Visiting Addington near Winslow to see the former schoolhouse built in 1876 by Edward Swinfen Harris

The Old School House in Addington, near Winslow, Buckinghamshire, was designed by Edward Swinfen Harris in 1876 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Patrick Comerford

My research into the life and work of the Stony Stratford architect Edward Swinfen Harris (1841-1924), is developing and growing in many exciting new directions. There are further invitations to speak about his work and its importance, and there is talk too of a new book.

But as I write about his work I also need to see it for myself with my own eyes. Two weeks ago I went to see Tylecote House on Hartwell Road, Roade, half-way between Old Stratford and Northampton.

This week I caught a bus from Stony Stratford to Addington to see the Old School House, Addington (1876), outside Winslow, a Jacobethan-style school and schoolmaster’s house that is now a private house.

Addington is a village in Buckinghamshire, about half way between Winslow (3.2 km) and Buckingham (4.8 km), and with a population of 145 people.

Addington is first referred to in the Domesday Book (1086) as Edintone, a name that means Eadda’s Estate. At the time, the manor was in the possession of Odo, Bishop of Bayeux.

The main buildings in Addington include Saint Mary’s Church, Addington House on the site of the much older manor, and Addington Equestrian Centre, one of the prime sites for equestrian sports in the UK. The parish church is dedicated to Saint Mary the Virgin. The church has three bells, the oldest dating back to 1666, hung for English change ringing and one sanctus bell hung for chiming.

Addington is about half way between Winslow and Buckingham in Buckinghamshire (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

I was in Addington to see the former school and schoolmaster’s house designed by Edward Swinfen Harris and built in 1876, with its bellcote and tall ‘Jacobeathan’ chimneys. The school was the gift of John Gellibrand Hubbard (1805-1889), a London financier, Conservative MP for Buckingham (1859-1868) and the City of London (1874-1887), and later Lord Addington (1887).

Swinfen Harris designed the house in a picturesque ‘Jacobeathan’ style and it was built in red brick with bands of blue brick and stone dressings. It has a tiled roof with ornamental panelled bargeboards.

The single-storey school room to the right has two gabled bays of three-light stone mullioned windows with bonded stone surrounds, small square centre lights over and small stone roundels at the apex of gable. The elaborate external chimney stack between bays has a decorative date plaque and an octagonal stone shaft.

The door to the left has an open timber porch with a hipped roof, an ogee arch with ornamented spandrels at the front and balusters with decorative cusping to the side. An enclosed porch at the right gable is half-timbered with some herringbone brick infill and a pointed arched door.

The open bellcote over the right-hand bay has a shingled spirelet. The two-storey schoolmaster’s house in the cross wing to the left has a hipped roof and tall ‘Jacobeathan’ chimney shafts. The gable at the front has a three-light sash window with stone mullions on first floor and square bay window with similar lights and a hipped roof below.

It has been converted and extended so that today it is a detached house with four bedrooms and four bathrooms and 2379 sq ft of space, with double glazed windows and has been extended since construction before 1900. When it was on the market recently a price of £1.5 million to £2 million was quoted.

Saint Mary’s Church in Addinton may stand on the site of an earlier Anglo-Saxon church (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The former manor house in Addington was used twice during the English Civil War as the headquarters of the parliamentarian forces. The Addington Manor estate was bought by JG Hubbard in 1854 before he was elected MP for Buckingham. He demolished part of the old house in 1857 and built a new Addington Manor to designs by Philip Charles Hardwick (1822-1892) in 1856-1857. Its site was near the earlier Addington House, which had belonged to John Poulett son of Vere Poulett, but had fallen into disrepair.

Hardwick is best known for designing the Doric Arch and Great Hall at Euston Station and the Great Western Hotel at Paddington Station. He designed the new manor in a French style with a large conservatory.

Addington Manor was built of brick with Bath stone quoins and dressings and heavy lead roofing, in the modified form of the French chateau style, with three lofty towers and a fine conservatory.

Round the great central tower were inscribed the words ‘Except the Lord build the house their labour is but lost that build it. Anno Domini 1857’. Over the library window, amid decorations of vine foliage and fruit, were the words ‘Dei Donum’. The third storey windows on the south and west sides of the mansion were crowned with the initials in monogram of the Lord and Lady Adlington, while on the north and south fronts of the building was the family’s heraldic emblem and the motto Alta Petens (‘Seek Higher Things’).

The ceiling of the oak hall was decorated by Owen Jones, and was said to be an exact copy of the oak ceiling in the older Addington Manor.

The Hubbard family moved into Addington Manor in December 1858 and there their distinguished visitors included the Duke of Connaught, Princess Victoria Louise, Bishop Wilberforce, members of the Gladstone family and prominent political figures.

Hubbard also built and endowed Saint Alban’s Church, Holborn, which was designed by the architect William Butterfield, and as patron appointed Father Alexander Mackonochie as the priest.

His son, Egerton Hubbard (1842-1915), 2nd Baron Addington, was MP for Buckingham in 1874-1880 and 1886-1889. He died in 1915, and during World War I the house was let as a school. Later, the house was occupied by Mrs Lawson-Johnston and family, and was then a guest house and hotel with Mrs Hocker and Mr Gordon Holmes.

Addington Manor was sold in 1926 to CB Smith-Bingham who lived nearby at Addington House. An auction sale to dispose of fittings and materials was held in June 1928 with a further auction a month later. He demolished Addington Manor in 1928 and it was rebuilt in the neo-classical style in 1928-1929, designed by the architect Michael Theodore Waterhouse (1889-1968).

During World War II, Addington Manor was a safe house from 1940 to 1945 for the Moravec, Strankmüller and Tauer families of the Czechoslovak military intelligence staff, who had their headquarters in London. František Moravec planned the assassination in Prague of Reinhard Heydrich, one of the principal architects of the Holocaust, although his killing was masterminded in London and not in Addington.

The house was eventually sold to Kenneth James William Mackay, 3rd Earl of Inchcape, who founded the Addington Equestrian Centre on the estate.

Addington House, Park House, Addington Place and Addington Grange were once one house (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Addington House, Park House, Addington Place and Addington Grange were once one house, formerly Addington House, but are now divided into four separate units. This house dates from the late 17th century and it was much altered in 1859-1860 and again in the 20th century.

The Stable Block, Vine Cottage and the Stocks are developed from a former stable block at Addington House that has been converted onto flats and workshops. The date 1642 is inscribed on a tablet re-set above central arch.

The Tythe Barn in Addington was built in the late 16th century and it too is now converted into housing.

Saint Mary’s Church was open when I visited Addington this week, and I must describe it in detail in a posting in the days or weeks ahead.

The former schoolhouse designed by Edward Swinfen Harris is now a private house (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Daily prayer in Ordinary Time 2025: 140, Monday 29 September 2025, Saint Michael and All Angels

‘Archangel Michael The Protector’ by Emily Young at Saint Pancras Church, London … today is the Feast of Saint Michael and All Angels (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

We are continuing in Ordinary Time in the Church Calendar. This week began with the Fifteenth Sunday after Trinity (Trinity XV, 28 September 2025) and today the Feast of Saint Michael and All Angels (29 September).

This morning, before today begins, I am taking some quiet time to give thanks, and for reflection, prayer and reading in these ways:

1, today’s Gospel reading;

2, a reflection on the Gospel reading;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;

4, the Collects and Post-Communion prayer of the day.

Angel I by Emily Young (2003), Paternoster Square, London (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

John 4: 47-51 (NRSVA):

47 When Jesus saw Nathanael coming towards him, he said of him, ‘Here is truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit!’ 48 Nathanael asked him, ‘Where did you come to know me?’ Jesus answered, ‘I saw you under the fig tree before Philip called you.’ 49 Nathanael replied, ‘Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!’ 50 Jesus answered, ‘Do you believe because I told you that I saw you under the fig tree? You will see greater things than these.’ 51 And he said to him, ‘Very truly, I tell you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.’

Angel II by Emily Young (2003), Paternoster Square, London (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Reflections:

Like many people, I never cease to be fascinated by the Caryatids that make Saint Pancras Church facing Euston Station in London a unique and captivating church. But I wonder how many miss the opportunity to appreciate Emily Young’s ‘Archangel Michael The Protector’ in the church gardens.

‘Archangel Michael The Protector’ is in onyx and can be viewed in the church grounds from Upper Woburn Place, around the corner from Euston Road. An inscription on a plaque between the sculpture and the railings reads: ‘In memory of the victims of the 7th July 2005 bombings and all victims of violence. ‘I will lift up my eyes unto the hills’ Psalm 121.’

Nothing moves in this image, a silent reminder of what is being commemorated in the sculpture. Because Saint Michael’s face has only one eye, and this is closed, some critics have wondered whether the quotation is ill-chosen. But the full context is provided in Psalm 121: 1-2:

1 I lift up my eyes to the hills –
from where will my help come?
2 My help comes from the Lord,
who made heaven and earth.

The London bombings twenty years ago on 7 July 2005, often referred to as 7/7, were a series of four co-ordinated suicide attacks that targeted commuters on the public transport system in the morning rush hour.

Three homemade bombs packed into backpacks were detonated in quick succession on Underground trains on the Circle line near Aldgate and at Edgware Road, and on the Piccadilly line near Russell Square; later, a fourth bomb went off on a bus in Tavistock Square, near Upper Woburn Place and Saint Pancras Church.

Apart from the four bombers, 52 people of 18 different nationalities were killed and more than 700 people were injured in the attacks. It was Britain’s deadliest terrorist incident since the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 near Lockerbie, and the first Islamist suicide attack in the UK.

Emily Young has been described as ‘Britain’s foremost female stone sculptor’ and ‘Britain’s greatest living stone sculptor.’ On different occasions, as I have strolled through London, I stopped and taken time at an open-air exhibition at ENO Southbank of works by Emily Young.

A number of her works have formed a sculpture trail or garden at the NEO Bankside development on South Bank in ‘Emily Young: Sculptor Trail.’ The exhibition was both a continuation and a broadening of her presence on the South Bank, echoing three large-scale works on long-loan facing the Tate Modern from NEO Bankside.

Emily Young’s sculptures of five angel heads in stone stand on five columns in Saint Paul’s Churchyard, London. The sequence of heads are mounted on columns under the arcade of a new classical-inspired building to the north west side of Saint Paul's, redeveloped as part of the redesign of Paternoster Square at the top of Ludgate Hill.

Her five angels’ heads are placed dramatically on columns in the arcade of Juxon House and almost face the west front of Saint Paul’s Cathedral.

Emily Young’s works are instantly recognisable and accessible. She deals in spectacular lumps of stone – quartzite, onyx, marble, alabaster – to which she gives an identity by carving a face but leaving the remainder of the rock displayed in its raw, craggy intensity, as if the face had grown or evolved organically. The Financial Times says: ‘Her sculptures meditate on time, nature, memory, man’s relationship to the Earth.’

xxx Emily Young was born in London in 1951 into a family of writers, artists and politicians. Her grandmother, the sculptor Kathleen Scott (1878-1947), was a colleague of Auguste Rodin, and the widow of the Polar explorer, Captain Robert Falcon Scott, ‘Scott of the Antarctic’. Her works included a statue of Edward Smith, the captain of the Titanic, now in Beacon Park, Lichfield. She later married Emily Young’s paternal grandfather, the politician and writer Edward Hilton Young, 1st Lord Kennet.

Emily Young’s father, Wayland Hilton Young, 2nd Lord Kennet, was also a politician, conservationist and writer. Her mother was the writer and commentator Elizabeth Young; her uncle was the ornithologist, conservationist and painter, Sir Peter Scott.

She was still a student when she achieved fame (or notoriety) in 1971 as the inspiration for the Pink Floyd song See Emily Play written by Syd Barrett of Pink Floyd. But the song had earlier origins in the 1960s. She was 15 when she met Syd Barrett at the London Free School in 1965. ‘I used to go there because there were a lot of Beat philosophers and poets around,’ she said many years later. ‘There were fundraising concerts with The Pink Floyd Sound, as they were then called. I was more keen on poets than rockers. I was educating myself. I was a seeker. I wanted to meet everyone and take every drug.’

As a young woman, Emily Young worked primarily as a painter while she was studying at Chelsea School of Art in 1968 and later at Central Saint Martins. She travelled around the world in the late 1960s and 1970s, spending time in the US, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, France, Italy, Africa, South America, the Middle East and China, encountering a variety of cultures and developing her experiences of art.

In the early 1980s, she abandoned painting and turned to carving, sourcing stone from all over the world. Travelling from a London childhood, to a European education, to a life lived as an artist round the world, she began to interact with the timeless quality of stone to produce breath-taking sculptures of luminous intensity and great beauty.

As well as marble, she carves in semi-precious stone – agate, alabaster, lapis lazuli. These not only reflect and refract the light – but glow with a passionate intensity (as Winged Golden Onyx Head), revealing the hidden crystalline structure of the material and the subtle layers the time has laid down, showing the liquid qualities of hard rock.

The primary objective of her sculpture is to bring the natural beauty and energy of stone to the fore. Her sculptures have unique characters because each stone has an individual geological history and geographical source. Her approach allows the viewer to comprehend a deep grounding across time, land and cultures. She combines traditional carving skills with technology to produce work that is both contemporary and ancient, with a unique, serious and poetic presence.

Emily Young now divides her time between studios in London and Italy. Her permanent installations and public collections can be seen in many places, including Saint Paul’s Churchyard, Saint Pancras Church, NEO Bankside, and the Imperial War Museum in London; La Defense, Paris; Salisbury Cathedral, Wiltshire; the Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester; and the Cloister of Madonna Dell’Orto, Venice.

After years of being feted as ‘Britain’s foremost female stone sculptor,’ the art critic of the Financial Times called her ‘Britain’s greatest living stone sculptor.’ The Daily Telegraph has written: ‘Emily Young has inherited the mantle as Britain’s greatest female stone sculptor from Dame Barbara Hepworth.’

She recently explained: ‘So my work is a kind of temple activity now, devotional; when I work a piece of stone, the mineral occlusions of the past are revealed, the layers of sediment unpeeled; I may open in one knock something that took millions of years to form: dusts settling, water dripping, forces pushing, minerals growing – material and geological revelations: the story of time on Earth shows here, sometimes startling, always beautiful.’

She told an interviewer: ‘I carve in stone the fierce need in millions of us to retrieve some semblance of dignity for the human race in its place on Earth. We can show ourselves to posterity as a primitive and brutal life form – that what we are best at is rapacity, greed, and wilful ignorance, and we can also show that we are creatures of great love for our whole planet, that everyone of us is a worshipper in her temple of life.’

Angel III by Emily Young (2003), Paternoster Square, London (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayers (Monday 29 September 2025, Saint Michael and All Angels):

The theme this week (28 September to 4 October) in Pray with the World Church, the prayer diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘One Faith: Many Voices’ (pp 42-43). This theme was introduced yesterday with Reflections from Rachel Weller, Communications Officer, USPG.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (Monday 29 September 2025, Saint Michael and All Angels) invites us to pray in these words:

O God, who has given us the feast of Saint Michael and All Angels, grant us your protection and guidance. May we, with the help of your heavenly hosts, stand firm in the faith and be strong in your service.

Angel IV by Emily Young (2003), Paternoster Square, London (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The Collect:

Everlasting God,
you have ordained and constituted
the ministries of angels and mortals in a wonderful order:
grant that as your holy angels always serve you in heaven,
so, at your command,
they may help and defend us on earth;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Post Communion Prayer:

Lord of heaven,
in this eucharist you have brought us near
to an innumerable company of angels
and to the spirits of the saints made perfect:
as in this food of our earthly pilgrimage
we have shared their fellowship,
so may we come to share their joy in heaven;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Yesterday’s Reflections

Continued Tomorrow

Angel V by Emily Young (2003), Paternoster Square, London (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org

‘Archangel Michael The Protector’ by Emily Young in the gardens of Saint Pancras Church near Euston Station (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The pink supercar is back in front of the hotel in St Pancras, but the owner still remains a mystery

The pink McLaren has been parked outside the hotel in St Pancras since 2018 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Patrick Comerford

The pink car is back outside the hotel in St Pancras. It had been missing for some months, but when we were walking from St Pancras to Euston Station last week I noticed it was back in its favourite spot in London once again.

The St Pancras London, Autograph Collection hotel is the frontispiece of St Pancras railway station. The station is one of the main rail termini in London and the final stop for international trains to Paris, Brussels and Amsterdam. The hotel re-opened in 2011, and occupies much of the former Midland Grand Hotel designed by George Gilbert Scott (1811-1878) which opened in 1873 and closed in 1935.

The St Pancras Renaissance London Hotel opened to guests on 14 March 2011, and the formal grand opening was on 5 May – 138 years to the day after the hotel first opened in 1873. The hotel was transferred from Marriott’s Renaissance Hotels brand to its Autograph Collection brand three months ago (3 June 2025), and was renamed St Pancras London, Autograph Collection.

Meanwhile, the pink car is also back in front of the hotel. The £150,000 supercar can reach speeds of 200 mph, even though most of London is limited to 20 mph. The car seemed not to move from its parking spot for several years, and was there throughout the pandemic.

The McLaren is owned by a guest at the hotel, who permanently moved into one of the apartments before the start of the pandemic. The car soon became a landmark in the Euston, King’s Cross and St Pancras area, even appearing on Google street view.

Since then, it has become the focus of many postings on social media, and it is now a local attraction with people taking ‘selfies’ beside it. But workers, residents and visitors alike were all baffled when the car went missing recently.

There were countless theories about the car and its owner. Some said the car was originally a different colour but was given a pink makeover by a specialist garage. Other rumours said it had been a gift to someone without a driving license holder, or suggested that the owner had moved into the hotel as a permanent resident shortly before the pandemic and could not return home due to travel restrictions.

Others suggest the hotel allows the supercar to be parked not in the lot but right at the entrance since because it attracts attention that is more valuable than expensive advertising.

Staff at the hotel then revealed that the owner is a permanent resident in one of the apartments in the hotel building. When the car went missing recently there was a fresh round of speculation until the same staff said the owner had just taken it on holiday.

The McLaren 570S is worth more than £150,000, and it has been outside the hotel since 2018 at least. It must need high insurance cover, particularly as it’s in the open on a busy street in London.

But the identity of the owner of the pink car still remains a mystery.

Daily prayer in Ordinary Time 2025: 115, Tuesday 2 September 2025

‘For with authority and power he commands the unclean spirits, and out they come!’ (Luke 4: 36) … a gargoyle at Lichfield Cathedral (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

Creationtide began yesterday (1 September) and continues until 4 October. Meanwhile, we are continuing in Ordinary Time and the week began with the Eleventh Sunday after Trinity (Trinity XI, 31 August 2025).

The Calendar of the Church of England in Common Worship today remembers the Martyrs of Papua New Guinea (1901 and 1942). Before today begins, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, for reflection, prayer and reading in these ways:

1, today’s Gospel reading;

2, a reflection on the Gospel reading;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;

4, the Collects and Post-Communion prayer of the day.

1, today’s Gospel reading;

2, a reflection on the Gospel reading;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;

4, the Collects and Post-Communion prayer of the day.

‘A man who had the spirit of an unclean demon … cried out with a loud voice’ (Luke 4: 33) … an image at La Lonja de la Seda in Valencia (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Luke 4: 31-37 (NRSVA):

31 He went down to Capernaum, a city in Galilee, and was teaching them on the sabbath. 32 They were astounded at his teaching, because he spoke with authority. 33 In the synagogue there was a man who had the spirit of an unclean demon, and he cried out with a loud voice, 34 ‘Let us alone! What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God.’ 35 But Jesus rebuked him, saying, ‘Be silent, and come out of him!’ When the demon had thrown him down before them, he came out of him without having done him any harm. 36 They were all amazed and kept saying to one another, ‘What kind of utterance is this? For with authority and power he commands the unclean spirits, and out they come!’ 37 And a report about him began to reach every place in the region.

‘And a report about him began to reach every place in the region’ (Luke 4: 37) … newspapers on sale at a kiosk in Rethymnon in Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Reflection:

We began reading a series of readings in Saint Luke’s Gospel yesterday, and they bring us to the end of the Church year.

In yesterday’s Gospel reading, Jesus began his public ministry in the synagogue in Nazareth, the small towns where he had grown up.

As he finished the reading, people began wondering why he was not doing in Nazareth what he had been doing in Capernaum and other places. His remarks so angered the people of Nazareth that they thought of killing him and drove him out of that synagogue and out of town.

But, as our readings in Saint Luke’s Gospel continue, we see how Jesus continues to bring good news to the poor, he releases this poor captive, he can now see things as they are and as they ought to be, the oppressed may go free, and all are amazed.

In this morning’s Gospel reading, the good news for the poor, the captives, the blind and the oppressed, continues to be put into action by Jesus, not just in words, but in deeds, as he returns to Capernaum, which seems to have been his home town after Nazareth.

Capernaum, was a prosperous town on the Sea of Galilee, and once again Jesus visits the synagogue on the sabbath, where they were astounded at his teaching, because he spoke with authority’ (verse 32).

Jesus speaks directly, confident of his authority and of his very essence. The Greek word here, ἐξουσία (exousía), has the same roots as the word in the Nicene Creed that is translated as ‘being’ or ‘substance’: ὁμοούσιον τῷ Πατρί (‘of one substance with the Father’).

The man with ‘the spirit of an unclean demon’ (verse 33) was, we might say, possessed, or under the influence of evil forces. In the understanding of the time, he was under Satan’s direction, separated from God.

The demon, speaking through this man (see verse 34), asks what Christ is doing meddling in the domain of evil: ‘Let us alone! What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God.’

He recognises who Christ is and that his coming spells the end of the power of the devil. He understands the significance of the coming Kingdom. Wonder-workers of the day healed using ritual or magic, but Christ exorcises simply through verbal command (verse 35), so clearly he is divine.

Are we comfortable with identifying or naming evil forces that are entrapping people in society today?

Do these malign forces manage to get a hearing in our places of worship today?

How would you name and identify them?

Would you include racism? Homophobia? Sexism? Class discrimination? Recent far-right rioters and protesters, the people who egg them on and who flags or paint over roundabouts as signs of provocatioon? Support for war and violence?

What inner demons in myself have I failed to cast out? My prejudices, my misjudging of people, my failings in relationships and friendships that continue to cause hurt? My self-indulgence and personal vanity? My failure so often to speak out on behalf of the hurt, the marginalised, the oppressed, the victim?

It is interesting that in his response, Christ leaves the man unharmed (verse 35). What harm could he have to at the hands of Jesus? Is this saying that the innate integrity of the man is respected and remains intact?

We are not told what happened to this man afterwards. All we know that he is still there, standing among the people of faith, in the community of faith, that Saturday morning. The evil in him has been cast out, but he has not been cast out of the community of faith himself. I too can be forgiven and restored.

But how happy are we with the idea that compassion for the victims of hatred and violence and appropriate responses to the people trapped in a world of hatred and violence both find expression in Christ’s ministry, message and mission?

‘Be silent …’ (Luke 4: 35) … a message in the porch of the chapel in Saint John’s Hospital, Lichfield (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayers (Tuesday 2 September 2025):

The theme this week (31 August to 6 September) in Pray with the World Church, the prayer diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘A Faith that Listens and Grows’ (pp 34-35). This theme was introduced on Sunday with reflections from Soshi Kawashima, Seminarian, Diocese of Chubu, Nippon Sei Ko Kai (Anglican Church in Japan). Soshi took part in the Emerging Leaders Academy (ELA), a cross-cultural learning opportunity for young people across the Anglican Communion.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (Tuesday 2 September 2025) invites us to pray:

God of compassion, comfort those who feel torn apart by judgment or exclusion. May they find strength in your embrace and peace in their identity as children of God.

The Collect:

O God, you declare your almighty power
most chiefly in showing mercy and pity:
mercifully grant to us such a measure of your grace,
that we, running the way of your commandments,
may receive your gracious promises,
and be made partakers of your heavenly treasure; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Post Communion Prayer:

Lord of all mercy,
we your faithful people have celebrated that one true sacrifice
which takes away our sins and brings pardon and peace:
by our communion
keep us firm on the foundation of the gospel
and preserve us from all sin;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Additional Collect:

God of glory,
the end of our searching,
help us to lay aside
all that prevents us from seeking your kingdom,
and to give all that we have
to gain the pearl beyond all price,
through our Saviour Jesus Christ.

Yesterday’s reflections

Continued tomorrow

‘God of compassion, comfort those who feel torn apart by judgment or exclusion’ (USPG prayer for today) … a mini ‘tent city’ on Euston Road in London (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org

Christ the King, a Bloomsbury church shared by two polar opposites that are opposed to the ordination of women

The English Chapel in the Church of Christ the King facing Gordon Square in Bloomsbury, now used by Forward in Faith (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Patrick Comerford

In my recent self-guided ‘church crawling’ tours in London of churches in Bloomsbury, Fitzrovia and Soho, one of the unusual ones is the Church of Christ the King facing Gordon Square in Bloomsbury.

The church was built for the Catholic Apostolic Church, an eclectic group that has faded into oblivion but that still exists on paper, and is used today by two by two different groups at polar opposites in Church of England, united by their opposition to the ordination of women and their narrow views on sexuality.

This church in Bloomsbury is of cathedral dimensions and is only 500 metres south of Euston station. I have been familiar with it from the outside for half a century or so but – until recent weeks – it has never seemed to be open.

It was open at lunchtime when I was in Bloomsbury a few weeks ago, and I took the opportunity to visit one part of the church, the English Chapel, which Forward in Faith describes as a ‘Place of Quiet Prayer and Reflection.’ I have yet to find the other part of the building, known as Euston Church, to be open when I am in that part of Bloomsbury.

The Church of Christ the King on Gordon Square, Bloomsbury, was built for the Catholic Apostolic Church or Irvingites and designed by Raphael Rodrigues Brandon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The Church of Christ the King is beside the former Dr Williams’s Library, which closed earlier this year (2025), and it is close to University College London. The building belongs to the trustees of the Catholic Apostolic Church. But the building has been divided and segmented in recent years, with the former main part of the church now used by the Euston Church for Sunday services, while the former Lady Chapel or English Chapel at the east end is used by Forward in Faith for weekday services.

The church has been a Grade I listed building since 1954, one of the 129 churches in London with this listing.

The church was designed in the Early English Neo-Gothic style with a cruciform plan by John Raphael Rodrigues Brandon (1817-1877) for the Catholic Apostolic Church or ‘Irvingites’ in 1850-1854, and Brandon designed the interior in 1853.

The Catholic Apostolic Church, also known as the Irvingite Church, originated in London around 1831. Edward Irving (1792-1834), a former clergyman in the Church of Scotland, is sometimes credited with organising the movement. Their former church on Adelaide Road in Dublin is now a Lutheran Church.

Brandon’s church in Gordon Square is incomplete, lacking two bays at the west side, a planned façade and his planned crossing tower and spire (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

John Raphael Rodrigues Brandon was a Gothic Revival architect and writer, and he carried out much in collaboration with his younger brother Joshua Arthur Rodrigues Brandon, until Joshua died in 1847. They were the sons of Joshua Rodrigues Brandon (1785-1864), a West India merchant from a prominent Sephardic family, and his wife Mary Anne Hunter (1786-1856). Both Raphael and Joshua Brandon were keen adherents of the Neo-Gothic style and they jointly produced a series of three works on Early English ecclesiastical architecture that became 19th century architectural pattern books.

The Brandon brother designed several stations and engine-houses in the style of mediaeval manor houses on the London and Croydon Railway, disguising chimneys as early Gothic church bell-towers. After Joshua died, Raphael Brandon went into partnership with Robert Ritchie until 1856.

Raphael Brandon’s other designs include Colchester Town Hall (1843-1845), which has since been replaced, and the restoration of Saint Martin's Church, Leicester, now Leicester Cathedral, in the 1860s, as well as the north aisle of Saint Bene’t’s Church, Cambridge.

Thomas Hardy worked briefly for Brandon, and based his description of Henry Knight’s chambers in his novel A Pair of Blue Eyes on Brandon’s office at Clement’s Inn. Brandon also employed James Rawson Carroll (1830-1911), architect of the Royal Victoria Eye and Ear Hospital and the Mageough Home in Dublin and many works throughout the village of Ardagh in Co Longford.

The Cloisters, beside the East porch at Gordon Square (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Brandon’s church in Gordon Square is built of Bath stone, with a tiled roof. The structure is incomplete, lacking two bays on its liturgical west side, Brandon’s a planned façade and his planned crossing tower with a 150 ft spire. The tower base that was built has mostly blind arcading.

The cruciform plan is made up of a nave with full triforium and clerestory, side aisles, sanctuary and Lady Chapel. All of the exterior corners have octagonal corner turrets with gabled niches and terminating in spires with gablets. The façade has pinnacle buttresses and corbelled parapets.

The main entrance is at the east end, from Gordon Street, through a gabled porch with angle buttresses, with mouldings, a pointed-arch door and a two-light and oculus plate tracery window above the door. This entrance links onto the Lady Chapel through an octagonal turret and a two-light room. In addition, a north side entrance is approached by a cloister walk from the porch.

Brandon’s planned façade at the west end was never built (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The five-bay nave is only 13 ft lower than the nave in Westminster Abbey. It has a gabled east façade with three large lancet windows below five smaller ones. Inside, it has a timber hammer beam roof with angels and central bosses of snowflake design, as well as a double-arcaded triforium. It also has a cathedra for the ‘angel’ or bishop of the Catholic Apostolic Church.

The crossing has roll-moulded arches on clustered columns. The transepts are gabled, with two layers of three lancets below a rose window. The south transept windows are the most notable. The lancets depict Christ in Majesty with ranks of saints, apostles and angels and earth below, while its rose window is by Archibald Keightley Nicholson, with a dove in the centre surrounded by musician angels and cherubim and seraphim.

The three-bay sanctuary has a roof with stone rib-vaulting and foliated bosses. The sanctuary lamp was designed by AWN Pugin.

The High Altar, now in the English Chapel, is carved with images of the Visit of the Magi, the meal at Emmaus, and the Ascension (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The three-bay Lady Chapel or English Chapel, now used by Forward in Faith, is beyond this sanctuary, separated from it by a screen behind the high altar with open traceried window to the chapel. The chapel itself has a richly painted timber roof and stone angel along with an east façade with arcaded lancet windows below a small rose window and gable, along with gabled and pinnacled buttresses.

When the church was built in the early 1850s, it was criticised for what was seen as its lack of originality of design. Since then, however, it has been appreciated for the combination of 13th and 15th century Gothic precedents in its design, which indicate the extent to which the Brandon brothers had studied ecclesiastical architecture.

The church was opened on Christmas Eve 1853 as the ‘central cathedral’ of the Irvingites. Brandon donated the original oak tabernacle for the High Altar The altar, now in the English Chapel, is carved with three New Testament scenes: the Three Wise Men presenting gifts to the Christ Child; the Risen Christ at the supper in Emmaus; and the Ascension.

A Gray and Davison organ was installed in 1853, and the early organists included Edmund Hart Turpin (1835-1907).

The East Window (1948) by Lilian Josephine Pocock depicting Christ the King (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The church was damaged during World War II but was restored in 1946. The East Window in the English Chapel depicting Christ the King (1948) is by Lilian Josephine Pocock (1883-1974), a stained glass artist as well as a theatrical costume designer, book illustrator and watercolourist who is closely associated with the work of Karl Parsons (1884-1934), who was a member of the church.

The chapel has 24 carved stone niches around its sides. Above them, Pocock’s window of Christ the King is complimented by a set of windows on the north and south sides by AE Buss for Goddard & Gibbs (1954).

From 1963 to 1994, it was known as the University Church of Christ the King and served the Anglican Chaplaincy to the universities and colleges of the Diocese of London. This new role was initiated on 6 October 1963 at the Eucharist, with Bishop Robert Stopford of London presiding and at Evensong, with Bishop JWC Wand preaching.

At the time, the poet Sir John Betjeman wrote much about the building and the need to preserve it intact. He spoke enthusiastically of its proportions, including the chapel behind the high altar which he referred to it as the ‘Apostles’ Chapel, which was renamed the ‘Lady Chapel’. The University Chaplaincy first called the building Christ the King after the figure of Christ the King in the central stained-glass window.

In practice, the church was a worship centre for students living in the university halls nearby. It was also a popular student venue, and the Crypt Café was run in the basement until 1992. Occasionally, the church was a venue for London-wide events, with a strong emphasis on music in worship under successive musical directors, including Ian Hall, Alan Wilson and Simon Over.

The memorial service for the architectural historian Sir Nikolaus Pevsner was held in the church on 6 December 1983.

The 25th anniversary of the role of the church in university chaplaincy was celebrated at a Thanksgiving Eucharist on 27 November 1988, with the Right Reverend Michael Marshall preaching. But this came to an end in the following years. The last chaplaincy Sunday service was held on 28 June 1992. The weekday celebrations of the Eucharist continued in the English Chapel until the last chaplaincy service on Ash Wednesday, 16 February 1994, with the Revd Alan Walker of the University of Westminster.

The Diocese of London surrendered its lease on the church to the trustees of Catholic Apostolic Church on 30 June 1994.

Forward in Faith describes the English Chapel as a ‘Place of Quiet Prayer and Reflection’ (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The Forward in Faith movement has used the Lady Chapel or English Chapel at the east end of the church since 1996, and has its offices at 2A The Cloisters. Forward in Faith was formed in 1992 in opposition to the ordination of women to the priesthood. In its early years, the movement had a number of evangelical members, but today its membership is overwhelmingly Anglo-Catholic.

The English Chapel is open from 8:30 am to 3:30 pm on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, with Morning Prayer at 9 am, Mass at 12:30 pm and Evening Prayer at 3 pm on those three days. The chaplain is Father Peter Hudson SSC.

Euston Church, a church plant from Saint Helen’s Church, Bishopsgate, started meeting in the church in September 2015. It began in 2010 with a church plant from Saint Helen’s, Bishopsgate, involving 40 people. It moved to Christ the King, Gordon Square, five years later. Sunday services are at 11 am, 3 pm and 5 pm, and it is also open when there is an organ recital, usually the Second Friday of the month at 1:10 pm, except August.

The Vicar, the Revd Kev Murdoch, trained at Oak Hill Theological College and Saint Mellitus College and on the Ministry Training Scheme at Saint Helen’s, Bishopsgate. Their website tells a lot about when tea and coffee and biscuits are served, but does not say when the Eucharist is celebrated.

Forward in Faith and Saint Helen’s, Bishopsgate, could be said to be at polar opposites of Anglican ecclesiology, liturgy and sacramental theology. Yet it seems appropriate that both groups, in their shared implacable opposition to the ordination to women that must appear to many as misogynist, share a church building that was once the pride of a curious but virtually moribund denomination that has been relegated to the footnotes of Victorian church history, and yet, at the same time, are separated from one another by a large dividing screen inserted in recent decades.

A screen has been inserted to separate the spaces used by Forward in Faith and Euston Church (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

A discreet plaque in London remembers David Ricardo, an early Jewish-born MP and ‘Britain's greatest economist’

Drayton House, home of the Department of Economics at UCL, which owes its origins to the politician and economist David Ricardo (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Patrick Comerford

Friends’ House and Drayton House form one impressive block at the corner of Euston Road and Gordon Street, London, opposite Euston Station. The building includes Friends’ House, the central offices and library of the Quakers in Britain, with a peaceful garden, and Drayton House, which houses the Department of Economics of University College London (UCL).

The imposing block is familiar to the many thousands of people who walk out from Euston Station onto Euston Road, and when I am meeting people in London, I often arrange to meet them at the café or in the secluded gardens there.

Friends’ House and Drayton House are close to Bloomsbury, Saint Pancras and King’s Cross. The block was built in a neo-Georgian style 100 years ago, in 1924-1928, to the design of the architect Hubert Lidbetter.

The plaque to David Ricardo on the Gordon Street frontage of Drayon House was unveiled in 2005 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

However, few commuters and rail users, I imagine, notice the small discreet plaque at the Gordon Street end commemorating David Ricardo (1772-1823), who was only the second person of Jewish birth to have been elected an MP, and who has been described as ‘Britain's greatest economist’.

The plaque to David Ricardo on the Gordon Street frontage of Drayon House was unveiled 20 years ago, on 21 August 2005. The Chair of Political Economy at UCL was created in 1828 with the assistance of funds raised to commemorate Ricardo, establishing the first Department of Economics in England.

The plaque is so discreet that it is not even mentioned in Jewish London, the comprehensive guidebook produced by Rachel Kolsky and Roslyn Rawson.

David Ricardo, ‘Britain's greatest economist’ and Ireland’s first Jewish-born MP (Source: Thomas Phillips/Wikpedia/Common Licence)

David Ricardo became the first Jewish-born MP in Ireland when he became the MP for Portarlington on 20 February 1819. Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881) was not elected until 1837, and although he had been born Jewish, he had been baptised at the age of 12 in 1817. Lord George Gordon had converted to Judaism in 1787, seven years after he lost his seat in Parliament.

Other MPs may have had Jewish parents, but only two Jewish-born MPs were elected before Disraeli: Sir Manasseh Masseh Lopes (1755-1831), who converted to Christianity in 1802, the year he was elected, and the political economist David Ricardo, who became MP for Portarlington on 20 February 1819.

David Ricardo was born in London on 18 April 1772, the third of 17 children of a Sephardic Jewish family of Portuguese descent who had recently moved to London from Amsterdam. The Ricardo family removed from Livorno in Tuscany to Amsterdam in the late 17th or early 18th century, and family members were prominent in the Jewish community in Amsterdam.

His father, Abraham Ricardo, wa a successful stockbroker on the Amsterdam Bourse and was naturalised in London in 1771. In 1773, he was appointed to one of the 12 brokerships reserved for Jews in the City of London. David Ricardo’s mother, Abigail Delvalle, was the daughter of a tobacco merchant.

David had a traditional Jewish upbringing. His family may have thought he had the potential to become a rabbi, and it is said he attended the Talmud Torah in Amsterdam in 1783-1785. But he returned to London and began working with his father at the age of 14 in 1786.

At the age of 21, he eloped with Priscilla Anne Wilkinson, a Quaker – a detail that becomes interesting in the coincidence that Friends’s House and Drayton House form one block. Their marriage led to his estrangement from his family, and the Ricardo family ‘went into mourning for him as if he was dead.’ His father disowned him and his mother never spoke to him again, although he was left £100 in his father’s will ‘in token of forgiveness.’

Forced to find his own independence, Ricardo went into business on his own with the support of Lubbocks and Forster, a banking house. He was an innovative economic thinker and was also closely involved in the city’s financial history. His work initiated the now dominant tradition of economic analysis rooted in systematic theoretical modelling. To this day, his insights into the principles of trade and public finance remain pertinent.

As a trustee of the early modern Stock Exchange, he was a member of the Committee of Proprietors that decided in 1801 to reconstitute it on a private subscription basis and subsequently helped oversee the execution of the plan. He later played a leading role in syndicates contracting loans that financed the Napoleonic wars. He made the bulk of his fortune speculating on the outcome of the Battle of Waterloo in 1815, when he reportedly ‘netted upwards of a million sterling’ – an impressive sum at the time.

Ricardo retired immediately, bought Gatcombe Park, an estate in Gloucestershire now owned by Princess Anne, and he was appointed the High Sheriff of Gloucestershire in 1818-1819.

He declined an invitation In November 1816 to contest a by-election in Worcester. In December 1817, Ricardo’s agent Edward Wakefield negotiated with Lord Portarlington’s agent to buy his interest in the ‘rotten borough’ of Portarlington in Queen’s County (now Co Laois), ‘at the market price of the day’, as part of a loan agreement for the debt-laden Irish peer.

Portarlington was a ‘rotten borough’ with just a handful of electors and was controlled by the Dawson family of Emo Court. But the deal fell through because ‘Lord Portarlington found there was nothing to be got by returning an opposition man.’

Ricardo then considered several borough seats, including Wootton Bassett and Fowey. However, in August 1818, he finally secured Lord Portarlington’s borough for £4,000 as part of the terms of a loan of £25,000.

Ricardo took his seat as an Irish MP on 20 February 1819, and he sat in the House of Commons as a Whig until his death five years later. Although Portarlington was a ‘rotten borough’ and he never visited his constituents, Ricardo was a supporter of parliamentary reform and religious toleration and he voted for Catholic relief on 3 May 1819.

JL Mallet noted that Ricardo, notwithstanding his slender footing in the House, his Jewish name and his shrill voice, obtained great attention and was cheered in the House of Commons throughout his first speech. A few days later, the Duke of Wellington met Ricardo at a large party at Lady Lansdowne’s and congratulated him on his speech.

Ricardo was an earnest reformer in Parliament, seeking an inquiry into the Peterloo massacre, and supporting free trade, criminal law reform and the abolition of the death penalty.

Ricardo died on 11 September 1823 from an infection of the middle ear that spread into the brain and induced septicaemia. He was 51. He was buried in Saint Nicholas churchyard in Hardenhuish, near Chippenham, Wiltshire.

Ricardo’s writings fascinated a number of early socialists in the 1820s, who thought his value theory had radical implications. Later, his eldest son, Osman Ricardo (1795-1881), was MP for Worcester (1847-1865); another son, David Ricardo (1803-1864), was MP for Stroud (1832-1833).

During Ricardo’s life, London had no university and Jews were unable to graduate at either of the existing universities in England – Oxford and Cambridge – because of religious restrictions. When UCL was founded in 1826, three years after Ricardo’s death, it was with a commitment to provide opportunities for university education to people of all religious beliefs.

After Ricardo’s death, his friends in the influential Political Economy Club – including Robert Malthus and John Stewart Mill – raised funds as a ‘tribute to his genius’, to perpetuate his memory through the delivery of lectures on the subject of political economy. When the university appointed Ricardo’s follower, John Ramsay McCulloch, to its first chair in Political Economy these funds were transferred to UCL to support teaching the subject.

The plaque at Drayton House honouring David Ricardo and his association with the foundation of the Department of Economics at UCL, was unveiled by Thomas Sargent, President of the Econometric Society, during the 2005 World Congress of the Econometric Society.

The plaque to David Ricardo on the Gordon Street frontage of Drayon House was unveiled in 2005 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

There is no evidence in Ricardo’s life of any particular interest in Jewish religious or communal affairs. He maintained cordial relations with the younger members of his family – some of whom seceded from Judaism – and during a visit to Amsterdam in 1822 he sought out some of his Dutch family members, including his sister’s son, the poet Isaac da Costa (1798-1860).

In 1823, he wrote, ‘It appears to me a disgrace to the age we live in, that many of the inhabitants of this country are still suffering under disabilities, imposed on them in less enlightened times. The Jews have most reason to complain, for they are frequently reproached with following callings which are the natural effects of the political degradation in which they are kept. I cannot help thinking that the time is approaching when these ill-founded prejudices against men on account of their religious opinions will disappear, and I should be happy if I could be an humble instrument in accelerating their fall.’

McCulloch wrote in 1846 that young Ricardo abandoned the Jewish religion of his upbringing. But Joseph Jacobs and JH Hollander in the Jewish Encyclopaedia point out there is no evidence of any formal apostasy, and that ‘it is more reasonable to hold that virtual alienation resulted from marriage outside of the Jewish faith and that the severance of family ties followed.’

The late Asher Benson, in his Jewish Dublin (Dublin: A&A Farmar, 2007), says, ‘Although there is no evidence that he converted to Christianity, he must have sworn allegiance to that faith in order to be admitted to Parliament.’

The law excluding any member of the Jewish religion from Parliament unless he swore an oath of abjuration remained in place until the 1850s.

No other Jewish-born MP was elected to represent an Irish constituency until 1892, when Gustav Wilhelm Wolff (1834-1913), the Hamburg-born co-founder of Harland and Wolff, was elected for East Belfast. But Wolff too had converted to Christianity, and was a member of the Church of Ireland and of the Orange Order.

The first Jewish member of the new Irish Parliament after independence was Ellen Odette Cuffe (1857-1933), Countess of Desart, who was appointed to the Free State Senate by WT Cosgrave in 1922. She was born Ellen Odette Bischoffsheim, and she was a leading philanthropist in Co Kilkenny, where she lived at Cuffesgrange. She has been called ‘the most important Jewish woman in Irish history.’

The first Jewish TD, Robert Briscoe (1894-1969), was elected to the Dáil in 1927, over a century after Ricardo took his seat, and he remained a Fianna Fail TD until 1961. He also served two terms as Lord Mayor of Dublin.

May his memory be a blessing, זיכרונו לברכה

Shabbat Shalom, שבת שלום

Emo Court in Co Laois, the home of the Earls of Portarlington when they sold the ‘rotten borough’ of Portarlington to David Ricardo in 1819 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Saint Mary’s Church in Somers Town, the church of the great ‘slum priest’ Basil Jellicoe, is at risk

Saint Mary’s Church on Eversholt Street, between Euston Station and Camden High Street, is covered in scaffolding (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Patrick Comerford

Saint Mary’s Church on Eversholt Street, halfway between Euston Station and Camden High Street, has been covered in scaffolding and corrugated fencing for a long time now and is on the ‘high risk’ register of English Heritage.

But the church, which was built 200 years ago, is part of the story of Somers Town, an area that once had some of the worst slum housing in London, and is forever associated with the work of Father Basil Jellicoe, one of the pioneering Anglo-Catholic ‘slum priests’ in London the early 20th century.

The slums expanded as the railway stations at Euston and King’s Cross opened in the 19th century. As time moved on, living standards in the area stagnated. Somers Town is also the location for a number of significant films, including the Ealing comedy The Ladykillers (1956), with Alec Guinness and Peter Sellers; Neil Jordan’s Mona Lisa (1986), starring Bob Hoskins; and Shane Meadows’s Somers Town (2008), filmed around Phoenix Court in Purchese Street.

Eversholt Street was originally the name of only the northern part of the street above Cranleigh Street, formerly Johnson Street, which is on the Bedford Estate. The portion in Somers Town includes the former Upper Seymour Street and the part of Seymour Street north of Drummond Crescent. The lower part continues south to the Euston Road immediately east of Euston Station.

Inside Saint Mary’s Church, Somers Town, designed by Henry William Inwood and his father William Inwood (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Saint Mary’s Church was built as Saint Mary’s Chapel in 1824-1827 as a chapel of ease for Saint Pancras Old Church on what was then Upper Seymour Street. At an early stage it was known as ‘Seymour Street Chapel’ or ‘Mr Judkin’s Chapel’, referring to its first priest, the hymnwriter and painter the Revd Thomas James Judkin (1788-1871).

The church was designed by Henry William Inwood (1794-1843) and his father William Inwood (1771-1843), and was built by IT Seabrook in 1824-1827. Henry William Inwood was an architect, archaeologist, classical scholar and writer. Father and son are best known as the joint architects of Saint Pancras New Church (1819-1822), where their design was inspired by classical Greece, using elements from the Erechtheum, especially the caryatids, and the Tower of the Winds in Athens.

The Inwoods collaborated on two other Greek Revival churches in the parish of Saint Pancras: All Saints’ Church, Camden Town (1822-1824) and Saint Peter’s Church, Regent Square (1822-1825, now demolished). Both father and son died within four days of each other in 1843.

Inside Saint Mary’s Church, Somers Town, built in what was described as a naive ‘Carpenter’s Gothic’ style (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Saint Mary’s was built in what was described as a naive ‘Carpenter’s Gothic’ style. A parliamentary grant paid for the construction and local taxes funded the purchase of the site and for the interior decoration.

Saint Mary’s was consecrated on 11 March 1826. The Revd William Stephen Gilly (1789-1855) attended as the minister, but apparently he seldom preached there. Soon after its consecration, Saint Mary’s attracted some notoriety as the scene of the vaunted conversion of many people in the neighbourhood from Roman Catholicism. The church also became known as the ‘Cabbies’ Church’, serving the cabbies of the horse-drawn cabs that queued up at Euston Station and their families.

Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin, the architect of the Gothic Revival in England and Ireland, satirised Saint Mary’s, comparing it with Bishop Skirlaw’s Chapel at Skirlaugh, Yorkshire, built in 1401-1405 by Walter de Skirlaw when he was the Bishop of Durham. Yet the architectural historian Sir Niklaus Pevsner later described the chapel as ‘a perfect piece of Perpendicular architecture’.

Charles Dickens went to church in Saint Mary’s during his schooldays when his family was living nearby at Cranleigh Street. Owen P Thomas, a schoolfellow at the Classical and Commercial Academy on Hampstead Road, relates how he and Dickens ‘very piously attended the morning service at Seymour Street Chapel.’

Inside Saint Mary’s Church, Somers Town, looking west ... it was originally built as a plain ‘preaching box’ (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Saint Mary’s was built as a plain preaching box in an elegant Gothic style. It has a central tower, prominent pinnacles and a row of 12 windows along the north side. The church has slate pitched roofs and brick walling with stone dressings. Inside, elegant cast iron columns support Gothic style arches, and the ceiling has rib vaulting.

Three schemes reshaped the interior of Saint Mary’s in the 19th century: it was decorated by JK Colling in 1874; the chancel was added by Ewan Christian in 1888, when the side galleries were removed; and in 1890 by RC Reade inserted traceried transoms in the windows and the west gallery was taken out.

The High Altar and reredos date from 1915 and are by the sculptor Mary Grant (1831-1908), who also sculpted the figures on the West Door of Lichfield Cathedral. The Calvary in Saint Mary’s, originally from Saint Mary’s Church, Charing Cross Road, is also her work. It was moved to Somers Town in the early 1910s, and has been restored recently.

The Calvary in Saint Mary’s Church, Somers Town, first designed by Mary Grant for Saint Mary’s Church, Charing Cross Road (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Father Basil Jellicoe was Missioner at the Magdalen College Mission which was run from Saint Mary’s in the 1920s and 1930s. His ground-breaking work in the Saint Pancras Housing Association cleared the area’s slums and tackled the causes of poverty.

The Revd John Basil Lee Jellicoe (1899-1935) was the eldest son of Bethia Theodora and the Revd Thomas Harry Lee Jellicoe (1861-1943), the Rector of Saint Peter’s Chailey and a cousin of John Jellicoe (1859-1935), 1st Earl Jellicoe. He was educated at Haileybury and Magdalen College, Oxford, and during World War I he was with the Royal Navy in the Mediterranean. He then studied at Saint Stephen’s House, Oxford, and was ordained in 1922.

Jellicoe became Missioner at the Magdalen College Mission, the outreach arm of Magdalen College, based at Saint Mary’s. When he arrived in Somers Town, the slums near Euston and King’s Cross had expanded and grown and it was an area of exceptional overcrowding and poverty. He believed people should see God’s work in action in their lives, and his great concern was that Christianity should be about showing people God loves them and they should have the right to decent lives.

The pulpit in Saint Mary’s Church in Somers Town ... Father Basil Jellicoe was Missioner at the Magdalen College Mission from 1922 to 1934 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

In his crusade for slum clearance, he founding the St Pancras House Improvement Society, later the St Pancras Housing Association, in 1924. For many years it was run by Irene Barclay (1894-1989), a campaigner for social housing and the first woman to qualify as a chartered surveyor.

The association built high-quality homes at decent rents the people who were living in the slums and could to afford to rent the new properties. He commissioned ceramic decorations by Gilbert Bayes that continue to adorn some of the buildings where the slums used to be.

On one occasion, he theatrically burned paper mâché representations of vermin. He became the landlord of a local pub when he opened the Anchor in Chalton as a ‘reformed pub’ in 1929. The first drinks were served to the then-Prince of Wales, later Edward VIII, and the Archbishop of Canterbury, Cosmo Gordon Lang.

Basil Jellicoe also founded several other housing associations in East London, St Marylebone, Kensington, Sussex and Cornwall. He toured England in his small car fundraising and selling loan stock to fund his housing projects.

He was at the Magdalen College Mission and curate of Saint Mary Somers Town until 1934, when he became the curate of Saint Martin-in-the-Fields, where Canon William Patrick Glyn (‘Pat) McCormick (1877-1940) had succeeded Canon Dick Shepherd as Vicar.

But, while he was improving the lives of others, Basil Jellicoe allowed his own health to suffer and probably worked himself to death. When he died in Uxbridge on 24 August 1935 he was only 36. He is commemorated in the Diocese of London with a memorial day on 24 August. The annual Jellicoe Sermon at Magdalen College is named in his honour, and his work continues to the present.

Saint Mary’s was one of the first churches in the Diocese of London to celebrate the Mass facing the people (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

After World War II, when much of the church building had fallen into disrepair, the interior was redecorated and refurbished in a simpler style. Saint Mary’s was designated a Grade II listed building in 1954.

Reflecting the new liturgical emphases from the 1970s on, Saint Mary’s was one of the first churches in London to decide to celebrate the Mass using the westward position, facing the people.

The church provided a safe haven for women who worked in the area in the 1970s and 1980s, when it was known as a red light district.

Saint Mary’s Church has been the spiritual heart of Somers Town for almost two centuries (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Saint Mary’s has been the spiritual centre of Somers Town for almost two centuries. But during work at the vicarage in 2022, serious structural faults were found at in the church, and these were confirmed in detailed studies by stonemasons, architects and structural engineers.

Saint Mary’s was temporarily closed in June 2022 and reopened in September 2022. Protective scaffolding was erected in 2023 to catch falling masonry. The roofs are in poor condition along with the gutters, flashings and rainwater goods. There is water staining internally, along with dampness at a low level. Areas of stone are decayed and past repairs using cement are becoming detached.

The parishioners were told in December 2023 the church could be demolished because of its crumbling disrepair. Today it remains wrapped in scaffolding and corrugated fences amid concerns about falling masonry.

The scaffolding and fencing cost £100,000 a year, and when Saint Mary’s exhausted its own funds, the Diocese of London agreed to bear this cost, but stated this is not an indefinite solution. Estimates suggest it could take £1.7 million to repair the building fully, including £1.2 million for immediate repairs to the stonework and cement, and another £500,000 is needed for urgent repairs to the roof, electrics and heating. The key priorities involve restoring the stonework, removing the costly scaffolding, decorating the porch after a leak repair, replacing the roof and installing a sustainable heating system.
The demolition of the church would be a drastic step that would mean the end for a church that has served generations of families since it was consecrated in 1826.

Looking out from Saint Mary’s Church through the cladding and scaffolding onto Eversholt Street (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Since 2003, Saint Mary’s has been part of a team of four parishes that includes Saint Michael’s Church, Camden Town, Saint Pancras Old Church and Saint Paul’s Church, Camden Square, as one parish with four districts. Father Paschal Worton, a former Franciscan friar and missionary in Zimbabwe, is the parish priest of Saint Mary’s.

The Magdalen Club is named after the Magdalen College Mission, which came to Saint Mary’s in 1908. The Magdalen Centre recalls the parish’s longstanding commitment to the local community. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, the Magdalen Centre hosts a drop-in for young families from the local area between 1 and 3 pm.

In the winter months, Saint Mary’s joins with other churches in the area to host C4WS, a local charity providing shelter for the homeless, as well as helping people to find work and permanent housing.

The regular services at Saint Mary’s include the Parish Mass at 11 am and Benediction at 5 pm on Sundays, and weekday Masses at 11 am on Tuesdays, 6 pm on Thursdays, 1:05 pm on Fridays and 10:30 on Saturdays. Benediction at 5 pm on Sundays is described as ‘a gentle half-hour with Jesus, as he comes to us in love in the Blessed Sacrament’, with prayers, hymns, contemplation and silence. Tuesday morning Masses are followed by coffee and conversation.

Saint Mary’s Church is part of a team of four parishes in the Old Saint Pancras and Camden Town area (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)