Patrick Comerford
When I was in London a few days ago, I visited half or dozen or so churches and chapels in Bloomsbury, Fitzrovia and Mayfair, and for the first time ever visited Farm Street Church or the Church of the Immaculate Conception, the Jesuit-run church in Mayfair.
Farm Street Church and has been described by Sir Simon Jenkins as ‘Gothic Revival at its most sumptuous.’ I cannot explain why I have never visited this church until now, with its interior work by Pugin, Goldie, Salviati and Eric Gill, its stained glass by Hardman of Birmingham, Evie Hone and Patrick Pollen, and its reputation for musical excellence.
Farm Street Church has been well-known for different reasons for over 175 years, including as a community welcoming converts to Roman Catholicism, famous writers, and for challenging preaching and beautiful music and art. Many people have regularly travelled long distances to worship in the church and to seek help and advice from the Jesuit community there.
When the Jesuits first began looking for a site for a church in London in the 1840s, they found the site in the mews of a back street. The name Farm Street comes from Hay Hill Farm which, in the 18th century, extended from Hill Street east beyond Berkeley Square. Pope Gregory XVI approved building the church in 1843.
The Superior of the English Jesuits at the time was Father Randal Lythgoe. He originally wanted to build a church that could hold 900 people. But this was too expensive, and the church was built with a capacity of 475. It cost £5,800 to build, and this was met by private donations. Father Lythgoe laid the foundation stone in 1844. The church opened for use in 1846 and the church was officially opened by Bishop Nicholas Wiseman, later the first Archbishop of Westminster on 31 July 1849, the feast of the Jesuit founder Saint Ignatius Loyola.
The architect was Joseph John Scoles (1798-1863), who also designed the Church of Saint Francis Xavier, Liverpool, Saint Ignatius Church, Preston, and the Church of Saint James the Less and Saint Helen, Colchester. He was father of Canon Ignatius Scoles, an architect and Jesuit priest, who designed Saint Wilfrid’s Church, Preston, and the church hall at Saint James the Less and Saint Helen, Colchester.
Thomas Jackson was the builder and Henry Taylor Bulmer designed the original interior decorations. Before the official opening, The Builder described the church on 2 June 1849 as ‘a very successful specimen of modern Gothic’.
Because of the limited size of the plot, the church was orientated north-south rather than east-west. The plan of the church is longitudinal, consisting of a nave, aisles with chapels and the sanctuary with side chapels. The overall style is a mixture of Decorated and Flamboyant Gothic, with the west front derived from Beauvais Cathedral, and the east window from Carlisle Cathedral.
The style is Decorated Gothic and Scoles in his design of the façade was inspired by the west front of Beauvais Cathedral. The Caen stone high altar high altar was designed by AWN Pugin, with an inscription requesting prayers for the altar’s benefactor, Monica Tempest. The front panels depict the sacrifices of Abel, Noah, Melchizedek and Abraham. The reredos contains images of the 24 elders in the Book of Revelation (see Revelation 4: 10);
Above Pugin’s high altar are two Venetian mosaic panels by Antonio Salviati (1816-1890) depicting the Annunciation and the Coronation of the Virgin Mary, added in 1875, shortly after Salviati had oepned studios in London. The sanctuary walls are lined with alabaster and marble by George Goldie (1864).
The polychrome statue of Our Lady of Farm Street, by Mayer of Munich, was donated in 1868. The figure is 6 ft high, carved in wood and decorated with gilt in the engraved style.
The words of the Ave Maria (see Luke 1: 26-28) are continued along the upper walls in the church in a series of roundels completed by Filomena Monteiro in 1996.
Originally, the church had a nave, sanctuary with side chapels and only three bays of aisles. Rich furnishings were gradually installed to embellish the church. The side chapels on the south side are dedicated to Saint Aloysius, Saint Joseph and Saint Francis Xavier.
After a fire in the Blessed Sacrament Chapel in 1858, Henry Clutton rebuilt it as the Sacred Heart Chapel (1858-1863), with the assistance of John Francis Bentley (1839-1902), later the architect of Westminster Cathedral. Bentley’s other churches included Holy Rood Church, Watford.
The sanctuary floor was raised in 1864, with the east window raised correspondingly. The side aisles were added as neighbouring land became available. Clutton built the south aisle in 1876-1878, with three chapels and a porch to Farm Street. Alfred Edward Purdie added the red brick presbytery in 1886-1888, and also designed furnishings for several chapels in the 1880s and in 1905.
William Henry Romaine-Walker (1854-1940) built the north aisle in 1898–1903, with five chapels divided by internal buttresses that enclosed confessionals. The chapels and the north aisle continued to be furnished in 1903-1909: the Calvary Chapel, the Altar of the English Martyrs, the Altar of Our Lady and Saint Stanislaus, the Altar of Saint Thomas the Apostle, and the Altar of Our Lady of Sorrows.
At the same time as the north aisle was built, an additional entrance to Mount Street Gardens was added and the north-east side chapel was reconfigured by Walker as the Chapel of Saint Ignatius. The liturgical east façade became visible and accessible with the demolition of Saint George’s workhouse, which had directly abutted the site boundary, and the laying out of public gardens.
The church was remodelled in 1951 by Adrian Gilbert Scott, following the bomb damage caused during World War II. The church became the parish church of Mayfair in the Diocese of Westminster in 1966 – until then, Baptisms and weddings could not be celebrated in the church.
There were several attempts to reorder the sanctuary without altering AWN Pugin’s high altar. Broadbent, Hastings, Reid & New extended the sanctuary floor in 1980, installed a forward altar, moved the pulpit eastwards to the chancel arch, and removed the altar rail gates to the Calvary Chapel while keeping the rails.
At the same time, the roof was repaired at a cost of over £86,000. In 1987, the roof was painted to a scheme by Austin Winkley. In 1992 a fibreglass cast of Pugin’s high altar was installed as a forward altar, but has since been replaced.
The most recent restoration campaign was completed in 2007 and involved conserving the stonework on the exterior, in the sanctuary and in the Sacred Heart Chapel.
The new altar, solemnly dedicated in 2019, was carved in Carrara marble by Paul Jakeman of London and features a frieze of bunches of grapes, calling to mind the Eucharist.
The great window in the chancel at the litrugical east end of the church was based on the east window in Carlisle Cathedral, with the theme of the Jesse Tree, tracing the family tree of Jesus back to the father of King David. The original was tarnished by pollution, and was replaced in 1912 by a new one by John Hardman of Birmingham. The old window was then cleaned and repaired and then moved to Saint Agnes Church in Lac-Mégantic, Quebec.
Hardman modified the original design of the Jesse Tree in the window to make the Madonna with the Christ Child the central figure.
The rose window at the liturgical west end by the Irish artist Evie Hone (1894-1955) depicts the instruments of Christ’s Passion. She also designed the window in the Lourdes Chapel depicting the Assumption. She once had a workshop in the courtyard at Marlay Park in Rathfarnham.
The window in the Calvary Chapel by Patrick Pollen (1928-2010), who worked with Evie Hone and Catherine O’Brien at An Túr Gloine, depicts three Jesuit English martyrs and saints: Edmund Campion, Robert Southwell and Nicholas Owen.
In his book England’s Thousand Best Churches (1999), Sir Simon Jenkins says, ‘Not an inch of wall surface is without decoration, and this in the austere 1840s, not the colourful late-Victorian era. The right aisle carries large panels portraying the Stations of the Cross. The left aisle has side chapels and confessionals, ingeniously carved within the piers. In the west window above the gallery is excellent modern glass by Evie Hone of 1953, with the richness of colour of a Burne-Jones.’
The church opened its doors to LGBT Catholics in 2013 after the ‘Soho Masses’ came to an end after six years at the nearby Church of Our Lady of the Assumption and Saint Gregory. Archbishop Vincent Nichols attended the first of these Masses in Farm Street.
The parish also has a focus on service to the disadvantaged, especially the homeless, refugees, trafficked people and people who suffer because of the faith, and supports Jesuit and Catholic projects in the Middle East, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.
Farm Street Church has developed a reputation for its music over the years. In the 19th century, the choir consisted only of men and boys drawn from the local Roman Catholic schools.
Between 1881 and 1916, the organist was John Francis Brewer, son of the architectural illustrator Henry William Brewer, who was just 18 when appointed.
After World War I, the choir wasunder the direction of Father John Driscoll and then Fernand Laloux, and the organist was Guy Weitz, a Belgian who had been a pupil of Charles-Marie Widor and Alexandre Guilmant. One of Weitz’s most notable students was Nicholas Danby (1935-1997) who succeeded him as the church organist in 1967. Danby’s main achievement at Farm Street was re-establishing the choir in the early 1970s, following a period of change in the late 1960s, as a fully professional ensemble.
A number of recordings were made of the music at Farm Street church were made in the 1990s. A CD of organ music was recorded at Farm Street in 2000 by David Graham and included the music of Guy Weitz. Today, the repertoire at Farm Street includes 16th century polyphony, the Viennese classical composers, 19th century romantics, 20th century and contemporary music as well as Gregorian chant.
The Mount Street Jesuit Centre was launched in 2004 to provide adult Christian formation through prayer, worship, theological education and social justice. It offers non-residential retreats and courses in spirituality and provides a full-time GP service for homeless people.
When Heythrop College formally closed in 2019, the London Jesuit Centre was launched at the Mount Street Jesuit Centre. It includes a reading room of the Heythrop Library, with access to about 8,000 books and indirect access to most of the collection of Heythrop College. The London Jesuit Centre also provides teaching courses, spirituality, retreats and research. and residential and non-residential retreats.
The Month, a monthly review published by the Jesuits at Farm Street, was founded by Frances Margaret Taylor (1832-1900) in 1864, but closed in 2001. Thinking Faith was launched as an online journal in 2008 and publishes theological papers as well as papers on philosophy, spirituality, the arts, poetry, culture, Biblical studies, political and social issues and current affairs.
King Charles III attended a special Advent service at Farm Street Church organised by Aid to the Church in Need (ACN), a charity that supports persecuted Christians.
• Mass times on Sundays are at 8 am, 9:30 and 11, with a young adults Mass at 7 pm. Weekday Masses, Monday to Friday, are at 8 am, 1:05 pm and 6 pm. Saturday Masses are at 10 am and 6 pm (Saturday Vigil).
