Patrick Comerford
During my visit to Pimlico and Belgravia last week, I visited three interesting churches in the area: Saint Gabriel’s Church, Warwick Square; Saint Saviour’s Church, Saint George’s Square; and Saint Peter’s Church, Eaton Square. In recent years, I have also visited Saint Michael’s Church, Chester Square.
Saint Peter’s Church is at the east end of Eaton Square, which is, in fact, an oblong about one-third of a mile long and arranged around six private garden squares covering 2.5 ha of Belgravia, close to Mayfair and Knightsbridge.
Eaton Square is part of the Grosvenor Estate and takes its name from Eaton Hall in Cheshire, the principal home of the Dukes of Westminster. Its origins go back to an Act of Parliament in 1826 that allowed Lord Grosvenor – who owned most of the land that now makes up Belgravia and Mayfair – to drain the ‘open and rural space known as the Five Fields and build a new and elegant town connecting London and Chelsea’.
Eaton Square was once named as the ‘most expensive place to buy property in Britain’. The residents have included former Prime Ministers Stanley Baldwin and Neville Chamberlain, actor Vivien Leigh, Austrian statesman Prince Metternich, philanthropist George Peabody and the exiled and deposed former Greek royal family.
James Bond’s fictional home was also in Eaton Square, while real-life residents in the past have included the Bond actor Sean Connery, film star Rex Harrison, Nigella Lawson and Charles Saatchi.
No 22 was once the childhood home of John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan, who as Lord Lucan who was suspected of murdering his children’s nanny Sandra Rivett in 1974.
If Eaton Square can be described as the ‘most expensive place to buy property in Britain’, then Saint Peter’s Church was once described in The Times ‘as one of the ost beautiful churches in London’ (19 October 1991).
Saint Peter’s is a neoclassical church designed by the architect Henry Hakewill with a hexastyle portico with six Ionic columns and a clock tower, and is a Grade II* listed building.
The architect Henry Hakewill (1771-1830) had a large practice, mostly involving English country houses. He was the architect to Rugby School, and also worked for the Radcliffe trustees in Oxford and the Middle Temple in London. His two Greek Revival buildings of note are Coed Coch (1804), a now-demolished country house in Denbighshire, Wales, and Saint Peter's Church, Eaton Square.
Saint Peter’s was first built in 1824-1827 during the early stages of the development of Eaton Square. This building burnt down, and the church was rebuilt in 1837 according to Hakewill’s drawings by Arthur William Hakewill (1808-1856) and Charles Jearrad. From its founding, Saint Peter’s, Eaton Square, was considered in Pimlico and until at least 1878 was usually recorded as Saint Peter’s, Pimlico.
Saint Peter’s was founded as a district a district church of Saint George’s, Hanover Square, in 1827, and remained so until 1844. It was the parish church of Saint Peter, Pimlico, from 1844 until 1954.
Saint Peter’s is built of yellow stock brick and ashlar and stone dressings. It is a basilica-style church with a pedimented west portico, a narthex, tower and cupola, rectangular nave, chancel with small north and south transepts, and flanking chapels.
The hexastyle Ionic portico has six Ionic columns and a plain entablature that are inspired by the west portico of the Erechtheion on the north side of the Acropolis in Athens. Some years earlier, William Inwood (1771-1843) in his design of Saint Pancras New Church (1822) on Euston Road had been inspired by both the Tower of the Winds in Athens, with Ionic-style pillars at the west end, and two sets of caryatids that stand above the north and south entrances to the crypt, modelled by John Charles Felix Rossi (1762-1839).
The portico of Saint Peter’s is set on four steps, surmounted by a pediment. There are pilasters at the rear angles, three tall doorways with moulded architraves, and flat cornices on carved brackets, each with a pair of doors with fielded panels.
The tower is set on a wide stylobate with a tall plinth forming a clock stage, each face with a clock. At the bell stage, a louvred round arched opening is flanked by Ionic half columns with pilasters at the angles. The cupola is set between pedimented blocks at the angles and is surmounted by a gilded metal cross.
The interior was, as so often at the time, a ‘preaching box’, with galleries along three sides and the organ and choir at the west end. The architect James Elmes (1782-1862) described the effect as ‘chaste and simple’.
The original building was a commissioners’ church, receiving a grant from the Church Building Commission towards its cost. The full cost of the building was £22,427, the equivalent to more than £2 million today, with the commission paying £5,556.
The church was enlarged in 1875, and reordered to designs by Sir Arthur Blomfield (1829-1899), who added a chancel at the east end and north and south transepts and ‘fiercely normanised’ the interior. Internally, Blomfield’s chancel and transepts are in a Romanesque Revival style, but externally they follow with Hakewill’s neoclassical style.
All of the parish of Christ Church, Broadway, and half of that of Saint Andrew’s Church, Ashley Place were merged into Saint Peter’s after they were both damaged beyond repair in the Blitz, with the other half of Saint Andrew’s parish going to Saint Stephen’s Church, Rochester Row.
The crypt with about 400 burials was cleared in 1951 and the remains were reinterred at Brookwood Cemetery in Surrey. Since 1954, it has been the Parish of Saint Peter, Pimlico, with Christ Church, Westminster. Choristers for the choir were provided by London Choir School until 1958, when the choir school closed.
Almost 40 years ago, an anti-Catholic arsonist set fire to the east end of the church on 20 October 1987, in the mistaken belief that the building was a Roman Catholic church. Within hours the church was engulfed. By the next day the fire was out but only the Georgian shell of the building remained. It was roofless, with most of its furnishings destroyed. The church needed total rebuilding.
The Braithwaite Partnership of architects was commissioned to completely redesign the church with a new and simpler interior, and to incorporate within the site a vicarage, offices, flats for a curate, verger and music director, a meeting hall, nursery school rooms and a large playroom for the parish youth club.
Work on the new church began at Easter 1990, and the foundation stone of the new sanctuary was laid by the Duchess of Kent on 25 September 1990 and dedicated by Bishop John Klyberg of Fulham. The rebuilding work was completed in 1991, the church reopened on 20 October 1991, the fourth anniversary of the fire, and was reconsecrated by the Bishop of London, David Hope, on 7 May 1992.
Saint Peter’s retains its grand Georgian portico but beyond that the interior is clean, bright and modern. The choir and organ are at the west end, as in the 1827 plan, but the fittings are thoroughly modern. The church is accessible and has disabled-accessible toilets.
The apse behind the altar is decorated entirely in gold mosaic. Around the side of the apse, part of the 1873 sanctuary that survived the fire can be seen, and also a side chapel now used as the vestry office, complete with stained glass.
Saint Peter’s has been described as ‘a serene sanctuary amidst the bustling cityscape … providing solace and spiritual nourishment for both residents and visitors.’ It is a venue for celebrated classical concerts in spring and autumn, and is known as a venue for society weddings. Lord Lucan’s daughter, the barrister Lady Camilla Bingham, and Michael Bloch were married in the church in 1998.
Saint Peter’s stands in the inclusive Anglo-Catholic tradition of the Church of England and serves a diverse community across Belgravia, Victoria, and Pimlico, with services using both the Book of Common Prayer and Common Worship. Father Jonathan Kester has been the Vicar of Saint Peter’s since 2022; the other clergy include Father Carlos Remotti-Breton, assistant curate, and Father Herbert Bennett, honorary associate priest.
• Sunday Services are: 8 am, Holy Communion (Book of Common Prayer); 9:30 am, Family Eucharist; 11 am, Choral Eucharist. A Parish Eucharist at 10:30 am replaces the Family Eucharist and Choral Eucharist on some Sundays. Weekday services are: 8 am, Morning Prayer (except Wednesdays); 5 pm, Evening Prayer; 8 am Wednesdays, the Eucharist; 12.30 pm, Monday to Friday, the Eucharist.
