishop of Connor. He had two curacies in Belfast, then worked as the travelling secretary of the Inter-Varsity Fellowship and spent five years at Saint Michael and All Angels, Blackheath Park, from 1953. He moved to Cambridge in 1958 and was the Vicar of Saint Paul’s for almost seven years.
He resigned from Saint Paul’s in December 1964, and seceded from Anglicanism in 1965 because of misgivings about liturgy, establishment, bishops, and infant baptism. Subsequently, he was baptised as a believing adult with his wife Delphine. He assisted Martyn Lloyd-Jones at Westminster Chapel London, and then became the minister of Hamilton Road Baptist Church, Bangor, Co Down, in 1967. He moved to Leicester in 1982 and was the minister of Knighton Evangelical Free Church until he retired in 1988.
When he left the Church of England, Carson split the congregation in the process. The damage caused by this was considerable but it was repaired to a degree by the Revd John Gwyn-Thomas, who had a popular ministry of preaching and counselling.
Saint Martin’s parish was also carved out of Saint Paul’s parish in 1961.
Canon Michael Robert Wedlake Farrer, Vicar in 1978-1992, was Rural Dean of Cambridge (1984-1989), a canon of Ely Cathedral (1988-1992), and senior chaplain to the Bishop of Ely (1992-1995). He died in 2018 at the age of 96.
The Revd Michael Shaun Beckett was the priest-in-charge and then vicar for over 30 years until he retired in 2021. He is the author of Gospel in Esther. In a foreword to the book, Stephen Sykes, a former Bishop of Ely, describes Saint Paul’s as a ‘parish church long noted for its attentiveness to the work of preaching’.
Saint Paul’s Church was Listed Grade II in 1972. The interior became a multi-use space in 1996, designed by Freeland Rees-Roberts. Meeting rooms and porch were added 2012-2013.
The Revd Imogen Nay has been the vicar of Saint Paul’s since 2022. She has been the Rector of Saint Andrew’s, Rugby, and the Canon for Evangelism and Discipleship in Chelmsford Cathedral. The Revd Dr Becky Applin Warner is the self-supporting assistant curate.
Despite its background and its turbulent history into the second half of the 20th century, Saint Paul’s describes itself today as a church that travels with questions, not firm answers, that seeks to have healthy conversations, learning from the world around us, and open to the Spirit and new forms of truth. ‘This is the Anglican way: balancing Scripture, Tradition and Reason. We are guided in our searching through conversation with the Bible, the historic creeds and the traditions of the church’.
Each week, Saint Paul’s hosts a variety of meals and runs an active community programme, and also runs a Fairbite social supermarket.
‘We are a member of inclusive church and we try and make church an accessible and safe place for all. However, we know this is an ongoing journey, and we don't always get it right.’
• Sunday Services in Saint Paul’s are Holy Communion at 10:30 am and a variety of reflective services at 6 pm. The church is open Monday to Friday 10 to 4 pm.
