Patrick Comerford
Lumen United Reformed Church, formerly known as Regent Square United Reformed Church, is in the heart of Bloomsbury, close to the corner of Tavistock Place and Wakefield Street. The church is a prize-winning building, recognised for its innovative architectural design, and has important works of art, including its windows and the details in its courtyard design, and has an interesting place in early 19th century church history in London. But the future of the church now seems uncertain, and there are many doubts and unanswered questions about its future use.
Until recently, Lumen Church had a small congregation worshipping in the Reformed tradition and part of the United Reformed Church, which brings together formerly separate Presbyterian, Congregational and Church of Christ traditions.
In 200 years, Lumen has had three buildings, belonged to four different churches – the Church of Scotland, the Free Church of Scotland, the Presbyterian Church of England, and the United Reformed Church – has had five different names and 17 ministers, and the building is the work of several architects who have worked in very different times and styles.
Regent Square Church was a Presbyterian Church first founded to serve a scattered, mainly Scots, congregation. The church has its beginnings back in 1808, when the Highland Society of London began a Gaelic-speaking Presbyterian mission and a Gaelic-speaking chapel for migrant workers from Scotland who had arrived in London.
The congregation first met in rented accommodation in Westminster, three miles from the later Regent Square site, and was first led by the Revd Duncan Robertson (1766-1825). In 1813, he took the church to larger premises, the New Jerusalem Chapel in Cross Street, Hatton Garden, built in 1797 for followers of Emanuel Swedenborg. However, a rupture between Robertson and the members led to ‘an almost total dispersal of the congregation’.
The Revd Edward Irving (1792-1834), the minister of the Gaelic church from 1822, received an invitation from the Caledonian Church, Hatton Garden, in the winter of 1821, and with that call he was ordained in the Church of Scotland in July 1822.
Irving was so popular a preacher that services had to be ticketed, with people standing in the aisles and even on the pulpit steps. Those who came to hear him included the Prime Minister, Lord Liverpool, and the future Prime Minister William Gladstone.
To accommodate the larger congregations, a newer and larger church, the Scotch National Church, was built in 1827 at what was then the very edge of London, at the corner of Regent Square and Tavistock Place. The regency gothic church was the first major commission for the architect Sir William Tite (1798-1873), who designed a miniature version of York Minster, including the miniature versions of the twin towers.
Tite’s greatest undertaking later was rebuilding the Royal Exchange, which opened in 1844, and he designed many of the early railway stations in Britain.
Regent Square Presbyterian Church was consecrated in 1827, and began as a sister church of the established Church of Scotland. It was formed to work among young people from Scotland who had moved to London to work and who ‘in the end are cast away among the manifold temptations of this busy and alluring city’. Prominent figures associated who visited the church during the 19th century included John Ruskin, George Canning, Thomas Carlyle and Sir Robert Peel.
An internal dispute erupted in 1832, when the church doors closed against Edward Irving for allowing members of the lay congregation to interrupt the services by ‘speaking in tongues’. In response, 800 people left Regent Square to form a new church nearby.
Irving and his followers, describing themselves as of the Holy Catholic Apostolic Church, moved to a new building in Newman Street in 1832, and in March 1833 he was deposed from the ministry of the Church of Scotland on a charge of heresy. He was re-ordained in the church in Newman Street and died on 7 December 1834.
Regent Square Church followed the Revd Thomas Chalmers (1780-1847) in the Disruption of 1843, when 450 ministers and their congregations, as well as probation ministers, teachers and missionaries seceded from the Church of Scotland to form the Free Church of Scotland.
At first, the church was surrounded by open field. But the industrial revolution soon brought the railways. When the more prosperous residents moved away, they were replaced by poor and working class families in a built-up area, alongside university students, medical staff at local hospitals and overseas visitors. As a result, many elders and members came from districts that were more affluent than the locality of the church.
The Presbyterian Church of England was formed in the 1876 with the merger of the English congregations of the mainly Scottish United Presbyterian Church with other Presbyterian congregations in England.
The Young Men’s Bible Class at Regent Square Church was founded in 1877 by an elder, Robert Whyte, with Christian teaching, cultural pursuits such as a literary society and an orchestra, facilities for cycling, football, rambling and swimming, and its own magazine, The Thistle.
Regent Square Presbyterian Church acquired an adjoining, abandoned Baptist chapel in 1911, repaired it and altered it to become the Regent Square Institute, with a hall, gymnasium and reading room that were was used by groups such as Sunday school, the Boys Brigade and evening concerts. The club continued until October 1923, when The Thistle ceased publication, the class closed and the society amalgamated with the young people’s group. By the 1930s, the harsh economic and social climates were reflected in the Regent Square Magazine, which devoted two pages in February 1933 to unemployment. A recreational centre in the church provided games, newspapers, magazines and writing materials, giving local unemployed men somewhere to go and something to do.
During the inter-war years, John Charles Walsham Reith (1889-1971), 1st Baron Reith, attended the church, where his parents had been married. He was inspired to apply for the new post of Director-General of the BBC by a sermon on Ezekiel he heard in the church in 1922.
During World War II, the Regent Square Institute was hit by a bomb on 21 September 1940. Evening meetings were discontinued, the institute activities were moved to the Wakefield Street halls, and the monthly church magazine was reduced to four pages.
A V2 rocket destroyed Presbyterian Church House on the afternoon of 9 February 1945, with loss of life, including four senior church officials. The church and halls still stood, but there was considerable damage, the structure was unsafe, and the church was unusable. For the next 15 years, the lecture hall served as a ‘temporary’ church, and another smaller hall served as ‘temporary’ accommodation for yet another six years.
Church House on the corner of Wakefield Street was rebuilt by 1956, and it was agreed to dismantle the old church and build a new but smaller one. The War Damage Commission’s offered a grant of £44,300 and the plans for a new church were approved in 1964.
The new church was designed by the architect Courtenay Theobald, who also built 50 bridges. The distinctive concrete arches used for the roof trusses probably owe their inspiration to his many bridges. The new church was opened on the 11 June 1966 with about 300 people present, including representatives from other local churches.
The church featured a dalle de verre stained glass window by Pierre Fourmaintraux (1896-1974) depicting the Resurrection. The window includes over 1,000 pieces of one inch thick glass in 21 panels. Each piece was expertly cut by hand, by scoring the glass on the surface and hitting it with a hammer on a small anvil so the piece would break cleanly. The surface of the glass was chipped, so that sunlight striking the glass goes in all directions.
Pierre Fourmaintraux was born in France, and first worked in his father’s ceramics factory, where he first worked. He married the English impressionist painter Rachel Winslow (1880-1974) and they moved to England. He worked for James Powell & Sons (Whitefriars Glass Studio) in 1956-1969 as chief designer of slab glass and abstract designs.
His windows were especially popular in Roman Catholic churches and those he trained in the dalle de verre technique included Dom Charles Norris, who became one of its most prolific British proponents and whose work I have seen in Saint Bernardine’s Church in Buckingham.
Regent Square Church joined the newly formed United Reformed Church (URC) in 1972, when the Presbyterian and Congregational traditions merged and the church later adopted the name Lumen United Reformed Church.
The institute and the halls were sold in 2007 to finance a major remodelling of the church, and they are now used by the Soka Gakkai International Buddhists. Church House on the corner of Wakefield Street and Tavistock Place, is now United Reformed Church House, the main offices of the URC.
The church was remodelled in 2008 by Theis and Khan Architects, who redesigned and extended it into a multi-faith community hub. It was their first church project and they completely remodelled the building. Their redesign retained the original building’s volume and coherence, and the 1966 window by Fourmaintraux was moved from the west side wall to make it central to the church.
The RIBA award-winning renovation added an 11-metre-high conical ‘sacred space’ that reaches through the full height of the building to penetrate the church roof, receiving direct natural light. The light inside alters with weather and seasons, and was intended to convey a sense of peace and separation from the bustle of the outside world. The position of this sacred space at the heart of Lumen provides a secluded area for contemplation.
New amenities including an entrance, lift, toilets, offices and multi-use spaces. A community café has a north window overlooking Regent Square with geometric metalwork designed by the artist Rona Smith. This is an 8 metre tall bronze screen suspended within the alcove of the window, gently arcing into the interior space.
A garden courtyard is planted with herbs and silver birch trees, providing a modern form of a cloister with an arcade around the courtyard. Alison Wilding created a new font, a drinking fountain and a garden fountain, drawing on the themes of ‘living water’ and light.
Lumen also has a small gallery that has showcased the work of local artists, photographers and students.
Lumen’s small worshipping community included people of different backgrounds who continued to worship there until 2020, when Covid-19 brought services to an end for a group that was already struggling. Although regular Sunday services have ended, the venue continues as an active community space that is home to several community church groups and it continues its links with Gaelic cultural events. Today Lumen says it hopes to become home to a new congregation in the near future.
