Saint Giles-in-the-Fields, a Palladian Revival church, stands at a crossroads in radical architectural change

Saint Giles Day is being celebrated in Saint Giles-in-the-Fields Church, London, today (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Patrick Comerford

When I was in London a few days ago, one of the churches I visited was Saint Giles-in-the-Fields. Saint Giles Day was last Monday (1 September 2025), and I marked the day by posting photographs and memories of a half a dozen churches I know with his name. But Saint Giles Day is being celebrated in Saint Giles-in-the-Fields today, with Choral Holy Communion, sung by the Saint Giles Quartet (11 am) and Evensong sung by the Saint Giles Choir.

Saint Giles-in-the-Fields is the parish church of the St Giles area in the London Borough of Camden. St Giles is part of the West End, and much or all of St Giles usually is taken to be a part of Bloomsbury. The places of interest include Saint Giles-in-the-Fields, Seven Dials, the Phoenix Garden, and St Giles Circus.

St Giles Circus was the site of a gallows until the 15th century, the Great Plague in 1665 started in St Giles, and in the 18th and 19th centuries the Rookery was one of the worst slums in Britain, with a large Irish Catholic population that gave the area nicknames such as ‘Little Ireland’ and ‘The Holy Land’. St Giles Rookery and the Seven Dials were known for poverty and squalor and became centres for crime, prostitution, gambling houses and ‘gin palaces’, and ‘Saint Giles’ Greek’ was a secret language used by thieves and beggars.

Inside Saint Giles-in-the-Fields, London, facing east (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The Church of Saint Giles-in-the-Fields gives its name to the surrounding district of St Giles, between Seven Dials, Bloomsbury, Holborn and Soho. But the church traces its story back to the chapel of a 12th-century monastery and leper hospital in the fields between Westminster and the City of London.

The present church is the third on the site since 1101 and was rebuilt in the Palladian style to designs by the architect Henry Flitcroft in 1731-1733.

The first recorded church on the site was a chapel of the Parish of Holborn attached to a monastery and leper hospital founded by Matilda of Scotland, the wife of Henry I, ca 1101-1109. It was later attached to the larger Hospital of the Lazar Brothers at Burton Lazars, Leicestershire.

When Saint Giles was founded, it stood outside the City of London, on the main road to Tyburn and Oxford. Between 1169 and 1189, Henry II granted the hospital the lands, gifts and privileges that secured its future.

Inside Saint Giles-in-the-Fields, London, looking towards the west end (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The chapel probably began to function as the church of a hamlet that grew up around the hospital. The hospital buildings would have included the church, the Master’s House, and the ‘Spittle Houses’, and the Precinct of the Hospital may have included the whole of the island site now bounded by Saint Giles High Street, Charing Cross Road and Shaftesbury Avenue.

A Papal Bull in the 13th century confirmed the hospital’s privileges and granted it special protection. Edward I assigned it in 1299 to the Hospital of Burton Lazars, Leicestershire, a house of the order of Saint Lazarus of Jerusalem. The warden of the hospital was answerable to the Master of Burton Lazars.

Richard II transferred the hospital, chapel and lands to the Cistercian abbey of Saint Mary de Graces by the Tower of London in 1391. But after a legal and sometimes violent dispute, the Cistercian ownership was revoked in 1402 and the hospital was returned to the Lazar Brothers.

Saint Giles Fields was at the centre of Sir John Oldcastle’s Lollard uprising in 1414. Many of the rebels were brutally executed and Oldcastle was hanged in chains and burnt ‘gallows and all’ in St Giles Fields on 14 December 1417.

The present church is the third on the site since 1101 and was rebuilt in the Palladian style to designs by the architect Henry Flitcroft in 1731-1733 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

At the dissolution of the monastic houses during the Tudor Reformation, Saint Giles Hospital and the Hospital of Burton St Lazar were dissolved in 1544, and all the hospital lands, rights and privileges, excluding the chapel, were granted to John Dudley, Lord Lisle, in 1548. The chapel survived as the local parish church, and when the first Rector of Saint Giles was appointed in 1547, the phrase ‘in the fields’ was added to the name to distinguish it from Saint Giles, Cripplegate.

Saint Giles was at the centre of the Babington Plot later in the 16th century. Pope Pius V issued a papal bull, Regnans in Excelsis, in 1570, giving licence to English Catholics to overthrow Elizabeth I. A group of recusants, secret Catholics and Jesuits drew up a plan in 1585 in the precincts of Saint Giles to murder Elizabeth I, invite a Spanish invasion of England, and place Mary Queen of Scots on the throne.

When the plot was exposed, the conspirators were returned to Saint Giles churchyard to be hanged, drawn, and quartered. Ballard and Babington and others were executed on 20 September 1586; Mary Queen of Scots was executed on 8 February 1587.

The original churchyard and burying place is on the south side of the church on the site of the original burial yard of the Leper Hospital (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

After parts of the mediaeval church collapsed in the 1610s, work on building a new church began in 1623. It was completed in 1630 and was consecrated by William Laud, Bishop of London, on 26 January 1630.

The Rector of Saint Giles, the Revd Roger Maynwaring, was fined and deprived of his clerical functions by Parliament in 1628 after two sermons advocating the divine right of kings and he was accused of challenging the rights of Parliament.

When Archbishop Laud’s former chaplain, William Heywood, became the rector in 1638, he began to transform Saint Giles in the High Church, Laudian fashion. Puritan parishioners presented a petition to parliament accusing Heywood of ‘popish reliques’ and said he had introduced ‘at needless expense to the parish’, including an elaborate carved oak screen and expensive altar rails.

Heywood was still the rector when the English Civil War began in 1642, and most of the ornaments his ornamentation was stripped out and sold off in 1643. After Charles I was executed, Heywood fled London and lived in Wiltshire.

One of the few surviving chest tombs in Saint Giles Churchyard is the tomb of Richard Penderel, who sheltered King Charles II after the Battle of Worcester in 1651.

John Sharp introduced a weekly Holy Communion and restored the Daily Offices (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The Puritan ministers were ejected from Saint Giles at the Restoration in 1660, and Heywood was re-instated. He was succeeded in 1663 by Dr Robert Boreman, another deprived Royalist, who is remembered for his bitter exchange with Richard Baxter, a leading Puritan and occasional parishioner of Saint Giles.

A number of Roman Catholic priests and laymen, executed for High Treason during the Titus Oates plot in 1681 were buried near the church’s north wall, including Archbishop Oliver Plunkett of Armagh, although his head is now in Drogheda and his body is at Downside Abbey, Somerset. All 12 were beatified by Pope Pius XI and Oliver Plunkett was canonised by Pope Paul VI in 1975.

Meanwhile, John Sharp, who became the rector in 1675, was seen as bridging the post-restoration divisions within the Church of England. He spent 16 years reforming and reconstituting the parish, preached twice on Sundays, introduced a weekly Holy Communion and restored the Daily Offices in the church. After the Williamite Revolution, Sharp became the Dean of Canterbury in 1689, and Archbishop of York in 1691.

Henry Flitcroft’s spire was modelled on the steeple by James Gibbs at Saint Martin’s in the Fields (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The high number of plague burials in and around the church may have caused the damp problems that emerged in the church by 1711, and the churchyard had risen as much as eight feet above the nave floor.

The parishioners petitioned the Commission for Building Fifty New Churches for a grant to rebuild the church. A new church was built in 1730-1734, and was designed by the architect Henry Flitcroft in the Palladian style. The first stone was laid by the Bishop of Norwich, William Baker, a former rector, on Michaelmas, 29 September 1731.

Flitcroft was inspired by the Caroline buildings of Inigo Jones rather than the works of Wren, Hawksmoor or James Gibbs, although his spire was modelled on the steeple by James Gibbs at Saint Martin’s in the Fields.

The mosaic ‘Time, Death and Judgment’ by GF Watts (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Flitcroft’s church represents a shift from the Baroque to the Palladian form in church architecture in England. It has been described as ‘one of the least known but most significant episodes in Georgian church design, standing at a crucial crossroads of radical architectural change and representing … the first Palladian Revival church to be erected in London.’ The Vestry House was built at the same time.

The East Window depicts the Transfiguration. The paintings of Moses and Aaron on either side of the altar are by Francisco Vieira the Younger, court painter to the King of Portugal.

The mosaic ‘Time, Death and Judgment’ by GF Watts was formerly in Saint Jude’s Church, Whitechapel. The cartoon for it was drawn by Cecil Schott and the mosaic was executed by Salviati.

The children of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Percy Bysshe Shelley and Lord Byron were bapised in the baptismal font (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The baptismal font, dating from 1810, is of white marble with Greek Revival details and is said to have been designed by Sir John Soane. William and Clara Everina Shelley, the children of the novelist Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley and Percy Bysshe Shelley, were baptised in the font on 9 March 1818, along with Allegra, the illegitimate daughter of Mary’s step-sister Claire Clairmont and the poet Lord Byron.

The haste in baptising these children is attributed to Shelley’s debts, his ill-health and his fears about the custody of his children, along with the desire to take Allegra to her father who was then in Venice. All three children were to die in childhood in Italy.

John Wesley is said to have preached occasionally at Evening Prayer in Saint Giles. In the east end of the north aisle is a small box pulpit from a chapel where both John and Charles Wesley preached. George Whitfield and John William Fletcher also preached from the same pulpit. The chapel later became All Saints’ Church, West Street, and when it closed the pulpit was moved to Saint Giles.

The Resurrection Gate at the west end of the churchyard was rebuilt to designs by William Leverton (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The Resurrection Gate at the west end of the churchyard facing Flitcroft Street is a grand lychgate in the Doric order. It once stood on the north side of the churchyard, where condemned prisoners would see it on their way to their execution at Tyburn. The gate is adorned with a bas-relief of the Day of Judgment, probably carved in 1686.

The gate was rebuilt in 1810 to designs by William Leverton. It was deemed unsafe in 1865, taken down and re-erected opposite the west door in anticipation of the re-routing of Charing Cross Road. But Charing Cross Road by-passed Flitcroft Street, and the gate now faces a narrow alley.

The Transfiguration depicted in the east window … most of the Victorian stained glass in Saint Giles was destroyed during World War II (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

As the population of the area grew in the 18th and 19th centuries, no more room was available for burials in the graveyard, and many parishioners, including the architect Sir John Soane, were buried in the churchyard at Saint Pancras Old Church.

The architects Sir Arthur Blomfield and William Butterfield made minor alterations to the interior of the church in 1875 and 1896.

Most of the Victorian stained glass in Saint Giles was destroyed during World War II and the roof of the nave was severely damaged. The Vestry House was filled with rubble, the churchyard was fenced with chicken wire, and the Rectory on Great Russell Street was destroyed.

Saint Giles-in-the-Fields uses the Book of Common Prayer (1662) and the King James Bible, and the church is a corporate member of the Prayer Book Society (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The Revd Gordon Taylor, who was appointed rector after the war, set about rebuilding the church and parish. The church was designated a Grade I listed building on 24 October 1951 and Gordon Taylor raised funds for a major restoration in 1952-1953, praised by Sir John Betjeman as ‘one of the most successful post-war church restorations’.

Taylor also rebuilt the congregation, refurbished the Saint Giles’s Almshouses and revived the ancient parochial charities. Despite the liturgical changes introduced in the 1960s, he maintained the use of the Book of Common Prayer.

George Chapman’s memorial was designed by Inigo Jones (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Saint Giles is often known to as the ‘Poets’ Church’ because of its connections with several poets, dramatists, actors and translators, and the Poetry Society holds its annual general meeting in Saint Giles Vestry House.

An early post-reformation rector, Nathaniel Baxter, was a priest and poet, and was once a tutor to Sir Philip Sidney. He is the author of a lengthy philosophical poem ‘Sir Philip Sydney’s Ourania’ (1606).

Edward Herbert, 1st Baron Herbert of Cherbury, who was buried at Saint Giles in 1648, was a brother of the priest-poet George Herbert and was a poet too.

George Chapman (1559-1634) published the first complete English translation of the works of Homer, and is the subject of John Keats’s sonnet ‘On first looking into Chapman’s Homer’. Inigo Jones designed his memorial.

James Shirley and Thomas Nabbes are both buried in the churchyard, and the politician, pamphleteer, poet and MP Andrew Marvell was buried at Saint Giles in 1678.

The translator Sir Roger L’Estrange, who produced the first English translation of Aesop’s fables for children is buried at Saint Giles. L’Estrange also discovered and foiled the Rye House Plot in 1683. John Milton’s daughter Mary was baptised in Saint Giles in 1647 and L’Estrange is often remembered for his attempt to suppress lines from Book I of John Milton’s Paradise Lost for potentially impugning the king:

As when the Sun new ris’n
Looks through the Horizontal misty Air
Shorn of his Beams, or from behind the Moon
In dim Eclips disastrous twilight sheds
On half the Nations, and with fear of change
Perplexes Monarchs

The organ was rebuilt in 1699 by Christian Smith, a nephew of the organ builder ‘Father’ Smith (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The 17th century organ was destroyed in the English Civil War. George Dallam built a replacement in 1678, which was rebuilt in 1699 by Christian Smith, a nephew of the organ builder ‘Father’ Smith. A second rebuilding was completed in 1734 by Gerard Smith the younger. The organ was rebuilt in 1856 and in 1960, and it was extensively restored by William Drake in 2006.

People with memorials in Saint Giles include: Luke Hansard, printer to the House of Commons; Thomas Earnshaw, watchmaker; Cecil Calvert, the first proprietor of Maryland; William Balmain, one of the founders of New South Wales; and John Coleridge Patteson, first Anglican Bishop of Melanesia and martyred, who is commemorated in the Church of England on 20 September.

Saint Giles-in-the-Fields is the custodian of the White Ensign flown by HMS Indefatigable at the Japanese surrender in Tokyo Bay 80 years ago, on 5 September 1945.

Saint Giles is the patron of beggars, so it is appropriate the mission of Saint Giles gives a priority to the destitute and the homeless, and the church works with many homeless charities.

The Simon Community provides a weekly Street Café outside the church every Saturday and Sunday. Quaker Homeless Action provide a lending library at Saint Giles every Saturday for people who otherwise would not have access to books.

The pulpit from which John and Charles Wesley once preached (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Saint Giles-in-the-Fields is a parish church in the Diocese of London, and is served by three clergy members and a licensed lay minister: the Revd Tom Sander has been the rector since 2021; the Revd Chris Smalling is an associate priest; the Revd Philip Dawson has been the curate since 2023; and Will James is a licensed lay minister. Jonathan Bunney is the Director of Music.

The two Sunday services are Sung Eucharist at 11 am and Evensong at 6:30 pm. The church is open daily for quiet prayer, with Morning Prayer every morning at 8:15 am, and said Holy Communion on Wednesdays at 1 pm. Saint Giles uses the Book of Common Prayer (1662) and the King James Bible, and the church is a corporate member of the Prayer Book Society. On the first Sunday in the month, the extended form of Sung Eucharist includes sung responses, Creed and Gloria.

The patronal Feast of Saint Giles is celebrated on the nearest Sunday to 1 September, and this year the feast is being celebrated today (Sunday 7 September 2025).

The seal of the mediaeval hospital of Saint Giles (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

All Saints’ Church, Leighton Buzzard, stands on a site where there has been a church for the past 1,000 years

The spire of All Saints’ Church, Leighton Buzzard, at 190 ft can be seen for miles around (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Patrick Comerford

I spent an afternoon recently in Leighton Buzzard, a market town in south-west Bedfordshire, close to the Buckinghamshire border. It is between Aylesbury, Tring, Luton and Milton Keynes, and near the Chiltern Hills.

I pass through Leighton Buzzard regularly on the train between Milton Keynes and London, but this was my first time to walk around the town, visiting some churches and cafés, searching for the main historical buildings and sites, and walking by the banks of the Grand Union Canal in the afternoon summer sunshine.

All Saints’ Church stands at the end of Church Square in the heart of Leighton Buzzard, on a site where there has been a church for about 1,000 years. The present church was built in the early 13th century and its 190-ft spire is a dominant feature in the town that can be seen for miles around.

Inside All Saints’ Church, Leighton Buzzard, facing the east end (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The episcopal seat was moved from Dorchester to Lincoln in 1075. Saint Hugh of Lincoln is depicted in the great west window with his legendary pet swan. Around his time, Leighton became a prebendal ‘peculiar’ in 1189. The Prebendary of Leighton Buzzard was a canon of Lincoln Cathedral and received his income from a prebendal manor in Leighton. Peculiar parishes were outside the jurisdiction of the archdeacon, and, generally, the bishop as well.

One explanation for the name of Leighton Buzzard suggests an early prebendary, Theobald de Busar, gave his name to Leighton, which became Leighton de Busar, and later Leighton Buzzard, to distinguish it from Leighton Bromswold in the same diocese.

Former prebendaries included William de Packington (1389), who was also Archdeacon of Canterbury and Dean of Lichfield (1380-1390). Former vicars included Christopher Sclater, who was Vicar from 1624 until he died in 1642. A petition from local people shows that he was not popular. He was described as ‘a promoter of superstitious innovations and of a scandalous life’, and so they employed a lecturer, Samuel Fisher, for their better instruction.

In practice, the prebendaries of Leighton Buzzard endowed the Vicarage of Leighton with a portion of their income. Until the 19th century, the prebendary held visitations, duplicates of registers were sent to the Prebendary, and the Peculiar Court proved all wills and registered all places of worship. No marriage licences except those granted by the Peculiar were legal.

Legislation in 1835-1836 empowered the Ecclesiastical Commissioners to abolish Peculiars, and the last visitation of the prebendary was in 1852. Meanwhile, the parish was transferred to the Diocese of Ely in 1837, and then to St Albans in 1914. By the time these changes were made, the position had become simply an honorary title. There is still a prebendal stall for Leighton Buzzard in Lincoln Cathedral.

Inside All Saints’ Church, Leighton Buzzard, facing the west end (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The church is large, and of cruciform shape, with a central tower and spire, and with a long chancel that is only slightly shorter than the nave. Most of the walls, tower, spire and nave arcading date from the 13th century, and the ground plan remains basically the same with some later additions, such as porches and the coffee shop.

The tower is about 9 metres (30 ft) square and 21 metres (69 ft) high. On the sides of the tower are traces of the older 13th century high pitched roofs. The pinnacles were added in 1842. The spire is 58 metres (191 ft) high, and is built with a slight bulge designed to make the tower appear straight from a distance. The spire was struck by lightning in 1852 and the top 6 metres (20 ft) had to be rebuilt.

There are 25 15th century gargoyles around the outside of the church, dating from the 15th century. Five sundials are fixed to the outside of the church, including one on the north transept wall that only catches the sun soon after sunrise or just before sunset.

The great West Door has hinges made by Thomas of Leighton, a 13th century ironsmith who made the iron grill on the tomb of Queen Eleanor of Castile in Westminster Abbey.

The chancel is the oldest part of All Saints’ Church, Leighton Buzzard (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The chancel is the oldest part of the church. The wooden altar and altar rails date from the 17th century. The sedilia and piscinae are Early English and date from before 1288. There are two piscinae and the most important of the three sedilia seats is at the west end and is a step below the other two.

Before the fire in 1985, the window over the altar was a traditional stained glass window. After the fire, it was replaced with plain glass.

The reredos is a carved oak triptych designed by the Gothic Revival architect George Frederick Bodley (1827-1907). The central section has three alabaster panels, the work of the stonemason and sculptor Robert Bridgeman (1844-1918) of Lichfield, and depict the Crucifixion, the Virgin Mary and Saint John.

The side sections are of leather and have four angels embossed, richly coloured and lacquered and are the work of Minnie King and Arthur Smallbones of the Leighton Buzzard Handicraft Class for Cripples. All the panels have finely carved oak canopies and bordered with a deep cut, vine pattern.

The late 14th century stalls have 27 misericords or tip-up seats that may have come from St Albans Abbey (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

On either side of the chancel are late 14th century stalls have 27 misericords or tip-up seats with ledges for resting against when standing. The carvings include 14 with heads, six of foliage, two heraldic birds, and one with two men (or monkeys) fighting. The carvings of the remaining four have been destroyed. The misericords probably originated from monastic stalls at St Albans Abbey.

The rood screen separated the chancel from the crossing and is a good example of 15th century work.

The nave arcades have four bays. The arches have a chamfered moulding and are supported by octagonal pillars that have moulded capitals and bases. Many of the bases were renewed in 1886.

The roof with magnificent carvings of angels poised on the ends of alternate beams is one of the finest features of the church (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The roof has magnificent carvings of angels, poised on the ends of alternate beams, and is one of the finest features in the church.

The roof was added in the 15th century, and paid for by Alice de la Pole, Duchess of Suffolk and granddaughter of Geoffrey Chaucer. On each corbel are carved figures representing various saints, and the carvings on the corbels themselves represent objects associated with Christ’s Passion.

Saint George, Saint Etheldreda, Saint Michael, Saint Hugh (with his pet swan) and Saint Alban in the west window by CE Kempe (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

All Saints’ Church has a large collection of windows by Charles Eamer Kempe (1837-1907), including 12 at lower levels and 16 in the clerestory. Kempe was at the forefront of the Anglo Catholic revival and worked closely with the architect GF Bodley.

The windows depict various saints, and the great west window depicts Saint George, Saint Etheldreda, Saint Michael, Saint Hugh and Saint Alban.

The oak eagle lectern is the oldest piece of carved woodwork in the church and the oldest of its type in the country. The base appears to date from the 13th century and the eagle from the 14th century.

The oak eagle lectern is the oldest piece of carved woodwork in the church (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The Jacobean pulpit in the nave is of American cedar, given in 1638 by Edward Wilkes, a local benefactor. The Wilkes family also provided the almshouses in North Street.

The font is Early English in design (ca 1240) and is from an earlier church. It has of a large bowl supported on a large central column, with four smaller ones. The metal plug is of much later date (1630).

The Simon and Nellie graffiti, linked locally with the origin of the Simnel Cake or ‘Sim and Nell’ cake (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Mediaeval graffiti or scratchings can be seen throughout the church, on the pillars and walls. They include crosses, birds, a king’s head, strange beasts, coats of arms, names and initials and geometric designs.

The best-known and the one that is always pointed out to visitors is known as the Simon and Nellie graffiti, on the south-west pier of the tower. It is linked locally with the origin of the Simnel Cake or ‘Sim and Nell’ cake. It dates from ca 1400.

The story has it that Simon and Nellie were preparing to welcome their children home for Mothering Sunday. They had little in their larder to eat except a piece of left-over Christmas pudding mixture. They argued over which to how to cook it: boil or bake? The carving shows them about to come to blows: Nellie raised a wooden spoon, Simon was about to throw the dough at Nellie, but they made peace, compromised, and boiled and then baked the mix.

And so, it is said in Leighton Buzzard, the Simnel cake was made.

Some of the mediaeval graffiti or scratchings throughout the church (Photographs: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The church was damaged extensively by fire in 1985. A vast restoration project included redecorating and refurbishing the carved angels, creating new vestries, and a small chapel dedicated to Saint Hugh from an old priests’ vestry upstairs. Other alterations include a meeting room named the Good Samaritan Room from the large window depicting the parable, a parish office, and a choir vestry and office. A new Harrison organ and new bells replaced those destroyed by fire. A new altar was placed under the tower, and a coffee shop is open to the public three days a week.

The lower level of the north transept has a 14th century piscina in the east wall, and combined with other architectural features in both the north and south transepts, point to the fact that they were both originally designed to contain altars. John Esgoer’s will in 1519 refers to two altars in each transept.

The south transept is now a Lady Chapel. It also has a piscina and fine trefoiled niche containing a statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary and Chrost Child. This niche was originally used to display relics, including the tunic of Saint Hugh of Lincoln'. Against the south wall is a single altar, which replaced the two against the east wall from before the fire.

The tower crossing suffered the most damage in the fire in 1985 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The tower crossing suffered the most damage in the 1985 fire, and most of what is seen in this part of the church is new. The altar is of limestone, weighing 3.4 tonnes. The frontal depicts the 12 apostles, and is in gold thread, the work of Watts of London. The organ was built by Harrison & Harrison of Durham in 1989.

Directly above the crossing roof is the ringing chamber, and above that the bell chamber. All ten bells had to be replaced after the fire, and the church now has a ring of 12 bells by Taylors of Loughborough, cast in the key of C sharp. The peal is ranked 21st out of 92 peals of 12 bells in the world.

One old mediaeval bell was rescued from the fire. This bell called ‘Ting Tang’ because of its sound. It is the oldest bell in the diocese and is now housed in the ringing room.

Further restorations were carried out in 1999-2016 after the discovery of cracks in the tower and structural problems in other places, when the tower was stabilised with steel anchors.

All Saints is in the Liberal Catholic tradition and the Parish Eucharist is the main service each Sunday at 9:30 am (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The Vicar of All Saints, Canon David MacGeoch, was appointed earlier this year. All Saints has a strong choral tradition and its worship and liturgy is in the Liberal Catholic tradition.

The church has a wide range of weekly services, most of which focus on the Eucharist, using Common Worship. The Parish Eucharist is the main service each Sunday at 9:30 am. An All Age Service is at 11:30 am on the first and third Sunday each month. Evensong is at 6 pm on Sundays. The weekday services include Holy Communion and Morning Prayer.

The west end of All Saints’ Church, Leighton Buzzard (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Charles Gutch, the visionary ‘slum priest’ in Marylebone who was a life-long fellow of Sidney Sussex in Cambridge

Father Charles Gutch was the priest at Saint Cyprian’s in Marylebone from 1866 until he died in 1896

Patrick Comerford

In a blog posting yesterday, I was discussing five churches within five minutes’ walk of Marylebone station that have five different stories and traditions. As I looked at the story of Saint Cyprian’s Church on Glentworth Street, I realised not only that its founding priest, Father Charles Gutch, had been a Fellow of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, for more than half a century, but the controversies involving his Anglo-Catholic style echo many of the experience of another Sidney Sussex fellow, his contemporary the Revd Thomas Pelham Dale (1821-1892), who was jailed for his high church practices.

The Revd Charles Gutch (1822-1896) was a Fellow of Sidney Sussex from 1844 until he died in 1896 and was the Perpetual Curate or priest-in-charge of Saint Cyprian’s Church, Marylebone, for three decades, from 1866 until his death.

Charles Gutch was born in Seagrave, Leicestershire, on 12 January 1822. He was the fourth son of the Revd Robert Gutch the Revd Robert Gutch (1777-1851), the Rector of Seagrave and a Fellow of Queens’ College, Cambridge; his mother, Mary Ann James, was a daughter of the Revd John James and Elizabeth Hodgson; the couple were married at Saint Giles’s, Marylebone, on 18 June 1810.

Charles Gutch went to school at Christ’s Hospital School, Sussex, and King’s College School, London. He matriculated in 1840 and was admitted a sizar at Saint John’s College, Cambridge, on 23 March 1840. He moved to Sidney Sussex College on 29 January 1842, where he became Prizeman in Classics and Divinity that year. He graduated BA in 1844 and as the 19th Wrangler.

The Wranglers are those students at Cambridge who gain first-class degrees in mathematics. The Cambridge undergraduate mathematics course, or Mathematical Tripos, is famously difficult. The Senior Wrangler is the top mathematics undergraduate at Cambridge, a position that has been described as ‘the greatest intellectual achievement attainable in Britain.’

Gutch was immediately elected a Fellow of Sidney Sussex College in 1844, and he later proceeded MA (1847) and BD (1854). He remained a senior fellow of Sidney Sussex for more than 50 years, until he died in 1896.

His contemporaries at Sidney Sussex included the Revd Thomas Pelham Dale (1821-1892), who was nine months older. Dale was admitted as a ‘pensioner’ on 30 June 1841 and matriculated in Michaelmas term. He graduated BA in 1845 and was the 25th Wrangler, and he too was immediately elected a Fellow of Sidney Sussex College in 1845.

The Chapel and Chapel Court in Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge … Charles Gutch was a senior fellow from 1844 until he died in 1896 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

As for Gutch, a year after graduating he was ordained deacon by Thomas Turton, Bishop of Ely, in 1845 and priest in 1847. He served two successive curacies in Leicestershire, in Kilworth (1845-1847) and Saint Margaret’s, Leicester (1848-1851).

Edward Bouveries Pusey asked Gutch to take charge of Saint Saviour’s, Leeds, in 1849. Pusey was Regius Professor of Hebrew at Oxford and a leading figure of the Oxford Movement. Saint Saviour’s was built in 1842-1845 to designs by the Irish-born architect John Macduff Derick (1815-1849), and Pusey had funded the church.

Gutch refused the offer of the living although he remained at Saint Saviour’s until 1854, when he moved to Norton Saint Philip, near Bath, Somerset (1854-1857), and then to All Saints’ Church, Margaret Street, London (1859-1864), where the Revd William Upton Richards (1811-1873) was the vicar.

Gutch was anxious to minister in a church of his own in London where he could pursue his own expression of Anglo-Catholicism. At the time, many large London parishes were being divided to create more workable parochial conditions. He approached the Revd IL Davies, the Rector of Christ Church, Cosway Street, about building a church in that part Marylebone that bordered the neighbouring parishes of Saint Marylebone and Saint Paul’s, Rossmore Road.

Davies reacted favourably to a plan that would relieve him of his responsibility for 3,000 people, about a tenth of his whole parish. He suggested that portions of Saint Paul’s and St Marylebone parishes should be handed over to Gutch too. But neither the Rector of St Marylebone nor the Vicar of Saint Paul’s approved of Gutch’s churchmanship, and that part of the plan foundered.

Many of the parishioners of Christ Church were living comfortably. But the north-east part of the parish was described as ‘a neglected and heathen part of London’. The 3,000 inhabitants of the proposed new district were mostly poor, and had no church and no school. A mission church was needed, but land was scarce and the wealthy landowner was unwilling to help.

Saint Cyprian’s Church owes its origins to the work of Father Charles Gutch (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Eventually, two houses backing each other and joined by a coal shed in what are now Glentworth Street and Baker Street were rented for use as a temporary chapel. Once the leases were signed, the conversion was entrusted to George Edmund Street (1824-1881), the architect of the Law Courts on the Strand and Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, a churchwarden of All Saints’, Margaret Street, and a personal friend of Gutch.

Gutch faced further difficulties when he proposed dedicating his mission church to Saint Cyprian of Carthage. He explained he was especially struck by Saint Cyprian’s ‘tender loving care for his people, the considerateness with which he treated them, explaining to them why he did this or that, leading them on, not driving them.’

A few weeks before the mission church was due to be opened, the Bishop of London, Archibald Campbell Tait, said that in line with ruling he and his predecessors had made, the district should be named after one of the apostles. Gutch pointed out that Tait had recently dedicated a number of churches in his diocese with the names of saints other than apostles, and he won the day.

The Eucharist was celebrated in Saint Cyprian’s for the first time on Maundy Thursday, 29 March 1866. During the following week, a sisterhood moved in next door to the church. When Queen Victoria formally approved the mission district, Saint Cyprian’s became a distinct parochial charge administered by Gutch with two assistant priests.

Gutch’s curates included the Revd John Witherston Rickards (1844-1921), who later became an SPG (USPG) missionary priest in South Africa, where he founded Saint Cyprian’s Parish at New Rush, Kimberley, on the Diamond Fields in 1871.

Saint Cyprian’s Mission flourished and expanded over the next 30 years. But the mission church was small and could seat only 180 people. It was often overcrowded and extra services were held to accommodate the numbers.

Meanwhile, the landlord, Lord Portman, persistently refused to make available a site for building a larger permanent church. Portman disliked for the churchmanship of Gutch. One of the trustees of Saint Cyprian’s described Portman’s attitude as ‘weak, frivolous, vexatious and unreal.’

Gutch never married. He died at 39 Upper Park Place, Dorset Square, London, at the age of 74 on 1 October 1896. When he died, he had not yet realised his vision of a permanent church.

Saint Cyprian’s Church was modelled on the wool churches of East Anglia (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The Bishop of London, Mandell Creighton, appointed the Revd George Forbes, Vicar of Saint Paul’s, Truro, as his successor. Negotiations were opened with the Portman Estate for a site, and Lord Portman finally agreed to sell a site for £1,000 in 1901. But among the rigorous conditions he imposed, he insisted the new church should be built and ready for consecration by 1 June 1904.

Sir Ninian Comper (1864-1960) was the architect of the new church, and it was the first new church completed to his designs. The Bishop of Kensington blessed the Corner Stone, which was laid by Lady Wilfreda Biddulph on 7 July 1902.

Almost a year before Portman’s terms were due to expire, Saint Cyprian’s was dedicated to the memory of Charles Gutch by the new Bishop of London, Arthur Foley Winnington-Ingram, on 30 June 1903. At the service, the bishop wore a magnificent cope of Russian cloth of gold and a richly jewelled mitre.

By then, the altars were fully furnished but when the church was consecrated in 1904 the interior was sparsely decorated, and the task of completing the interior was to be left to succeeding generations.

Comper designed Saint Cyprian’s in a Perpendicular Gothic style. The church is built of red brick with stone dressings and has a nave with clerestory and two aisles. There is no tower, but a small bellcote on Chagford Street. Comper modelled the church on the ‘wool churches’ of East Anglia. It includes large Perpendicular windows but the stained glass, also designed by Comper, is confined to the east end. The nave is modelled on the parish church in Attleborough, Norfolk.

Saint Cyprian’s is seen by many as one of London’s most beautiful church interiors

Saint Cyprian’s reflects Comper’s emphasis on the Eucharist and the influence of the Oxford Movement. He wanted his church to resemble ‘a lantern, and the altar is the flame within it’. The unadorned whitened walls in the nave emphasise the contrasting richness of painted and gilded furnishings in the sanctuary.

The sanctuary fittings include a delicate carved and painted rood screen and parclose screens around an ‘English Altar’ surrounded on three sides by hangings and a painted dossal, riddel posts with angels and a painted and gilded reredos.

The central screen below the rood was completed in stages up to 1938. The gilded square tester over the high altar was completed in 1948 and shows Christ holding an open book with a Greek inscription: ‘I am the Light of the World’.

The left-hand screen leads to what was originally called the All Souls’ Chapel, later re-dedicated as the Chapel of the Holy Name. The right-hand screen separates the liturgical south aisle from the Lady Chapel.

Parclose were added and the stone font, vaulted narthex and gallery above in 1930. The decoration of the screens progressed in stages and the tester above the high altar was installed in 1948. The west doors followed in 1952.

Saint Cyprian’s is seen by many as one of London’s most beautiful church interiors. The poet Sir John Betjeman once described Saint Cyprian’s as ‘Comper’s superb church … a Norfolk dream of gold and light within.’ The architectural historian Sir Nikolaus Pevsner also praised Comper’s work at Saint Cyprian’s: ‘If there must be medieval imitation in the twentieth century, it is here unquestionably done with joy and care.’

• The Parish Mass in Saint Cyprian’s Church on Sundays is at 10:30 am, and Choral Evensong is sung on the second Sunday of each month at 6 pm. Canon Clare Dowding is the Priest in Charge.

Sir John Betjeman described Saint Cyprian’s as ‘Comper’s superb church … a Norfolk dream of gold and light within’ (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Five Churches close to Marylebone station with different stories and a variety of traditions

Saint Mary’s Church, Bryanston Square, is a prominent landmark Marylebone (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Patrick Comerford

Marylebone in Central London is part of the West End, and Oxford Street marks its southern boundary. An ancient parish and then a metropolitan borough, it merged with the boroughs of Westminster and Paddington to form the City of Westminster in 1965.

The name Marylebone originates from an ancient hamlet located near Marble Arch, on the east banks of the Tyburn. A parish church dedicated to Saint Mary was built there in 1400. The name Marylebone is derived from Saint Mary-burne, or ‘the stream of Saint Mary’, the Anglo-Saxon word burna meaning a small stream.

The ancient parish church, or Saint Marylebone Parish Church, has been rebuilt several times at various locations within the parish. Saint Marylebone Parish Church on Marylebone Road was built to the designs of Thomas Hardwick in 1813-1817.

On a recent weekend, with an hour or so on my hands, I visited five other churches in Marylebone, each with a different style, flavour and history, and each within a short five or ten minute walk from Marylebone Station or Baker Street.

Saint Mary’s Church, Bryanston Square, was designed by Robert Smirke in the Greek Revival style (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

1, Saint Mary’s Church, Bryanston Square:

Saint Mary’s Church, Bryanston Square, is a prominent landmark in the heart of London. It was built in 1823-1824 as one of the Commissioners’ churches, 600 new churches built by the Church Building Commission between the 1820s and 1850s in thanksgiving for and as a celebration of Britain’s victory at the Battle of Waterloo, and to meet the needs of growing populations in the suburbs.

Saint Mary’s was designed by Robert Smirke (1780-1867), best known as the architect of the British Museum. He designed Saint Mary’s to seal the vista from the lower end of Bryanston Square towards York Street. It is a brick building in the Greek Revival style, with a rounded stone portico, a round tower and a small dome, topped by a cross.

The tower rises in three stages from a plain drum base. The main stage has an engaged order of fluted columns with Graeco-Egyptian capitals carrying deep entablature with acroteria to a blocking course and a wreathed clock in drum base to a crowning arcaded cupola with a stone dome and a cross finial. Some internal remodelling was designed by Sir Arthur Blomfield in 1874.

The tower of Saint Mary’s has a crowning arcaded cupola with a stone dome and a cross finial (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

A major project to restore the Grade 1 listed building to its original Georgian splendour as carried out in 2000-2002.

Today, Saint Mary’s is an HTB-linked charismatic evangelical church led by the Revd John Peters. The congregation is a church plant from Holy Trinity Brompton and Saint Paul’s, Onslow Square, and was allocated the church building by the Bishop of London in 2002. Saint Mary’s is a long-standing member of the New Wine network of churches.

The church holds two services on Sunday: an informal 11 am service, with groups for children and youth, and an informal service 5:30 pm, and there are several midweek groups and courses. I can easily find details and times for serving coffee and pastries on Sunday mornings and afternoons, but can find no details about when Holy Communion or the Eucharist is celebrated on Sundays.

Christ Church, Cosway Street, built in the 1820s, was designed by Thomas and Philip Hardwick (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

2, Christ Church, Cosway Street:

Christ Church, Marylebone, also known as Christ Church, Lisson Grove, and Christ Church, Cosway Street, is a Grade II* listed building, mid-way between Paddington Station and Regent’s Park. It was was one of the first of the Commissioners’ churches, and was built in the 1820s to designs by Thomas and Philip Hardwick.

The parish of Christ Church, Cosway Street, was created in 1825 by Act of Parliament as one of four new district rectories within the ancient parish of St Marylebone. The Revd George Saxby Penfold was the first rector, and in 1828 he was succeeded by a notable classical scholar, Robert Walpole, a grandson of Horatio Walpole and a great-nephew of Sir Robert Walpole, prime minister.

Constance Lloyd, later the wife of Oscar Wilde, was baptised at Christ Church in 1858.

The former church is now a multi-sports centre (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Christ Church is an example of square Georgian neoclassical architecture, covered in pale limestone, with a four-columned Ionic portico, a blank pediment, and further pairs of pillars on each side.

A square tower rises above the church, with clock faces and Corinthian pillars. Above this is an octagonal cupola with a roof shaped like a bell. Inside the church are an eight-bay Corinthian arcade, with Corinthian pilasters on the east wall, clerestory windows above an entablature, and a brick-built nave with a low arched ceiling with ribs and oval panels. The church also has galleries.

Some alterations to the church in 1887 were also designed by Sir Arthur Blomfield.

A post-war scheme to reorganise the Marylebone parishes in 1945 was not implemented until 1952. With parish reorganisation in the Diocese of London again in the 1970s, the parish of Christ Church was united with Saint Paul, Rossmore Road, in 1971 to create the parish of Christ Church and Saint Paul. Christ Church was declared redundant and closed in 1977.

The former church became an antiques market and then a restaurant. It was bought in 2014 by Greenhouse Sports, a youth charity, and was refurbished as a multi-sports centre, while the crypt was converted into changing rooms and meeting rooms.

Saint Paul’s Church on Lisson Street and Rossmore Road replaced the former Bentinck Chapel on Lisson Street (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

3, Saint Paul’s Church, Lisson Street:

Saint Paul’s Church, on Lisson Street and Rossmore Road in North Marylebone, was designed by JW Higgins and was built by voluntary contributions as Saint Paul’s Chapel in 1837-1838 soon after the closure of the Bentinck Chapel on Lisson Street. It was consecrated in 1838 and was assigned a district. The solemnisation of baptisms was authorised in 1838 and marriages in 1860.

After World War II, Saint Paul’s parish was united with Emmanuel, Maida Hill, and Saint Matthew, Maida Hill, to form the parish of Saint Paul with Saint Matthew and Emmanuel. The parish was united with Christ Church, Cosway Street, in 1971. Saint Paul’s Church became one of the parish churches of the parish of Christ Church and Saint Paul, St Marylebone, until Christ Church was closed in September 1977.

The interior of Saint Paul’s has been subdivided and refurbished, but the reredos remains in place (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

In recent years, the interior of Saint Paul’s has been subdivided and refurbished, the galleries have been removed, and the worship space is in part of the nave and the sanctuary area. The reredos and the windows remain in place.

Canon Clare Dowding is the Rector of Saint Paul’s, Priest in Charge of Saint Cyprian’s and Area Dean of Marylebone; the Revd Rachel Sheppard is the Assistant Curate; and the Revd Michele Lee is the Associate Priest.

The Parish Eucharist is celebrated in Saint Paul’s every Sunday at 10 am, Morning Prayer is said on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday at 9:15, Evening Prayer is said every Monday at 4:30, and Holy Communion is celebrated every Friday at 8:30 am. Through a partnership with West London Synagogue and Foodcycle, Saint Paul’s offers a free community meal every Wednesday night to over 70 people at the church.

Saint Cyprian’s Church is the first new church completed to Sir Ninian Comper’s designs (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

4, Saint Cyprian’s Church, Glentworth Street:

Saint Cyprian’s Church in Marylebone is a Grade II* listed building at the north end of Glentworth Street (formerly Park Street) and near the Clarence Gate Gardens entrance to Regent’s Park. The church off Baker Street was designed by Sir Ninian Comper and was consecrated in 1903, but the parish was founded in 1866.

The parish was formed as part of the work of the slum priest Father Charles Gutch (1822-1896), a senior fellow of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, for 52 years. His campaigning Anglo-Catholic views and pastoral mission to London’s poor led him to propose a mission church in the then slum enclave north-east corner of Marylebone. The new mission district was formed from portions of the parishes of Saint Marylebone and Saint Paul, Rossmore Road, although neither the Rector of Saint Marylebone nor the Vicar of Saint Paul’s approved of his Anglo-Catholic style or his pastoral approach.

The mission district was in an area where church attendance was poor and it was densely populated with overcrowded slums. Saint Cyprian’s Mission Chapel, designed by George Edmund Street, was a low-budget conversion of a terraced house on Park Street and a mews hay barn, and about 150-180 people could be squeezed in.

Saint Cyprian’s Church was modelled on the wool churches of East Anglia (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Gutch died in 1896, without realising his vision of a permanent church and was succeeded by the Revd George Forbes. The new Saint Cyprian’s Church was designed by Sir Ninian Comper (1864-1960) in a Perpendicular Gothic style and was built in 1901. It was modelled on the wool churches of East Anglia, and was the first new church completed to Comper’s designs.

Saint Cyprian’s is built of red brick with stone dressings, with a nave with clerestory and two aisles. There is no tower, but a small bellcote on Chagford Street. It has large Perpendicular windows but the stained glass designed by Comper is confined to the east end.

Sir John Betjeman described Saint Cyprian’s as ‘Comper’s superb church … a Norfolk dream of gold and light within’ (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Although I did not get inside Saint Cyprian’s that afternoon, the church is regarded by many as one of London’s most beautiful church interiors. In its design, Saint Cyprian’s reflects Comper’s emphasis on the Eucharist and the influence of the Oxford Movement. He said his church was to resemble ‘a lantern, and the altar is the flame within it.’

The sanctuary fittings include a carved and painted rood screen and parclose screens around an English Altar, surrounded on three sides by hangings and a painted dossal, riddel posts with angels and a painted and gilded reredos.

The left-hand screen leads to what was originally called the All Souls’ Chapel, later re-dedicated as the Chapel of the Holy Name. The right-hand screen separates the liturgical south aisle from the Lady Chapel. The central screen below the rood was completed in stages up to 1938. The gilded square tester over the high altar was completed in 1948 and shows Christ holding an open book with a Greek inscription: ‘I am the Light of the World’.

The poet Sir John Betjeman once described Saint Cyprian’s as ‘Comper’s superb church … a Norfolk dream of gold and light within.’ The architectural historian Sir Nikolaus Pevsner also praised Comper’s work at Saint Cyprian’s: ‘If there must be medieval imitation in the twentieth century, it is here unquestionably done with joy and care.’

The Parish Mass in Saint Cyprian’s on Sundays is at 10:30 am, and Choral Evensong is sung on the second Sunday of each month at 6 pm. Canon Clare Dowding is the Priest in Charge.

Rossmore Hall Evangelical Church on Rossmore Road in Marylebone (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

5, Rossmore Hall Evangelical Church:

Rossmore Hall Evangelical Church, also known as Paragon Gospel Hall, is a Brethren church on Rossmore Road, off Lissom Grove in Marylebone. It may have taken its name from Rossmore Hall, a mission hall that once stood on Morning Lane in Hackney.

A ‘Mystery Worshipper’ or visitor from the site Ship of Fools described it as sandwiched between two residential houses on a Georgian street, and said in a report: ‘Rossmore Hall is basically a big square room with a high ceiling. At one end there is a long wooden plaque on the wall, with ‘Jesus Christ is Lord’ painted on it in gold Gothic lettering, and beneath this an upright piano and a Victorian harmonium.’

A Portuguese-speaking congregation uses the hall on Sunday afternoons.

‘What Habits Do You Want to Give Up’ … ‘Where Do You Need Strength’ … signs at Saint Mary’s Church, Bryanston Square (Photographs: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Saint Anne’s, Soho, the London church that rose from the ashes after the Blitz and lengthy closure

Saint Anne’s Church, Soho, and Saint Anne’s Gardens, a public park that opens onto the Shaftesbury Avenue end of Wardour Street, London (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Patrick Comerford

In my recent self-guided ‘church crawling’ tour of half a dozen or so churches and chapels in Bloomsbury, Fitzrovia, Soho and Mayfair, one of the churches I visited was Saint Anne’s Church in Soho, including the remaining tower of the original church facing onto Wardour Street and the modern church facing onto Dean Street.

Saint Anne’s was known in the past for its musical traditions and its literary associations with writers and poets, including Dorothy L Sayers, Rose Macaulay, Iris Murdoch, TS Eliot and John Betjeman. The church is also associated with the homeless charity Centrepoint and was known in the past for its radical and innovative priests, exemplified in the life and ministry of the late Kenneth Leech.

Although the church was destroyed during the Blitz in 1940, the church community survived through the post-war decades and the church was rebuilt in the 1990s. Parts of the churchyard around the west end with the surviving tower are Saint Anne’s Gardens, a public park that opens onto the Shaftesbury Avenue end of Wardour Street.

The first certain reference to the church is in the minutes of a meeting of the vestry of Saint Martin in the Fields, in August 1676. A few months earlier, in April, the foundation stone had been laid of a new church in the parish, which was in 1685 to become the church of the parish of Saint James, Westminster.

No grant of the site by the Crown to an individual or corporate body seems to be recorded and its appropriation to church use seems to have been effected simply by an Act of Parliament in 1678 that authorised the establishment of the parish and stated the boundaries of the church and churchyard site. Later, the parish would give rise to two new churches, dedicated to Saint Thomas and Saint Peter, but they became part of the same parish again in 1945.

Saint Anne’s Church, Soho, was consecrated by Bishop Henry Compton of London in 1686 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Saint Anne’s Church in Soho was consecrated on 21 March 1686, the Sunday before Lady Day, by Henry Compton, Bishop of London, as the parish church of the parish of Saint Anne Within the Liberty of Westminster, created from part of the parish of Saint Martin in the Fields. The ceremony was interrupted by dinner and was followed by the consecration of an additional cemetery for the parish of Saint Martin’s on the site of a former Greek church.

The parish was dedicated to Saint Anne because Compton had been tutor to Princess Anne, who later became Queen Anne. Construction began in 1677 on a plot that was then in the countryside and known as Soho Fields.

It seems the original church was designed by William Talman, an architect who worked under Sir Christopher Wren. Saint Anne’s was a basilica, having a nave of five bays terminated by an eastern apse, serving as a chancel, and flanked by north and south aisles containing galleries that were linked by a gallery across the west end of the nave.

The interior was 64 ft wide, the nave was 31 ft clear, and 78 ft long, excluding the chancel apse which added a further 18 ft. The chancel apse was flanked by vestibules with staircases to the galleries, that were also reached by open staircases at the west end of each aisle.

A square tower projected centrally from the west front, but the church remained without a spire for 32 years. The church tower was only completed in 1718, with the addition of a timber spire.

Saint Anne’s House at 57 Dean Street was first occupied ca 1705 by the parish watch-house, and later also by the parish fire-engine-house and vestry-room.

Inside the present modern chapel at Saint Anne’s Church in Soho (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

In its early years, the church had a fashionable congregation, including the Prince of Wales, later George II, and the actress Hester Davenport, who was buried in the churchyard in 1717.

The tower had become unstable by 1800 and the new tower was completed by 1801, its bell chamber’s Portland stonework by March 1803, and its copper cupola by May 1803. The tower’s ground floor room of the tower became the parish vestry room, and was later used as a robing room for the clergy.

Canon Nugent Wade (1809-1893), who was the Rector of Saint Anne’s in 1845-1891, was born in Dublin and educated at Trinity College Dublin and at Oxford, and was ordained deacon (1832) and priest (1833) in Saint Fethlimidh’s Cathedral, Kilmore, Co Cavan. Before coming to Soho, Wade was the Anglican chaplain in Elsinore.

AW Blomfield rearranged the interior for Wade in 1866. Although Wade faced opposition in Saint Anne’s for his ‘Puseyite’ sympathies, he made Saint Anne’s a gathering place for the new generation of Anglo-Catholics in central London. He founded the Saint Barnabas House of Charity in Soho, which ministered to prostitutes, and Saint Mary’s Crown Street, an Anglo-Catholic centre in a slum district within the parish of Soho.

The Revd Basil Graham Bourchier (1881-1934) was the Rector of Saint Anne’s in 1930-1933. During World War I, while he was a chaplain with the Red Cross in Belgium, he was arrested by the Germans as a spy. But his death sentence was commuted, he escaped, and became an army chaplain.

Bourchier was a flamboyant preacher and was satirised as the Revd Cyril Boom Bagshaw in ASM Hutchinson’s If winter comes (1921) and as a ‘totally preposterous parson in Evelyn Waugh’s A little learning (1964). He resigned before being enfolded in a major scandal about his sexuality and his inappropriate relationships with choirboys. Little Dean Street in Soho was renamed Bourchier Street in 1937.

The complex at Saint Anne’s has survived the Blitz and proposals for demolition (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The Revd Gilbert Shuldham Shaw (1886-1967), who was the Vicar of Saint Anne’s from 1940, was another Dublin-born priest at Saint Anne’s. He had been baptised by his mother’s uncle, William Conyngham Plunket, Archbishop of Dublin. With his successor Patrick McLaughlin, he is thought to be part of the inspiration for Rose Macaulay’s character of Father Hugh Chantry-Pigg in The Towers of Trebizond (1956).

During World War II, the whole church, apart from the tower, was burned out in the Blitz on the night of 24 September 1940, and the tower was left derelict. Saint Thomas’s, Regent Street, and the adjoining Saint Anne’s House in the Upper Room, later known as the ‘Allen Room’, were used for worship from then on, although Saint Thomas’s has since been demolished.

After the war, Jacques Groag proposed in 1945 keeping the ruins as a war memorial, but by 1949 it was assumed that the church would not be rebuilt. The remains of the east wall were the only significant parts left standing, and they were demolished in 1953. The site was deconsecrated and prepared for sale, and the parish was amalgamated with those of Saint Thomas’s Church, Regent Street, and Saint Peter’s Church, Great Windmill Street, creating the Parish of Saint Anne with Saint Thomas and Saint Peter, centred on Saint Thomas’s.

Dorothy L Sayers was a longtime churchwarden of the parish … her ashes were buried at the base of the tower in 1957 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Despite having no building, from 1941 to 1958, the Saint Anne Society under Patrick McLaughlin encouraged links with the literary world, and the members included Father Gilbert Shaw, JC Winnington-Ingram, Charles Williams, Agatha Christie, TS Eliot, Father Max Petitpierre, Dom Gregory Dix, Arnold Bennett, CS Lewis, Rose Macaulay and Dorothy L Sayers. Others who contributed from time to time included John Betjeman, Iris Murdoch, Lord David Cecil, Rebecca West and Christopher Dawson.

Even when there was no church building, the church community remained active in those post-war years, and the tower was used as a chapel for a time in the 1950s. The novelist Dorothy L Sayers was a longtime churchwarden of the parish and member of the Saint Anne’s Society. Her ashes were buried in the base of the tower in 1957.

Father Patrick McLaughlin (1909-1988) was the Rector Saint Anne’s in 1953-1962. He introduced the ‘basilican mode’, in which the priest faces the congregation instead of facing the altar with his back to the congregation. This liturgical innovation was widely adopted in the Church of England some 20 years later. Patrick McLaughlin became a Roman Catholic in 1962.

Saint Anne’s has a long history of being socially inclusive and engaged, exemplified in the life and ministry of Kenneth Leech (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Saint Anne’s has a long history of being socially inclusive and engaged with its diverse and ever-changing community. The Revd Dr Kenneth Leech (1939-2015), who was a curate at Saint Anne’s in 1967-1971, was a priest in the Anglo-Catholic tradition and a socialist, and a leading advocate of contextual theology.

At the heart of his faith was what he called ‘subversive orthodoxy’: the indissoluble union of contemplative spirituality, sacramental worship, orthodox doctrine and social action. He argued that this conjunction of faith and the quest for justice, which points to the coming of the Kingdom of God on earth, is the essential mark of the Christian life and underlies scripture, the teachings of the Church Fathers and the Christian mystical tradition.

He founded the homeless charity Centrepoint in the basement of Saint Anne’s House in December 1969, and it was based at the church until 2023.

The entrance to Saint Anne’s on Dean Street (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

After many years as a bomb site and car park, the present building was created in 1991 thanks to the tenacity of members of local community. By selling part of the site to build social housing and provide commercial properties, funds were raised to create the community hall and the simple but attractive chapel that extends into the hall on Sundays.

Princess Anne laid the foundation stone of the new complex on 12 March 1990, and it was opened and rededicated on Saint Anne’s Day, 26 July 1991. The new church complex is not an actual reconstruction of the old church and can be varied from a large to a small space. It is set within a community centre and is a community focus.

The tower, which had been partly restored in 1979 by the Soho Society, was fully restored when the whole church was rebuilt in 1990-1991 and is now a Grade II* listed building.

The prize-winning entrance was designed by Lina Viluma and Sherief al Rifa’i and was dedicated in 1996 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

To celebrate the 25th anniversary of the rebuilding of the church, a redesigned entrance on Dean Street, featuring the name of Saint Anne’s in neon lights, was dedicated by the Bishop of London in December 2016 and it ensures the church remains a visible presence in the community.

The new entrance was designed by two UAL London students, Lina Viluma and Sherief al Rifa’i. Their redesign of the entrance won the President’s Award for alterations to a church building in the 2017 Church Architecture Awards. The judges said their design made ‘a dynamic and inviting entrance to the church’.

Saint Anne’s is a thriving church community today and a venue for many local community and charitable events. It also houses the Soho Society, and the anti-homophobic bullying charity Diversity Role Models.

Saint Anne’s also has had its own community coffee shop, Sacred Grounds, since January 2024, on the very site where Centrepoint was founded in 1969.

A double espresso in Sacred Grounds, where Centrepoint was founded in 1969 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Saint Anne’s was once famous for its high musical standards. The church received an organ in 1699 from the Dowager-Queen’s Chapel in Saint James’s Palace. The first organist Dr William Croft wrote the tune ‘Saint Anne’ in 1708, a tune still used for the hymn ‘O God Our Help in Ages Past’.

During Wade’s half century at Saint Anne’s, the choir under Sir Joseph Barnby revived the interest in Bach in England, starting with the Christmas Oratorio and Crescendo to the Mathew Passion. Barnby, who was the organist in 1871-1888, introduced the first performance in Britain of Bach’s ‘Saint John Passion’. The first religious service with music broadcast by radio came from Saint Anne’s in the 1920s.

The churchyard, Saint Anne’s Gardens, was leased to Westminster City Council in 1894, having been closed to burials 40 years earlier. It is believed that up to 60,000 bodies are still buried there, and this explains why the ground is so high above the entrance on Wardour Street.

The curious monument to King Theodore of Corsica, who reigned for eight months in 1766 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

One of the few surviving monuments in the churchyard is a curious tablet to King Theodore of Corsica, who reigned briefly from March to November in 1766. It includes a crown in an oval panel above an inscription composed by Horace Walpole. The biography of the soi-disanting was published by Percy Fitzgerald in 1890.

King Theodore’s wife Catalina Sarsfield was the daughter of David Sarsfield of Kilmallock, Co Limerick, a younger brother of Dominick Sarsfield, 4th Viscount Sarsfield, and his French-born wife, Marie d’Athboy. She is sometimes mistakenly said to have been the daughter of Patrick Sarsfield, 1st Earl of Lucan, and Lady Honora Burke, but she was part of a different branch of the Sarsfield family.

Below this monument is a stone commemorating the burial in the churchyard of William Hazlitt (1830).

The Revd Simon Buckley has been the Rector of Saint Anne’s, Soho, since 2013, and is a former assistant priest. Previously, he was a professional puppeteer, and worked with the Muppets and the original Spitting Image. The Revd Martha Pennel has been the curate of Saint Anne’s since 2023

• The main service in Saint Anne’s is the Sunday Eucharist at 11am, celebrated with ‘a relaxed dignity’. The regular weekday services include Holy Communion on Tuesday at 1:05 pm and Morning Prayer on Tuesdays, Wednesday and Thursday at 8:30 am and Evening Prayer at 4:30 pm on Wednesdays. Other services range from Christmas Carol Services and the liturgies of Holy Week, to Prayers at Pride and Soho Parish Sundays.

‘Lord Have Mercy’ … time for prayer in Saint Anne’s (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)