All Souls Langham Place: Pray for the BBC

 

 

"Pray for the BBC: Corporation staff offered sanctuary in church next to New Broadcasting House"

All Souls, Langham Place is probably most famous as "The church next to the BBC". Designed by John Nash, and opened in 1824, its spire and rotunda-like base act as a knuckle, linking the disjointed axes of Regent Street and Langham Place, part of George IV's development of a grand route to his new Regent's Park. The body of the church therefore sits at a bit of an awkward angle to the tour-de-force. Spires are ultimately a gothic creation, but they remained popular throughout the 17th, 18th and 19th Centuries. Everyone from Wren and Hawksmoor to Soane and Dance tried collections of elements, such as colonnades, mini porticoes or massive columns, to produce the effect of a gothic spire but in the classical taste. At All Souls, Nash's solution was a cone surrounded with two tiers of columns arranged in rings.

The church's prominence at then s-shaped junction has over the past 190 years been challenged by increasing building heights, and the creation of Broadcasting House in the 1930s and New Broadcasting House in the 2000s.

Next time you are are at Oxford Circus, look North at its spire and columns.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/tv-radio/pray-for-the-bbc-corporation-staff-offered-sanctuary-in-church-next-to-new-broadcasting-house-8313151.html

St Stephen Walbrook

St Stephen Walbrook, by Sir Christopher Wren is, from the outside, not the most beautiful of London's City Churches, but the interior is stunning. It has the largest dome of a City church, other than St Paul's. Its central altar was designed by Henry Moore. This Youtube video details its history...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Cssie1QYag

Radicalism Thwarted by Health & Safety? Newington Green Unitarian Chapel

Stoke Newington has a long history of religious dissent and radicalism. It has been noted as a centre for Congregationalism, Quakerism, Judaism, and more recently lesbianism! Abney Park Cemetery, for example, was designed as a model of an ecumenical burial ground. Newington Green is home to London's oldest surviving nonconformist place of worship, a Unitarian Church. Former attendees include early feminist Mary Wollstonecraft and republican Dr Richard Price.

Political, as well as religious dissent have long been hallmarks of this simple stuccoed chapel, and its radicalism continues. The church applied to hold Civil partnerships, making it London's first religious building legally allowed to do so. But whilst religious marriage can be held in any religious building, venues for Civil partnerships must have a health and safety audit. The early 18th Century chapel has only one fire escape, so apparently cannot get a licence for Civil Partnerships.  Revd. Andy Pakula said of the decision “I guess gay people must generate more heat than straight ones. It’s a list of pretty trivial things to wait the best part of a year for”.

Once the church meets the requirements, it will potentially reach another landmark in its long and illustrious history.

http://www.new-unity.org/

http://www.eastlondonlines.co.uk/2012/11/church-denied-same-sex-civil-partnership-licence/

St John the Divine, Kennington by GE Street

St John the Divine in Kennington, London. was designed by GE Street, of Royal Courts of Justice fame, in 1871. The interior was the work of GF Bodley. The church has a landmark stone spire, whilst the main body is constructed of industrial red brick with stone details. In many ways, the church is the epitome of heavy gothic, stained black by decades of London pollution. It was gutted in the blitz, but has since been restored twice.

The interior

The vault in the porch

St Joan of Arc, Highbury

Yesterday, as I was walking through north London I saw a rather unusual looking Catholic church. It's toblerone-like form seemed very 1960s, yet its West window was of a strangely rational gothic style. A bit of research and I discovered St Joan of Arc, in Highbury Grove, was built in 1961 by Stanley Kerr Bate who wanted to build 'a happy church'.

If only more architects tried to make happy buildings.

Geffrye Memorial, London

Memorial to Sir Robert Geffrye, located in the chapel of the almshouses he founded in Shoreditch, East London in 1714. Today the almshouses are the location of the famous Geffrye Museum of domestic interiors.

The marble memorial features the usual selection of swags, urns, fruit, flowers, cherubs and skulls.

Almshouses were, especially from the 16th to 18th centuries, a way of securing one's place in heaven, in much the same way as chantry chapels were in the Middle Ages. They also provided, and many still do, accommodation and basic charity for the elderly poor.

A challenge for many working almshouses today is the balance between preserving historic buildings, but also providing accessible modern accommodation. Many almshouses also have a small chapel, often quite basic, which offered space for both religious services, and also secular communality.

The museum's website can be found here:
www.geffrye-museum.org.uk

Bucolic vs. Chaotic. Tottenham is not what you expect.

For years Tottenham in North London has suffered with an image problem. Urban decay, Broadwater Farm, deprivation, social isolation, poor transport, decaying buildings. Since last summer's riots have undone twenty years of slow and often non-existent progress to improve the area's reputation.

Few people visit Tottenham, other than to go to Ikea (where there was a riot when it opened) or to White Hart Lane, home to Spurs.

Tottenham has a rich history dating back to Roman times, located on the famous Ermine Street heading north out of London. Like neighbouring Hackney and Enfield, Tottenham became a popular area for hunting and rural retreats from the 16th to the early 19th Centuries. The most venerable secular building of this era is "Bruce Castle", once home to the Kings of Scotland and the Earls of Northumberland. Today it is open as a museum. It is approached from Bruce Grove which contains some of Tottenham's grandest Georgian houses. The High Road, too, is blessed with once grand mansions that housed those wealthy enough to afford a home in the Middlesex countryside away from the dirty crowded city. Today many of these houses are neglected, hidden behind later shops, or restored but under appreciated.

Behind Bruce Castle, and well away from the traffic of the A10, stands the most idyllic corner of Tottenham. The ancient All Hallows Church. It was begun in the 12th Century, and the original tower still stands (with later haphazard alterations). The 15th century brick porch is particularly fine.

All Hallows was even painted by Constable, and the original is at the Met in New York.

Next to the church, behind a high brick wall is the Georgian Rectory. The iron gates are beautiful, and the garden behind, on a sunny day, could be mistaken for a small town in the Chilterns.

The church is surrounded by a graveyard with a selection of interesting and not so interesting graves dating back to the 17th century. But as the railway arrived and Tottenham became part of the growing sprawl of 19th century London, the graveyard quickly became full. An adjacent cemetery was opened. As one moves further from the church, we shift through a hundred and fifty years of cemetery and grave design. There is perceptible shift from rural to urban to suburban not only in Tottenham's houses, but also in its graves.

The earliest part is lined by limes and filled with gothic slabs in closely packed rows.  Continue along and the WWI memorial and portland graves have their own enclosure. They are, as with all CWGC graves, immaculate. Their pristine whiteness only highlight the decay in the rest of the cemetary. Scarcely a single grave is either upright or clean.

Furthest from the church, and closest to the 1920s LCC estate are mid-20th century graves, with green glass chips and plastic flowers. At the centre of this is a picturesque lake with weeping willows, rose garden and crazy paving. The final corner has the most recent graves, invariably timber crosses or black marble with gold lettering.  The space has almost run out. How will Tottenham commemorate its dead now? Or has Tottenham already been killed by the media? Must 2000 years of history be erased and the Estate Agent's rebranding begin?

"Welcome to North Hackney/ East Wood Green/South Enfield"

http://www.haringey.gov.uk/brucecastlemuseum

St Dunstan In The East

The church was repaired after the Great Fire in 1666. Wren constructed a new tower. The church was largely rebuilt between 1817 and 1821. It was bombed during WWII and the ruins were preserved as a public garden. Today it is incredibly serene, and the vine covered tracery make it a gothic fantasy in a sea of late 20th Century office buildings.

Some City Churches

London’s famous city churches are a remnant of an era when the City was still a crowded maze of all echelons of society. Today they stand tucked away down alleyways, or with just a gable wall or a tower facing streets which, though crammed from eight till seven, Monday to Friday, are vacant the rest of the time. For me, one of the most evocative characteristics about the churches are their names. Long forgotten saints, or curiosities from the middle-ages bush against the forefront of modern business. St Vedast Foster Lane. St Mary Aldermary. St Andrew-By-The-Wardrobe.

St Mary Le Bow is a church whose name is far more famous than its image. Millions of Londoners have heard of the church, yet most couldn’t find it on a map, or wouldn’t recognize its graceful spire that dominates any view of Cheapside, from St Paul’s to the Bank of England. It is blessed with a great vestibule which helps shield the sounds of buses and taxis from the body of the church. Entering from the north, one is struck by the great volume of the space. It is high, and it is gilded and painted like an Austrian Baroque interior. Well, not quite that lavish. This is England after all. The keystones, replaced after damage during the Second World War, are lovely carvings of key people to the church. The vicar at the time, complete with horn-rimed spectacles, looks down into his church.

St Mary Woolnoth is a little gem. Externally, it is surprisingly prominent. Hawksmoor was always one for doing his own thing, and the steeple here is undoubtedly one of the most distinctive in the city. It’s a shame that the Victorian and Edwardian baroque office buildings which now surround it have copied so much of its detail and texture that this most idiosyncratic construction seems to blend in. Internally, it is essentially a cube. Lit from above, the east wall feels so close as you enter.  The Jacobean woodwork, dark and heavy, seems quite at odds with the gracious white columns and beautiful plasterwork. The galleries were, like in so many other churches, removed in Victorian times and their fronts stuck to the side walls, so we cannot fully appreciate the original design. It doesn’t have the peace or extravagance of St Mary Le Bow, but it feels much more ‘London’.

St Clements Eastcheap definitely feels like a poor relation. Externally, when viewed from King William Street, it has neither the prominence or seclusion which make the city churches hidden gems or landmarks of the streetscape. St Clements is dirty and a bit battered, like all the city churches were a hundred years ago before the finance companies and guilds gave so generously. It’s crowning claim to fame has been stolen from it- Oranges & Lemons. The ‘other’ St Clements, St Clement Danes in The Strand has usurped the title (supposedly). Internally something very beautiful stands in front of you as you enter from the west under the organ. The font. Carved within the font cover is a little marble dove. Dirty and a bit worn, like the whole of the church. The reredos is by Comper, and the blitz smashed the supposedly not very lovely 19^th century stained glass. The church is a simple box, with one aisle to the south. It is oddly wedge shaped and has not features of merit except a removed balcony. The whole church is a bit sad and disappointing really, and that’s what makes it wonderful. It’s not a star. It doesn’t make it onto lists of great buildings or tourist trails. It isn’t serene or grandiose. It isn’t quaint. It’s just a church really. And that’s the remarkable thing.

The city churches are wonderful because they are so similar, yet so varied. They are so famous collectively, yet so forgotten individually. They are so densely packed that one can stumble across three or four in a single street.  They are surprisingly empty too.