The name of Soho Baptist Chapel survives on Shaftesbury Avenue despite many changes over the years

The former Soho Baptist Chapel on Shaftesbury Avenue is now the Soho Outreach Centre of the Chinese Church in London (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Patrick Comerford

I was writing yesterday about Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church on Shaftesbury Avenue in the heart of the West End in London. But for much of the 19th and throughout the 20th century, Shaftesbury Avenue had another Baptist church, on the corner of Mercer Street, known for its ‘Strict Baptist’ theology and teachings that were in sharp contrast to the traditions and ethos of neighbouring Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church.

The former Soho Baptist Chapel at 166A Shaftesbury Avenue has been known at different times as Soho Baptist Chapel, Gower Street Memorial Chapel and Shaftesbury Avenue Chapel and it is now the Soho Outreach Centre of the Chinese Church in London.

The church was built for a Strict Baptist community that had been formed almost a century earlier in 1791. Its origins dated back to the 18th century revival associated with George Whitefield and John Wesley.

In 1770, young Richard Burnham, began listening to a preacher in High Wycombe and within a few years began preaching himself. He was a pastor for a few years in Staines in Surrey. He moved to London around 1780 and was a pastor in Green Walk near Blackfriars Bridge. By 1787, he had formed a new congregation, Ebenezer Chapel, near Lincoln’s Inn Fields.

Burnham left the congregation at Lincoln’s Inn Fields in 1791, and moved to Edward Street in Soho, naming his new congregation as Salem Chapel.

Four years later, another Baptist church on Grafton Street in Soho decided to relocate in 1795 and Burnham and his congregation took a lease on their property. Soho was then one of the poorest and most densely-populated areas in London. Burnham continued to minister there for another 15 years until he died in 1810.

Burnham was succeeded as the minister by John Stevens, originally from Northamptonshire, the son of a shoemaker. Stevens moved to London at the age of 16 to work as a shoemaker. He was rebaptised by Burnham at the Edward Street church and then moved with them to the new Grafton Street church.

Stevens had returned to Northamptonshire in 1795 and began preaching in his grandfather’s home. He founded a new church in Oundle in 1797, then moved to St Neots in 1799 and formed the town’s first Baptist church. He moved on to pastor a small church in Boston, Lincolnshire, in 1805. He was considering his next move in ministry when Burnham died. The church at Grafton Street in Soho now had over 200 members and invited Stevens to return. He preached his first sermon at Grafton Street in July 1811 and by 1812 the church had 100 new members.

Stevens was known for his idiosyncratic positions, including his view on the pre-existent humanity of Christ. Soon, numbers meant a new building was needed, and the congregation moved west in 1813, still in the Soho area to a chapel built for Catholic services behind the Spanish ambassador’s house at No 8 Saint James Square, York Street, now Duke of York Street.

By 1818, Stevens’s writings were being debated heatedly. The church split into two factions, with Stevens building a new purpose-built chapel, Salem Chapel, at Meards’ Court, behind No 8-10 Wardour Street. He preached his last sermon at Salem Chapel in 1847 and died in October 1847. The Salem Chapel continued with JE Bloomfield and JT Briscoe as pastors until the 1870s, when it was sold to Bloomsbury Baptist Mission and then demolished in 1907.

Meanwhile, the faction that disagreed with Stevens’s Christology rejoined the Soho Chapel congregation that Burnham had originally founded at Lincoln’s Inn Fields and called George Comb as pastor. The congregation was located at Lisle Street when Comb became their pastor in January 1824, then moved to Oxford Street in 1825 and built a new chapel there in 1835.

Comb died in 1841, and was succeeded as pastor by George Wyard (1842-1856), John Pells (1858-1864) and Joseph Wilkins (1866-1873). While Joseph Wilkins was pastor, 23 churches met at Soho Chapel on Oxford Street in 1871 to form the Metropolitan Association of Strict Baptist Churches, later the Association of Grace Baptist Churches South East.

The former Soho Baptist Chapel on Shaftesbury Avenue was designed by the architect William Gillbee Scott and built in 1887-1888 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

John Box, who became the pastor in 1875, drafted the Articles of Faith and oversaw building new church premises on Shaftesbury Avenue. The church was forced to move from Oxford Street in 1885 when the freeholder wanted to buy-out the lease to build business premises.

A new site was bought from the Metropolitan Water Board in June 1886. The site was on Shaftesbury Avenue, then a new road from Piccadilly Circus to Bloomsbury and described the as ‘a broad thoroughfare cut through a horrible and densely populated district’. Plans were drawn up to build a new chapel to seat 500 people and additional school accommodation. While the new chapel was being built, the congregation met in the Albert Rooms, Whitfield Street, Tottenham Court Road.

The church was built in 1887-1888 to a design by the architect William Gillbee Scott (1857-1930) of Bedford Row. When the chapel was partly built, three memorial stones were laid in May 1887 at a service attended by 600 people. A service of dedication was held in February 1888, and the congregation moved into its new premises.

After 26 years in pastoral ministry, John Box died in 1901. The church continued for several years without a pastor until TL Sapey was appointed in 1904. But numbers were falling, there was difficulty in paying Sapey’s stipend and removal expenses, and in 1906 he moved to Brixton Tabernacle.

The membership continues to fall and by World War I many members of the congregation were living in the Finchley area. Soho Baptist Chapel was sold in 1915, when it was bought by the Gower Street Chapel, which was being forced to move. The closing service in Soho Baptist Chapel was held in March 1917. The congregation moved to Finchley, where the Soho Memorial Chapel later became High Road Baptist Church.

Soho Baptist Chapel was bought in 1915 by the Gower Street Chapel and became he Gower Street Memorial Chapel in 1917 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The original Gower Street Chapel, which opened on 9 July 1820, was built in 1820 by seceding members from William Huntingdon’s Providence Chapel, which had been rebuilt in 1811 in Gray’s Inn Road.

The congregation in the Gower Street Chapel became known as Gadsbyites, or Strict Baptists, followers of William Gadsby (1773-1844), who is regarded by many as the founding figure of the Strict and Particular Baptist movement in England. They believed only a select few of God’s chosen people, the Elect, would attain salvation and everlasting life.

The hymn-writer Henry Fowler was the minister of the Gower Street Chapel from of July 1820 until he died in 1838. After Fowler’s death, the church could not agree on appointing a new preacher. Gadsby and another preacher, John Warburton, began preaching conflicting ideas to the same congregation.

Fowler was succeeded by Edward Blackstock, but his inconsistent views on communion led to many members to leave the chapel and in 1843 they formed their own Strict Baptist Church at Eden Street, Hampstead. Blackstock stayed on at the Gower Street Chapel, with fewer and fewer people attending his services, and eventually the mortgagee foreclosed. The chapel was sold to a born-again preacher, the Revd Arthur Triggs, in 1848 and enjoyed a brief resurgence.

However, Triggs was trying to sell the chapel in 1854. By then, the disaffected and now Baptist congregation had outgrown its premises in Hampstead and was looking to move. They bought the Gower Street Chapel back in 1854, and the congregation returned with its first service on 7 January 1855.

Disputes about key aspects of Christian doctrine and practice continued to divide the congregation, and by 1860 some members were denying the divinity of Christ.

The lease of the Gower Street building was to run for 99 years from 25 March 1820. The remainder of the lease was sold to Maple & Co in May 1917 for £250, and was due to expire on 25 March 1919. The congregation began planning and fundraising for a new building in 1911, and in 1916 they bought the Soho Baptist Chapel, on the corner of Shaftesbury Avenue and Great White Lion Street.

The last service at the Gower Street Chapel was held on 24 April 1917, and the congregation moved to Shaftesbury Avenue in 1917, renaming the chapel as the Gower Street Memorial Chapel.

The church and congregation on Shaftesbury Avenue continued during the years between the World Wars without a pastor, and remained without a pastor until the appointment of JS Green (1956-1978), the first pastor the church had for 112 years.

The name was changed from Gower Street Memorial Chapel to Shaftesbury Avenue Chapel in 1994 to avoid confusion about its location.

But by the end of the 20th century, young people and students who frequented the chapel were no longer living in the Shaftesbury Avenue area and attendance figures had dropped dramatically. For financial reasons, the Gower Street Memorial Chapel finally closed in June 2002, and the building was sold in 2004 to the Chinese Church in London and became its Soho Outreach Centre.

Inside the Soho Outreach Centre today (Photograph: Chinese Church in London)

The Chinese community in London had shifted from the Docklands and the East End after World War II to the West End and the area off Shaftesbury Avenue in the 1950s and 1960s, forming a new, thriving commercial area, and by the 1970s Chinatown had become a distinct area of its own.

The first gathering of the Chinese Church in London (CCIL) was on Christmas Eve of 1950, when a small group of people led by Pastor Stephen YT Wang met in Trafalgar Square. They began holding official services on 7 January 1951.

The CCIL began inquiring about the Gower Street Memorial Chapel in the 1980s and once again in the 1990s because of its location close to the relocated Chinatown. CCIL rented space in the Gower Street Memorial Chapel for baptismal services In the early 2000s,, and finally acquired the Gower Street Memorial Chapel on Shaftesbury Avenue in May 2004.

The Chinese Church in London has four other properties and seven congregations, offering services in Mandarin, Cantonese and English. Because of the popularity of the Chinese services, English services cannot be hosted in the Soho Outreach Centre and are instead are held at the Seven Dials Club.

Sunday services are in Cantonese and Mandarin, with English-language services in the Seven Dials Club (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

• Sunday services are in Cantonese from 9:30 to 11 am and in Mandarin from 11:30 to 1 pm at the Soho Outreach Centre, and in English from 11:30 to 1 pm and in Cantonese from 2:30 to 4 pm at the Seven Dials Club.

The Mercer Street side of the former Soho Baptist Chapel on Shaftesbury Avenue (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

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)

Westminster Jews’ Free School closed 80 years ago, but the building remains a landmark

The former Westminster Jews’ Free School on Hanway Place, off Tottenham Court Road and Oxford Street(Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Patrick Comerford

I posed, in jest, a conundrum the other day, asking why there are no Greek cafés or restaurants on Greek Street in Soho. But, of course, in my discussion of the cultural diversity of that one street in Soho – from Greek and French to Italian and Irish, all contributing to the mosaic of life in England today – I ought to have referred too to the Jewish school that was on Greek Street for many years.

The Westminster Jews’ Free School was established by the independent Western Synagogue in 1811, before the government provided any funds for education. The school was founded under the auspices of the Western Synagogue to teach Hebrew, English, writing and arithmetic.

Originally, the aim of the school was ‘that male children of the Jewish persuasion (whose parents are unable to afford them education) be instructed in Hebrew and English reading, writing and arithmetic; that the principle of religion be carefully inculcated, and every exertion used to render them good and useful members of society.’

The school was formalised in 1820, it was funded by voluntary contributions and classes were held at the teachers’ homes. By 1837, the school committee had decided to rent a premises in Stanhope Street but by 1843 this was too small and a new school was opened at 59-60 Greek Street, opposite the Pillars of Hercules, which I was writing about earlier this week.

The children were admitted from age 5 to 12 and discharged at 13. As well as teaching, the boys received gifts of clothing and on his bar mitzvah each boy was given an entire new outfit was provided.

The equivalent girls’ school opened at Richmond Buildings, 21 Dean Street, in 1846. Shortly after, it too moved to 59-60 Greek Street. Its aims were ‘For the diffusion of religion and knowledge of moral and social principles among the young and ignorant.’

The two schools were amalgamated in 1853 and named the Westminster Jews’ Free School. By the time education was made compulsory and school boards were set up in the 1870s, it was a large, successful establishment.

The school moved from Greek Street to Hanway Place in 1883 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The school remained at 59-60 Greek Street for 40 years. But by 1882, it was obvious the school was no longer big enough. A new school that could accommodate 500 children was built on the north side of Hanway Place, a narrow lane near the corner of Tottenham Court Road and Oxford Street, and it was consecrated in July 1883.

Because the school was located between Bloomsbury and Soho, it brought together an economically diverse Jewish community. The school charged fees to attend, but many scholarships were available. The school management committee included members of the prominent and wealthy Montefiore and Rothschild families and wealthy local businessmen and investors who saw the school as both a charitable and religious undertaking.

The wages and resources for teachers were much better than schools of comparative size in similar areas, staff turnover was low, teachers stayed for years, wages were increased regularly.

School prizes were endowed by prominent figures, including Sir David Salomons was the first Jewish Lord Mayor of London, one of the first Jewish MPs and a founder of the London and Westminster bank, and his nephew, Sir David Lionel Salomons. Yet, despite this, many of the children came from families that still lived in poverty well into the early 20th century.

At its peak, the school had 700 children on its rolls. But attendance was falling off by the 1930s, and the last pupil enrolled in 1939. A famous pupil was Harry Ehrengott, the only fireman during World War II who was awarded the George Cross for bravery, the highest honour that can be awarded to a civilian.

After the end of World War II 80 years ago, Westminster Jews’ Free School finally closed on 31 December 1945.

The former Westminster Jews’ Free School was converted into flats and offices in the late 1990s. But the name of the school is still to be seen in the beautiful terracotta decoration and lettering.

Shabbat Shalom, שבת שלום

Westminster Jews’ Free School closed 80 years ago on 31 December 1945 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

A walk though Soho to ask why there is no Greek restaurant or church on Greek Street

The Pillars of Hercules on Greek Street, Soho, celebrates the feats of Hercules in Greek mythology (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Patrick Comerford

One of the silly conundrums I pose when I find myself in Soho is: why is there no Greek restaurant on Greek Street?

Greek Street, which runs from Soho Square to Shaftesbury Avenue, takes its name from the small Greek church that stood on Hog Lane, now buried under Charing Cross Road, roughly where the Montague Pyke pub now stands.

An early map by Fairthorn and Newcourt in 1658 shows the location as a rectangular field that may have been owned by the Crown. A parcel of land known as Soho Fields was steadily sold off to developers.

Henry Jermyn, 1st Earl of St Albans, acquired the ownership of the area in the 1660s, and then leased out the land to Joseph Girle. He received permission to develop the area and then, in turn, passed on the lease for development to a builder, Richard Frith, who gives his name to Frith Street, where Mozart stayed at No 20 in 1764-1765.

Work on developing Greek Street began in 1680. William Morgan’s map in 1682 shows Greek Street with 17 plots on its east side and 12 on the west side, and the street was bisected by Queen’s Street, now Bateman Street.

The Pillars of Hercules, a half-timber pub dating from the early 18th century, on Greek Street (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The origins of the first Greek Orthodox Church in London dates back to the late 17th century. The first church was founded to meet the needs of a growing Greek community in London.

The main driving force behind the new church was Metropolitan Joseph Georgerinis of Samos. A Greek priest, Father Daniel Voulgaris, and number of Greeks living in London signed a petition in 1674 seeking permission ‘to build a church in any part of the city of London, where they may freely exercise their religion according to the Greek Church’.

Permission was granted in 1675 and work began in 1677 on building a small church. The church was completed in 1681, and was dedicated to the Dormition of the Virgin Mary.

The church stood at what was then the edge of the city in Soho in Hog Lane, off Charing Cross Road, and Hog Lane eventually became known as Greek Street. Most Greeks in London at the time were refugees from the oppression of the Ottoman Turks, but lived and worked in the City and around the ports of London. The church was too far from those Greek residents and they found they were unable to attend the Divine Liturgy regularly or support its function.

The church ended up being sold in 1682 and the building was taken over by another group of refugees, French Protestant Huguenots who had fled to England. There were more than 30 Huguenot churches and chapels in London by the early 18th century.

Although the church changed hands, the name Greek Street stuck with the street, which was laid out in the 1670s and 1680s, with taverns, coffee houses and tradesmen’s workshops.

William Hogarth’s painting and print, ‘Noon’ (1736-1738) shows a scene outside the former Greek church on Greek Street

William Hogarth produced a set of four paintings and prints in 1736-1738, including one called ‘Noon’ that shows a scene outside the Greek church, which by then had become the French Church. The spire in the background is either Saint Anne’s Church, Soho, or Saint Giles-in-the-Fields.

The early residents of Greek Street included Arthur Annesley (1678-1737), 5th Earl of Anglesey and 6th Viscount Valentia, who was MP for Cambridge and for New Ross, Co Wexford, in the English and Irish Houses of Commons at the same time. He owned large estates near Camolin, Wexford, and his offices in Ireland included Vice-Treasurer and Paymaster General and Governor of Co Wexford.

Casanova stayed on Greek Street when he was visiting London in 1764. No 1 was once the home of Sir William Beckford (1709-1770), twice Lord Mayor of London (1762, 1769). Other residents included Josiah Wedgwood in 1774-1797.

The writer Thomas de Quincey (1785-1859), author of Confessions of an Opium-Eater (1821), also stayed on Greek Street for a time. Sir Joseph Bazalgette (1819-1891) began designing London’s sewer system in the offices of the Westminster Commissioners Sewers at No 1 Greek Street. No 1 later became the House of Saint Barnabas.

The passageway through the arch seen from Manette Street, with the name of the Pillars of Hercules seen above (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

With no Greek restaurants, and the long disappearance of the Greek church, the only hint of a Greek presence, past or present, on Greek Street is through the name Greek mythology has given to the Pillars of Hercules, a half-timbered pub at No 7, at the north end of Greek Street.

The name celebrates the feats of Hercules, who was renowned for his strength and courage, and two landmarks, the Rock of Gibraltar on the north side and Mount Hacho on the south side that mark the entrance to the Mediterranean. Greek mythology says Hercules set up the pillars after cleaving a path through the land to create the Straits of Gibraltar during his tenth laboir. The northern pillar is the Rock of Gibraltar, while the southern pillar is either Jebel Musa in Morocco or Monte Hacho in Ceuta.

Most of what exists of the Pillars of Hercules today was built around 1910. But a pub has been on the site since before 1700, and it was first recorded in 1709.

The passageway through the arch at the side of the pub through leads into Manette Street, named after Dr Manette, one of the characters in A Tale of Two Cities, who is described by Charles Dickens as living near Soho Square.

Greek mythology says Hercules created the Straits of Gibraltar when he pushed two pillars apart, separating Europe from Africa (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

A sign at the pub says the Pillars of Hercules was also frequented in the 19th century by the poet, cricket lover and Catholic mystic Francis Thompson (1859-1906), author of the poem The Hound of Heaven.

Those literary associations were revived in the 1970s when the Pillars of Hercules was known as a literary pub and the meeting place of writers such as Martin Amis, Julian Barnes, Ian McEwan, Clive James and Ian Hamilton. Clive James named his second book of literary criticism At the Pillars of Hercules, apparently because most of the pieces were commissioned, delivered or written there.

The pub closed on 24 February 2018, but reopened later that year as Bar Hercules under new owners Be At One. In 2022, the cocktail bar chain Simmons took over the pub, and the pub continues to serve under the name of the Pillars of Hercules above the arch and the sign of Hercules above the Greek Street façade.

Other premises on Greek Street today include the Coach and Horses (No 29), the Gay Hussar restaurant (No 2) and Maison Bertaux (No 28), the oldest French pâtisserie in London. Three of the mirrors in the shop contain the inscriptions Liberté, égalité, fraternité, and each year, the shop creates a tableau vivant on 14 July to celebrate Bastille Day – so, even if you can’t get a good Greek meal on Greek Street, there is always a good French patisserie.

As for the former Greek church on Greek Street, it was demolished in 1934. However, the inscription commemorating the foundation of the first Greek Orthodox Church in London has survived and can still be seen in the left part of the narthex of the Greek Orthodox Cathedral of Saint Sophia in Bayswater.

Sunlight on the waters of the Straits of Gibraltar between the Pillars of Hercules and the coasts of Spain and Morocco (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

A new biographical study of the ‘Rake of Rathfarnham’ reconnects with the Spanish branch of the Comerford family

José Antonio Peña Martínez has published a new biographical study of Philip Wharton (Photographs: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Patrick Comerford

A new book is always a pleasant present that brings a smile to my face. It is even more welcome when the book is unexpected and when it is signed by the author. And the pleasures are added to when I find that I am referred to a number of times in the text and that I am fully referenced in the citations and the footnotes.

José Antonio Peña Martínez worked for most of his life in the pharmaceutical, agro-chemistry and food technology sectors in Spain. But since he retired, he has concentrated on historical research, particularly focussed on Aragon and on his home town of Llíria, 25 km north-west of Valencia.

Over the past 20 years or so, he has written and published a series of historical studies and biographies, and his latest book is a study of the infamous ‘Rake of Rathfarnham’, Philip Wharton (1698-1731), who became Duke of Wharton and Earl of Rathfarnham. Wharton inherited the Rathfarnham Castle and neighbouring estates, including Knocklyon and Scholarstown, when his parents died in 1716. His property in England included a large estate at Winchendon near Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, about 20 miles south of Stony Stratford, where I now live.

Philip Wharton also inherited his parents’ great influence and wealth, with an estimated income of £14,000 a year. But within less than a decade, while he was still in his early 20s, he had dissipated a heritage that had passed to him from the Loftus family.

Later, Philip Wharton married his second wife, Maria Theresa Comerford, in Madrid in 1726 – just three months after the death of his sadly neglected and abandoned first wife Martha Holmes and after a very public affair with Lady Mary Montagu (1689-1762). Maria Theresa’s mother was Henrietta Comerford, her father was Colonel Henry O’Beirne, an Irish colonel in the Spanish army, and her step-father was Major-General John Comerford (ca1665-1723), of Finlough in Loughkeen, Co Tipperary, of Waterford, and of Madrid.

Despite having converted to Catholicism when he married to Maria Theresa Comerford, Wharton founded a lodge of English Freemasons in Madrid in 1728. He continued his dissolute life, and his health broke down completely in the winter of 1730. He died a destitute in the Cistercian Monastery of Saint Bernard at Poblet, near Tarragona, at the age of 32 on 31 May 1731, and was buried in the church there the next day. At his death, all his titles, apart from that of Baron Wharton, became extinct.

Alexander Pope wrote of him in his first Moral Essay, probably noting Wharton’s death, in 1731:

Wharton, the scorn and wonder of our days,
Whose ruling passion was the lust of praise …

Wharton appointed his widow as his ‘universal heiress’. But there was nothing for the widowed duchess to inherit. Some time after her mother died in Madrid in August 1747, the former Maria Theresa Comerford moved to London, where she subsisted on a small Spanish pension.

She died at her house in Golden Square, Soho, on 13 February 1777, and was buried in Old Saint Pancras churchyard. There were no children to inherit her claims to her husband’s former wealth and titles in Ireland, including the estates and castles he had disposed of at Rathfarnham Castle, Knocklyon Castle and Scholarstown House. The south Dublin estates had been returned to the Loftus family ten years earlier in a legal victory in 1767.

I have long been interested in Philip Wharton and this duchess related to the Comerford family, and I have spoken about them in lectures organised by Rathfarnham Historical Society and Knocklyon History Society about 20 years ago.

In his new biographical study of Philip Wharton, José Antonio Peña Martínez is particularly interested in his role in establishing freemasonry in Spain and in the masonic symbolism on his tomb in Poblet, one of the largest and most complete Cistercian abbeys in the world.

I am hardly equipped to critically engaged with these aspects of Philip Wharton’s life, but I am pleased that substantive portions of the genealogical details take account of my papers 20 years ago in Rathfarnham and Knocklyon and on my biographical details of the former Maria Theresa Comerford on the Comerford Genealogy site.

José Antonio Peña Martínez has been interested in history and historical figures since childhood. His first book, Edeta. Our Iberian Past (2007), was followed by Llíria in the 13th Century (2008); Martin I the Humane, a King without an Heir (2010); The Compromise of Caspe. A Historical Perspective 600 Years Later (2014); Roger de Lauria, a Titan of the Seas (2016); Saint Teresa of Jesus Jornet Ibars. Her Historical Context (2018); Charles of Trastámara and Évreux. The First Prince of Viana (2019); and The Prince Without a Kingdom (2020), and Marie Curie. La cientifica en un mundo de hombres 2022.

His latest book, a new biography, El Misterio del Masón Enterrado en Poblet (The Mystery of the Mason Buried in Poblet), was published this year. Although I am not descended from Philip Wharton or his Comerford duchess, I am related to her Comerford stepfather. That side of the Comerford family continued to be engaged in Spanish politics and life well into the late 19th century.

Perhaps the exotic and eccentric life of her half-brother’s granddaughter, Doña Josefa Eugenia Maria Francisca Comerford MacCrohon de Sales or ‘Josefina’ de Comerford) (1794-1865), who was involved in Spanish political intrigues in the early 19th century. She was given the title of Condesa de Sales and is the one figure in the history of the Comerford family in Spain who stands out as a femme fatale. She might even make a good subject for another biographical study.

My school-level Spanish helped me to read this well-researched and delightfully illustrated book. book. The author José Antonio Peña Martínez thanks me for sharing my research with him. But I have been more than delighted to be in touch again with this Spanish dimension to my family history.

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)