Patrick Comerford
While I was visiting a number of churches in the Holborn area of London recently, including Saint Alban’s Church, Holborn, where I was attending an event hosted by both USPG and SPCK, and Saint Etheldreda’s Church on Ely Place, I stopped for a while also at the City Temple on Holborn Viaduct, which has sometimes been described as ‘the nonconformist cathedral’ in London.
The City Temple, beside Saint Andrew Holborn, should not be confused with the Temple Church, between Fleet Street and the Embankment, a mediaeval church known to many only because it features in both The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown and the film based on the book.
The church in Holborn is part of the United Reformed Church and one of the oldest Congregational churches in London, with connections with the early Puritans of the mid 16th century. It is famous for its notable preachers, pastors and theologians, especially the Revd Leslie Weatherhead, who led the church from 1936 to 1960, but also Thomas Goodwin, chaplain to Oliver Cromwell, and Joseph Parker, one of the great Victorian preachers.
The first church building on the present site in Holborn was built in 1874, but the congregation was founded much earlier. The traditional date is 1640, when the church possibly started as a nonconformist, congregational church. But evidence suggests it was founded as early as the 1560s by Puritans and Calvinists who refused to conform to the Church of England, to use with the Book of Common Prayer and wanted freedom in their approach to worship.
Throughout its history, the congregation has worshipped in many buildings in London. Since 1874, it has met in its building on Holborn Viaduct, and for long claimed to be the only historic English Free Church in the City of London worshipping in its own building every Sunday.
The City Temple is widely believed to have been founded by Cromwell’s chaplain Thomas Goodwin around 1640. It is the oldest Nonconformist congregation in the City of London, and its first meeting house was on Anchor Lane.
The second minister was Thomas Harrison, who succeeded Goodwin in 1650, when the congregation moved to a meeting house in Lime Street. Harrison remained only until 1655 and a successor was not appointed until 1658, when Thomas Mallory became the pastor. Mallory led the congregation through a difficult period after the restoration of the monarchy in 1660.
The congregation moved several times until it found a more permanent home in the Poultry, Cheapside, in 1819.
When James Spence resigned as the pastor in 1867, the Poultry Chapel offered the position of pastor to Joseph Parker of Cavendish Street Chapel, Manchester, but he did not accept until 1869.
At the same time the congregation was planning to move from its site in Poultry, sold its site for £50,000, and the Poultry Chapel was closed on 16 June 1872. Parker insisted on finding a new site within the City of London and a new site was bought on Holborn Viaduct. Until the new church was ready, the congregation met in Cannon Street Hotel in the morning, in Exeter Hall in the evening, and in the Presbyterian Church, London Wall, for mid-day services on Thursdays.
The new church was designed by the Bradford architects Lockwood and Mason with an elegant, classical stone-clad façade onto Holborn Viaduct, with a prominent copper cupola-clad tower, providing a glowing beacon in the local community. The Doncaster-born architect Henry Francis Lockwood (1811-1878) and the Leeds-born architect William Mawson (1828-1889) also designed some of the most distinguished buildings in Bradford, including Saint George’s Hall (1851-1852), the Venetian Gothic Wool Exchange (1864-1867), and the Continental Gothic Revival City Hall (1869-1873). They also laid out and designed the mill, model town and church at Saltaire (1851-1876), all in an Italianate Classical style. At the time, Saltaire was one of the most important examples of a philanthropic industrial and housing development in the world.
The memorial stone of the new church, to be called the City Temple, was laid by Thomas Binney (1798-1874), popularly known as the ‘Archbishop of Nonconformity’, on 19 May 1873. The Corporation of the City of London presented a marble pulpit, and the new building was dedicated on 19 May 1874. Because of its location and size, the City Temple soon came to be seen as the nonconformist cathedral, and it became the most important Congregational pulpit in Britain, mainly due to Joseph Parker’s reputation.
As Parker grew older and his health declined, the Revd Reginald John Campbell (1867-1956), a Congregational minister in Brighton, was called as his assistant in 1902. But Parker died suddenly and Campbell became his successor from 1903 to 1915.
Parker had been theologically conservative, but Campbell was a socialist politically and a supporter of the Independent Labour Party, and his theology was as radical as his politics. He introduced Biblical criticism in his preaching, and questioned the traditional authorship of books and the origins of the text.
The theology of Campbell and his friends came to be known as the ‘New Theology’ and he answered his critics in a volume called The New Theology. But Campbell came to a crisis of faith when several New Theologians began to question the deity and even the historicity of Christ.
Campbell preached his last sermon in the City Temple in October 1915 and then resigned from the Congregational Church. A few days later, he was received into the Church of England by Bishop Charles Gore in Cuddesdon, and in October 1916 he was ordained as an Anglican priest. On joining the Church of England, he wrote an account of the development of his thinking in A Spiritual Pilgrimage (1916). He was the Canon Chancellor of Chichester Cathedral when he retired in 1946 at the age of 80. His funeral was conducted by Bishop George Bell.
Campbell’s successor at the City Temple, the Revd Dr Joseph Fort Newton (1880-1950), was an American who was almost as radical theologically. He was educated at the Southern Baptist Seminary, Louisville, and Harvard, and was a theological liberal. He had been asked to the City Temple at first as a temporary appointment after Campbell's resignation, but he was opposed by the deacons and the internal divisions that ensued led to the deacons being dismissed.
Newton asked for an assistant, and the assistant finally called was Maude Royden (1876-1956), an Anglican and radical pacifist. As a woman, she had been prohibited from preaching by the Church of England.
After World War I, Newton returned to the US in 1919 and in 1926 he was ordained a deacon and priest in the Episcopal Church. He was succeeded at the City Temple by FW Norwood, an Australian Baptist who remained until 1935.
When Norwood left the City Temple, there were demands within the congregation for the appointment of a Congregationalist as pastor. In the event, however, the Revd Leslie Weatherhead (1893-1976), a Methodist minister then in Leeds, was appointed in 1936.
Weatherhead was a member of Frank Buchman’s Oxford Group from 1930 to 1939, and wrote several books reflecting the group’s values, including Discipleship and The Will of God. He was often seen as the ‘head’ of the Oxford Group in London.
The City Temple was destroyed by fire caused by German incendiary bombs during the Blitz. Weatherhead was able to continue his ministry thanks to the hospitality of a nearby Anglican church, Saint Sepulchre-without-Newgate.
Weatherhead raised the funds to rebuild the City Temple, which was redesigned by by Seely and Paget and reopened in 1958. The completed design included a new copper and sandstone clad concrete and steel-framed form, book-ended by the original surviving front and rear of the church. The City Temple has been a listed Grade II building since 1977.
Meanwhile, Despite opposition, Weatherhead was elected President of the Methodist Conference in 1955-1956. He retired in 1960 and died in 1976.
The present minister, the Revd Dr Rodney D Woods, was appointed in 2001.
The City Temple is currently completing work on a major redevelopment programme, and I was unable to visit the building, which is covered in hoarding and cladding as the work continues. Sunday services are currently taking place in the Chelsea Community Church on Edith Grove.
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