Author: man-thinking

blog | St John the Divine Earlsfield

St John the Divine, Earlsfield SW17

Earlsfield (formerly Garratt Green; var. Garret, Garat &c) – in the London Borough of Wandsworth – is a somewhat nondescript inner south-London suburb. It is dissected by the River Wandle, a tributary of the River Thames. In past times the area was open farmland and with no settlements other than the hamlet of Garratt Green, home to a large water mill. Garratt Lane, running parallel with the Wandle for some distance, is the main thoroughfare of Earlsfield; its name keeps alive a memory of former times.

Sketch map of south-west London showing the location of Earlsfield.
Garratt Lane Mill, c.1905
Garratt Lane, Earlsfield, c.2015
A map showing the course of the River Wandle, running north into the River Thames at Wandsworth

With the coming of the railways in the 1880s the construction of a railway station required the purchase and demolition of a large house called Earlsfield. One of the conditions of its sale was that the station should be named after the house, and so the area has been known ever since.

Earlsfield Station, street level, early c.20
Earlsfield Station, street level, c.2015
Earlsfield Station, platform level, early c.20

From the mid eighteenth century until the 1820s Garratt Green was widely known for the rumbustious carnival atmosphere that accompanied the election of a ‘mayor’ to oversee the management of the common land. These elections were timed to coincide with national elections, but outgrew their original purpose to become something of rallying point for the un-enfranchised classes to have a day out and mock the political system that denied them a vote. Reports talk of tens of thousands attending.

The scene of the election was the Leather Bottle pub, which still stands on Garratt Lane. The elections were immortalised in a popular drama called  ‘The Mayor of Garratt’ (1763), written by the actor-dranatist and impresario Samuel Foote (1720-77) who had witnessed the 1761 election.

“Sir” Harry Dimsdale, a muffin seller elected as the final Mayor of Garrat in 1796
The Garratt election of 1761, from a drawing by Valentine Green (1739–1813)
Ephemera of the Garrett elections.
The Leather Bottle pub, Earlsfield, c.2015
The Leather Bottle pub, Garratt Lane, Earlsfield, c.1915
Bendon Valley Mission Church, Earlsfield, c.1915
Bendon Valley Mission Church, Earlsfield, c.1915

The church of St John the Divine on Garratt Lane was established in 1903 as the Bendon Valley Mission Church, a mission church of St Andrew’s, Garratt Lane.

Unbuilt design (1920) for St John the Divine Earlsfield
Unbuilt design (1920) for St John the Divine Earlsfield

In the 1920s plans were drawn up to replace the mission building with something altogether more grand, designed by F H. Greenaway and J.E. Newberry, and dedicated to St John the Divine, ‘on a corner site at the junction of Garratt Lane and Bendon Valley’ (The Building News, 29 October 1920), but these plans were never carried out.

St John the Divine, Earlsfield, the west end, c.2015
St John the Divine, Earlsfield, the west end, c.2015

Instead we have the rather modest building that dates from 1925 by the architect Arthur Young, 1853-1924, supervised after his death by his business partner Allan Douglas Reid, 1898-1977. (C20 Society Churches Database).

The font at St John the Divine, Earlsfield, c.2013
The font at St John the Divine, Earlsfield, c.2013

The font came from St George Battersea (Southwark Diocesan Records [SDR]: DS/F/1936/008).

St John the Divine became a parish in its own right in 1938 (SDR: DS/OC/1938/001).

According to an advertisement for a parish organist in The Musical Times of 1943, the organ at that time  was a ‘S Cecilia Organ’. I am guessing that this refers to the  economical production-line instruments made in the early decades of the twentieth century by the firm of Henry Jones in Finsbury Park, north London.

Advertisement for St Cecilia Organs by Henry Jones, early c20. (©Phillip J. Wells, 2016)
Advertisement for an organist for St John the Divine, Earlsfield in The Musical Times, August 1943
Advertisement for St Cecilia Organs by Henry Jones, early c20. (©Phillip J. Wells, 2016)
A ‘St Cecilia’ organ by Henry Jones in St Mary’s, Cunningham, Essex {© Dartll East, 2016)
Advertisement for St Cecilia Organs by Henry Jones, early c20. (©Phillip J. Wells, 2016)

In 1974, according to the National Pipe Organ Register (NPOR), the church had a two-manual instrument but gives no maker’s name. Was this the St Cecilia organ, an enlargement of it, or something altogether different?

Organ builder's announcement about the organ in St John the Divine Earlsfield, in 'The Musical Times' (vol. 117, no.1605, November 1976.
Organ builder’s announcement about the organ in St John the Divine Earlsfield, in ‘The Musical Times’ (vol. 117, no.1605, November 1976.

NPOR notes that in 1976 a new two-manual and pedal instrument was installed by Percy Daniel and Co. Lrd. of Taunton (Somerset). This instrument was mentioned by name in several quarter page adverts placed by the company in The Musical Times during 1976 and 1977.

Tne organ is sited at the south-west corner of the church, and when I played it earlier this year it was in excellent condition with no extraneous mechanical or wind noise, and was unexpectedly satisfying to play, being well-suited to accompanying the congregation in this small church, and an ideal ‘no frills’ practice instrument.

St John the Divine, Earlsfield, pipe organ (1976) by Osmond of Taunton, c.2016
St John the Divine, Earlsfield, pipe organ by Osmond of Taunton, c.2016
St John the Divine, Earlsfield, pipe organ by Osmond of Taunton, c.2016

blog | St Bartholomew-the-Less Smithfield

St Bartholomew the Less, West Smithfield, London EC1

The Smithfield area just beyond the north-west corner of the City of London owes much of its current street plan to the history of its medieval Augustinian priory and hospital, while the historic character of its architecture – some dating back to the Middle Ages– is due in no small part to the fact that the area narrowly escaped the Great Fire of London in 1666, and was relatively little damaged by aerial bombing during the Second World War.

London, 1666, showing the location of Smithfield adjacent to the areas destroyed by the Great Fire.
The location of Smithfield in 2016.
Smithfield, 1827, engr. John Greenwood.
Smithfield, from ‘Civitas Londinum’ (attrib. Robert Agas c.1560-70), publ. 1633.
Smithfield, 2016
St Bartholomew-the-Great, Smithfield, looking east.
St Bartholomew-the-Great, Smithfield, looking east.

Smithfield Priory

The priory church (1123) survives today as the Anglican parish church of St Bartholomew the Great. It is an impressive edifice by any standards although only two-thirds of its former length now survives and most of its priory building have long gone, thanks to the destruction of church property wrought throughout England during the religious battles of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

The hospital

St Bartholomew’s Hospital (1123) – known to most Londoners simply as Barts – was founded as an integral part of the Priory and survives on its original site, although most of its historic buldings date back only as far as the early eighteenth century.

St Bartholomew’s Hospital;, Smithfield, the courtyard (1732-69), designed by James Gibbs (1682–1754).
The Great Hall at St Bartholomew’s Hospital, Smithfield, c.2000.
Plan of St Bartholomew’s Hospital, Smithfield, 1893.
The Grand Staircase at Sr Barholomew’s Hospital, decorated 1736–7 by William Hogarth (1697–1764), c.2000.

Smith field

Over many centuries Smithfield been a site of many notable gatherings, for example:

  • From 1123 Smithfield was the site of the annual Bartholomew Fair originally designed by the Priory to mark St Bartholomew’s Day, 24 August. The fair survived the Reformation and the Civil War and by the early 1700s lasted at least two weeks and attracted vast crowds of fun-seeking Londoners. The fair was a regular source of anxiety for various civic-minded groups concerned with public order and public morality but it was not until 1855 that the fair ceased.
  • In 1374 Edward III (1312–77) held a seven-day tournament at Smithfield, for the amusement of his mistress Alice Perrers (1348–1400).
  • On 15 June 1381 Richard III met here the the leaders of the so-called Peasants Revolt. The meeting turned violent and several of the revolutionaries were killed by the London militia, including the peasants’ spokesman, Wat Tyler
  • In 1390 Richard II (1367–1400) hosted a two-day tournament organised by Geoffrey Chaucer, who was then the clerk to the king. The tournament – reported across Europe – was described by Jean Froissart (c.1337–c 1405) in his Chronicles (of the Hundred Years War).
  • Until the late seventeenth century Smithfield was a place of public execution. In 1305 the Scottish rebel William Wallace was executed here. During the sixteenth century it was often religious dissidents who met their deaths on Smithfield, while in the seventeenth century it became a place of execution for swindlers and coin forgers.
  • From as early as 1132 livestock and horses were traded here every Friday, a practice that developed in into the Smithfield meat market that operates today in a splendid Victorian market-hall that covers much of the former Smithfield.
Memorial to Sir William Wallace on the wall of St Bartholomew’s Hospital, Smithfield, near the place of his execution.
St Bartholomew Fair, 1721, design for a fan.
Richard II’s 1394 tournament at Smithfield depicted in Froissart’s ‘Chronicles’.
Smithfield Market buildings, late c.19.
Death of Wat Tyler. British Library Royal MS 18.E.i-ii f. 175 (date: 1385-1400)

St Bartholomew the Less

Less well known in the story of Smithfield is the ancient church of St Bartholomew the Less (1184), located within the hospital precinct. It replaced the Chapel of the Holy Cross (1123).

Smithfield Market, mid-c.19, showing the Henry VIII Gate (1703) of St Bartholomew’s Hospital, with the church of St Bartholomew the Less behind. The dome of St Paul’s Cathedral is in the distance.
St Bartholomew’s Hospital, Smithfield, c.1890, Henry VIII Gate (1703) with the church of St Bartholomew the Less behind.
St Bartholomew’s Hospital, Smithfield, c.1720, Henry VIII Gate (1703) with the church of St Bartholomew the Less behind.

Although the ground-plan of the present church is Norman, the west-end and tower are largely 13th-century structures;  two of the tower’s three bells date from 1380 and 1420. and are still hung in a medieval–period ‘bell frame’. The architect and theatre-designer Inigo Jones (1573–1652) was baptised here. His father was a Welsh clothworker living in nearby Cloth Fair.

The medieval tower of St Bartholomew the Less, Smithfield, c.2000.
The west end of St Bartholomew the Less, Smithfield.

In 1789 the nave and chancel of the church was ‘repaired’ (rebuilt) by the hospital’s surveyor and architect George Dance the younger (1741–1825). Dance chose the modern ‘gothick’ style to create a brand-new, light and airy octagon–shaped nave within the church’s medieval walls. At the same time he removed many of the old tombs and memorials.

St Bartholomew the Less, looking east, c.2015.
St Bartholomew the Less, Smithfield, looking north-west, c. 2015.
St Bartholomew the Less, Smithfield, looking south-west, c. 2015.
St Bartholomew the Less, roof of the octagonal nave, m c.2000.

The pipe organ

There have been several organs in the church supplied by various organ-builders as follows:

  1. Richard Bridge, c.1729
  2. John Byfield jun. with John Byfield III, 1794.
    This organ was an ‘annuity organ’, which meant it was installed gratis by the organ builder but in return he provided the organist – in this case his son – and took the organist’s fee. (Organists of the City of London. Dawe: 1983. 33). As I noted in my blog of 24 September 2016, a similar annuity-organ contract was made in 1790 between William Warrell and the parish of St Mary-le-Strand.
  3. John Gray, 1825
  4. Gray and Davison, 1863
  5. William Hill and Son & Norman and Beard Ltd, 1930
  6. N. P. Mander, 1978
St Bartholomew the Less, Smithfield, organ console, c. 2016.
St Bartholomew the Less, Smithfield, organ builder’s plate, c. 2016.
St Bartholomew the Less, Smithfield, organ pedalboard, c. 2016.

Alas, no images of the earliest organs seem to have survived. The current organ’s pipework is located in somewhat cramped conditions, deep-set under a narrow arch at the west end of the church. The organ’s console is in the  south-east corner. The instrument has no pretensions, being simple in looks and plain in tone; even at full-organ it does not overwhelm. However, since it speaks directly along the main axis of the church it is adequate to accompany congregational singing.

References

 

blog | All Saints Poplar

All Saints, Poplar, London E14

All Saints' Poplar (1823), c.2015
All Saints’ Poplar (1823), c.2015

Poplar is a district located due east of the City of London, on the north bank of the River Thames and includes the Isle of Dogs, a large peninsula bounded on three sides by a large meander in the river.  From the mid-eighteenth century until the 1970s the area was increasingly dominated by wharves and docks that were the heart of Britain’s seaborne trade. Of all the traders using the docks two companies were pre-eminent. These were: 1/. the East India Company (established in 1600 as the ‘Governor and Company of Merchants of London‘) and 2/. the West India Company (firmed in 1780 as the ‘London Society of West India Planters and Merchants’). Much of these two companies’ profits depended on the use of slave labout in their respcctive domains of influence.

The Isle of Dogs. ‘Pocket Atlas and Guide to London’ (London: John Walker, 1899). Poplar is at the top centre of the map.
The Isle of Dogs. ‘A plan of the cities of London and Westminster, and borough of Southwark’, John Roque (c.1709–62), 1747) and John Pine (1690–1756). Poplar is at the top centre of the map.
‘A view of the proposed West India Docks and City Canal’ (1802) by W Daniell (1769–1837)

The two companies’ new docks
In 1802, in order to avoid the sclerotic congestion of shipping further west towards London Bridge,  the East India Company developed docks on the Isle of Dogs, and was soon followed by the West India Company whose new docks opened there in 1806.

After the  Slavery Abolition Act of 1833 the two companies’ fortunes began a long decline. The 1833  Act of Parliament had abolished slavery throughout the British Empire with the exceptions “of the Territories in the Possession of the East India Company”, the “Island of Ceylon” and “the Island of Saint Helena”. In 1838 the two companies merged. After 1843, with those territorial exemptions to the 1833 Slavery Act nullified, the combined Companies’ domination of the UK’s international sea trade was doomed to a long slow decline.

Isle of Dogs chapel
A small chapel had existed on the Isle of Dogs from the middle ages, to serve the sparse population. It was abandoned as a place of worship by the time the Reformation period, and any remains of it were swept away by the development of the docks.

St Matthias: East India Company
As early as 1654 the East India Company had provided its London workforce with a chapel on the north side of Poplar High Street. The area was then in the parish of St Dunstan, Stepney, whose church was considered too far away for the company’s riverside and warehouse employees to attend. In the later nineteenth century the East India Company chapel became a parish church in its own right; St. Matthias. It still stands today, though now a community asset.

Poplar Chapel (later St Mathias) built 1654, as seen c.1799.
The East India Company Hospital (or Almshouses)in 1799.
St Mathias, Poplar (1654), the chaplains house, c.2015
St Mathias, formerly the Poplar Chapel, built 1654; interior, c.2015.
St Mathias, formerly the Poplar Chapel, built 1654; exterior c.2015.
St Mathias, formerly the Poplar Chapel, built 1654; community event, c.2015

All Saints: West India Company
In 1817 the West India Company agreed to underwrite the cost of a brand-new parish church of All Saints (consecrated 1823; patron: Brasenose College, Oxford), the parish being carved out out of Stepney parish. As with Sr Matthias the church was in large part funded by the profits of slavery.

The church of All Saints is a handome, imposing, building designed by Charles Hollis (d. c.1830) with a 161-feet-high steeple. The organ for the new church was built by the London organ-building firm of Henry Russell; see note below. There is nothing in the present-day building – so far as I could see – that indicates the parish’s links with the slave trade.

All Saints; Poplar (1823), seen c.2015
All Saints’ Poplar (1823), interior looking west c.1941.

During the Second World War aerial bombing severely damaged the west end of the church putting the Russell organ beyond repair. The church was restored and its interior remodelled, providing a new west gallery with a ‘second hand’ organ.

Pipe organ
The new organ (1953, by N. P. Mander Ltd.) was formerly in the Clapham Congregational Church (south London), although provided with a new case. It had been newly installed in Clapham in 1902 by the London firm of  A. Hunter and Sons. It is a large instrument with a clear and bright yet rich tone, enhanced by the buiding’s generous clean acoustic. On my visit there to play this organ I found it particularly encouraging of improvisation, and rather well-suited to the European Romantic repertoire.

All Saints, Poplar (1823) interior looking east c.2000
All Saints, Poplar (1823) the organ case c.2000
All Saints, Poplar (1823) the sanctuary c.2000
All Saints, Poplar (1823) interior looking west, c.1994

‘Call the Midwife’ and ‘East Enders’
As a coda, it is worth mentioning that Poplar is the area in which are set two popular BBC TV series: ‘Call the Midwife’, which is based on the work of the real-life nursing nuns of the Anglican Order of St John the Divine; and ‘EasterEnders’, which is entirely spurious.

The ‘Call the Midwife’ mission buildings and nuns chapel (c.1893; patron, Christ Church Oxford) remain on Lodore Street, converted to secular use. The adjacent parish church of St Frideswide, patron saint of Oxford, was destroyed by aerial bombing in the Second World War; the area is now part of All Saints parish.

Call the Midwife: BBC TV promotional material
Sisters of the Community of St John the Divine in Hastings (1967).
Call the Midwife: BBC TV title image
St Frideswide parish church and Christ Church Mission, c.1912
St Frideswide’s Mission House (1893), Lodore Street, E14, c.2015

Find out more …
– Podcast
– -Sean Coleman, Mark Williams (2025) headphone" Emoji - Download for free – Iconduck  Short history of the East India Company headphone" Emoji - Download for free – Iconduck  resource, accessed 12 July 2025
– Reading
– – Survey of London: Volumes 43 and 44, Poplar, Blackwall and Isle of Dogs (British History Online), online resource accessed 25 October 2016
– – Organ specification (National Pipe Organ Register), online resource, accessed 25 October 2016 NB. The National Pipe Organ Register listing gives the builder as Timothy Russell, but the Register’s database of organ builders shows that Henry Russell, not Timothy, was in charge of the firm at the time the All Saints organ was installed.
– – The Community of St John the Divine, online resource, accessed 1 February 2019
– – Parish website, online resource, accessed 29 December 2022.

blog | St Mellitus Finsbury Park

St Mellitus, Tollington Park, London N4

At first glance the Catholic church of St Mellitus located on Tollington Park in north London would appear to be an unremarkable nineteenth-century example of a neo-classical Catholic church building, such as can be found throughout the Catholic world.

St Mellitus Catholic church – originally New Court Congregational Church (1871), Islington London (UK) by C. G. Searle (1816-81)
Basilica of the Assumption, Baltimore (USA) 1821, by British architect B. H. Latrobe (1764–1820)
St Mary Moorfields (1820), Finsbury Circus, London EC2 by John Newman (1786–1859). “Illustrated London, or a Series of Views in the British Metropolis and its Vicinity” by A. H. Payne (London : 1846-1847)

However looks can be deceiving since the Tollington Park building has only been a Catholic church since 1959.

The building dates from 1871 and was built for the New Court Congregational Church to the design of C. G. Searle (1816–81). The New Court congregation had fist met n 1662 in a building in Bridges Street, Covent Garden, London. In 1696 the congregation moved to a location in Drury Lane and again in 1707 to a location in New Court, Carey Street, Strand. Here they stayed until the 1860s when Carey Street and the area all around it was cleared to make way for the building of the Royal Courts of Justice. Thus the New Court congregation moved to its new building in Tollington Park where it stayed until selling up in the 1950s, due to dwindling numbers. The descendents of the New Court congregation continue to meet today in other premises in the same area under the banner of the Elim Pentecostal Church.

This dissenting-Protestant back-story explains the church building’s interior, which seems to embrace Catholic worship rather reluctantly, although the Catholic congregation here have a genuine affection for the place.

St Mellitus Catholic church – originally New Court Congregational Church (1871), Islington London (UK) by C. G. Searle (1816-81), looking east c.2015
St Mellitus Catholic church – originally New Court Congregational Church (1871), Islington London (UK) by C. G. Searle (1816-81), looking west c.2015

The most obvious changes in converting the building were made at the (liturgical) east end where an altar replaced the large preaching desk (pulpit), and the display pipes of the pipe-organ were replaced by a painted reredos depicting a neo-classical doorway with three windows above; the significance of this decoration is not clear. Sadly I can find no pictures of the interior of the building prior to 1959.

The rather fine and rather large three-manual pipe organ (1920) by the London firm of Alfred Hunter remains in situ, hidden – and rather muted – behind the reredos; its console is at the east end of the south gallery. The instrument was installed as a memorial to those of the New Court congregation who died in the First World War.

I had an opportunity to play the organ during Christmas and New Year 2015-16 when it was abundantly clear that the instrument was in a very poor state, short of wind and with much of it unusable and by March 2016 the organ had stopped working altogether. Undeterred, the parish has immediately set in motion imaginative plans for a restoration of Alfred Hunter’s ‘war memorial’ organ, with help from the UK National Lottery.

blog | St Margaret Barking

Barking Abbey, St Margaret of Antioch, London IG11

Map showing Barking in relation to central London.
Map showing Barking in relation to central London.

This week, and for the second time this year, I have travelled to the pre-Saxon Thames-side town of Barking, eight miles east of Westminster and now the civic heart of the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham. My destination was once again the pipe organ of the thirteenth-century parish church of St Margaret of Antioch.

Until the 1850s Barking was home to a thriving port, most notable for supplying London with coal, fish and grain.

Barking, c2015
Barking mill, Barking quay, late c19
Barking miill. Barking quay, somewhat idealised, mid c.19.
Map of Barking, 1777
Barking mill, Barking quay, c2015

By the early twentieth century the area had become a rather insalubrious hub for chemical-based industries, a major London sewage works, and a coal-fired power station. Such polluting industry is now a thing of the past, and many former industrial sites have made way for much-needed housing.

Barking Abbey, a reconstruction
Barking Abbey, a reconstruction

Before the Dissolution of the English monasteries under Henry VIII, Barking had been the site of a great convent, Barking Abbey, created in the 7th century by Saint Æthelburh and her brother Saint Earconwald. The parish church of St Margaret of Antioch was sited next to the abbey church.

The importance of Barking Abbey can be glimpsed from the fact that its abbesses held precedence over all other abbesses in England, indeed many of Barking’s abbesses were  former queens and the daughters of kings; three are saints. The site of the abbey ruins is now Abbey Green, a public park within which only the Curfew Tower gate to the abbey and the parish church remain intact.

Barking Abbey remains in the Abbey Green park
Barking Abbey Curfew Tiower gate, town-side late c19, before clearance of the surrounding buildings
St Margaret’s church seen from the Barking abbey Curfew Tower in modern times
Barking Abbey Curfew Tower and St Maragret’s church, in modern times

In medieval times pilgrims were attracted to Barking to view the Holy Rood, a painted stone carving of the crucifixion in the Chapel of the Holy Rood inside the abbey’s Curfew Tower, where it survives to this day albeit in a less than pristine conidtion; history has not been kind to it. It is dated to between 1125 and 1150.  According to Vatican records, on 22 March 1400 Pope Boniface IX granted a Papal licence (indult) to the Abbess of Barking “to have Mass and other services celebrated in the Oratory, in which a certain cross is preserved”.

Barking Abbey, the Holy Rood, , as seen in 1799.
Barking Abbey, the Holy Rood, as seen in modern times
Barking Abbey, the Curfew Tower, gateway and , Chapel of the Holy Rood. C19 engraving

The parish church itself is almost as wide as it is long and is very well maintained. The parish’s current Rector (and Assistant Bishop of Chelmsford) is Trevor Mwambe. previously the Bishop of Botswana whose intellect, spirit and clear-thinking leadership were not so well appreciated in Africa as they are in England. Also visiting the church when I was there was Sir Quett Masire, the 2nd President of Botswana (1980-98).

St Margaret’s, Barking, the nave, from north to south
Sir Quett Masire, 2nd President of Botswana
St Margaret’s, Barking, floor plan
St Margaret’ s Barking, chancel screen and c18 plaster ceiling
St Margaret’s, Barking, the nave
Bishop Trevor Mwambe, Rector of Barking, Assistant Bishop of Chelmsford

The church’s rather nice pipe organ dates from 1770, and was originally made by the London firm of Byfield and Green. Despite several nineteenth-century alterations and relocations within the building by the firm of J. W. Walker and Sons the organ has retained its original facade (now on the organ’ s west side) and its eighteenth-century sweetness of tone (although not so much of its eighteenth century tone-colour).

St Margaret’s, Barking, organ console (1913?)
St Margaret’s, Barking, original organ-case front (1770), now the organ’s west facade
St Margaret’s, Barking, original organ-case front (1770), now the organ’s west facade, from the north side
St Margaret’s, Barking, south facade (1913?) in the chancel, north side

 

blog | St Peter Vauxhall

St Peter’s, Vauxhall, London SE11

St Peter’s church (1864) on Kennington Lane in Vauxhall, south London, is a very nice unadulterated example of work by the English architect John Loughborough Pearson (1817–97). What a pleasure to discover it this week.

St Peter’s church Vauxhall, south London, 1864; the chancel
St Peter’s church Vauxhall, south London, 1864; ground plan
St Peter’s church Vauxhall, south London, 1864; the nave, looking east
John Loughborough Pearson (1817-97), c.1861. National Portrait Gallery London, with permission.
St Peter’s church Vauxhall, south London, 1864; exterior, west end, c.2015
St Peter’s church Vauxhall, south London, 1864; exterior, east end, c.2015
St Peter’s church, Vauxhall, London; exterior door detaii
St Peter’s church Vauxhall, south London, 1864; exterior brickwork, c.2015

From the late seventeenth century and all through the eighteenth this place was the location of the celebrated New Spring Gardens or Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens, a place of fantasy and fun on the south bank of the Thames for leisured Londoners. By the mid-nineteenth century the gardens were closed and the area was fast becoming a densely populated and semi-industrial working-class suburb with almost none of the gardens remaining, indeed the church is built on the south-west corner of the gardens’ site. The 1794 house next door to St Peter’s church is now the vicarage but it was originally the home of the widow of Jonathan Tyers II, a former owner of the Vauxhall Gardens.

Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens, 1821
Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens, c 1761,
Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens, mid eighteenth century
Chinese Pavillion, Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens, mid eighteenth-century
St Peter’s church (1864), Vauxhall, south London, seen across what is left of the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens’ site today, a grassed open space, c.2015.

While the outside of this well-maintained church has some nice decorative flourishes here and there, the inside brims with finely wrought design such as the fine carving and decoration on the font and the elaborate carved capitals of the nave, the decoration of the chancel, and the lofty brick vaulting.

St Peter’s church, Vauxhall, London; a nave capital
St Peter’s church, Vauxhall, London; font.
St Peter’s church, Vauxhall, London; font cover
St Peter’s church Vauxhall, south London, 1864; chancel decoration, c.2015
St Peter’s church, Vauxhall, London” chancel ironworlk
St Peter’s church, Vauxhall, London; brick vaulting

The organ (1870) by T.C. Lewis sits at the east end of the south aisle, next to the chancel. It was initially rented from Lewis as a temporary instrument but was eventually purchased outright by the parish in about 1873. It is rather too modest for the building and it is to be regretted that Lewis did not get the chance to provide this fine building with a more substantial permanent instrument. But as with all organs by Lewis the tone is lovely; each stop sounds remarkably fine in its own right, crisp and articulate, and yet is able to blend wonderfully well with its neighbours. Now, after almost 150 years of service the mechanism is rather tired and rackety, and at the time of writing an organ-restoration appeal is underway.

St Peter’s church Vauxhall, south London, 1864; organ by T. C. Lewis 1870, c.2015
St Peter’s church Vauxhall, south London, 1864; organ by T. C. Lewis 1870, c.2015
St Peter’s church Vauxhall, south London, 1864; organ by T. C. Lewis 1870, c.2015
St Peter’s church Vauxhall, south London, 1864; organ by T. C. Lewis 1870, c.2015

blog | St Mary-le-Strand

St Mary-le-Strand, London WC2

St Mary-le-Strand, south side and western end. Mid nineteenth century
Exterior view of Somerset House and Church of St Mary le Strand: 1818. Watercolour by Thomas Hosmer Shepherd) (Museum of London)
St Mary-le-Strand, south side and eastern end, c.2015
St Mary-le-Strand, west front, c.1896

As far as I can remember, until last week  I had not previously stepped inside the London church of St Mary-le-Strand (1714–23), stranded rather splendidly in the middle of the Strand opposite Kings College (University of London) in a sea of traffic.

The site was formerly occupied by a giant maypole, reputedly the largest in England, and part of the original plan for the church was for this maypole to be replaced by a 250-feet-high column topped of by a statue of Queen Anne (1665–1714), but the queen died just as the church foundations were being laid and the stone for the column was used instead to add a steeple (1717) at the west end.

The Strand maypole, seventeenth-century engraving.
The Strand maypole, a nineteenth-century re-imagining.

St Mary-le-Strand was the first of the fifty new churches built in London under the Commission for Building Fifty New Churches, at a cost of some £16,000. It was the first major building project completed by the Catholic Tory architect James Gibbs (1682–1754) upon his return home to England after studying architecture in Rome, and it reflects the influence of Italian Baroque models; the interior is quite splendid.

It is said that in this church the so-called ‘Young Pretender’ Charles Edward Stuart (1720–88) abjured Catholicism to pronounce his loyalty to the Church of England during a clandestine visit to London in 1750, hoping to accede to the British throne.

St Mary-le Strand, nave ceiling, c.2015
St Mary-le-Strand, ground plan
St Mary-le-Strand, west gallery, c.2015
St Mary-le-Strand, chancel, c.2015

An organ never seems to have been part of the original design so far as I can tell. The first known organ dates from 1790. The organologist Henry Leffler (1761–1819) described it as “Not a very good organ being part new & part old”.

The 1790 organ was built by William Warrell, a little-known music-seller and organ-builder whose business was in Bridge Street, Lambeth. The subsequent fate of the Warrell organ is not clear, but by 1863 there was another organ in the building, made by the firm of Hunter & Webb. It too is no longer present.

Warrell’s organ of 1790 was a so-called ‘annuity organ’ i.e. installed at the builder’s expense, the cost repaid to him by the parish by a fixed annuity. Such ‘annuity organ’ schemes are rare but not unheard of at this time, indeed Warrell was involved in another such scheme at St Olave, Jewry in 1814. These schemes often entailed appointing the organ builder as the organist, and this was the case with Warrell both at St Mary-le-Strand and at St Olave Jewry where Warell provided a deputy. (Donovan Dawe (1983) Organs and Organists of the City of London).

Notes about the organ in St Mary-le-Strand made by Henry Leffler, c.1800.
St Mary-le-Strand, nave, c.1927, showing the Hunter & Webb organ of 1863.
St Mary-le-Strand, nave, c.2015

Today the liturgy at St Mary-le-Strand is accompanied by a far-from-new Johannes electronic 2-manual organ, an instrument that would once have been considered cutting edge but which – having experienced it – now has little to commend it. To quote Henry Leffler: “Not a very good organ”.

blog | St John of Jerusalem

St John of Jerusalem, London E9

 

The church of St John of Jerusalem in Hackney, east London, UK; a nineteenth-century engraving of the north side.
The church of St John of Jerusalem in Hackney, east London, UK; a nineteenth-century engraving of the south side.
The church of St John of Jerusalem in Hackney, east London, UK; c.2016 the west facade.
The church of St John of Jerusalem in Hackney, east London, UK; c.2016 the north side.
The church of St John of Jerusalem in Hackney, east London, UK; c.2016 the west door.

Back in June of this year I had the chance to visit the rather lovely early Victorian church of St John of Jerusalem in Hackney, east London. The ‘Jerusalem’ in the name relates to the area’s historic links with the Order of St John of Jerusalem, which owned land and property in Hackney before the English Reformation (mid 16th century).

 

The church of St John of Jerusalem in Hackney, east London, UK; c.2016 the nave looking east
The church of St John of Jerusalem in Hackney, east London, UK; c.2016 the chancel.
The church of St John of Jerusalem in Hackney, east London, UK; c.2016 the nave looking east
The church of St John of Jerusalem in Hackney, east London, UK; c.2016 the nave looking east
The church of St John of Jerusalem in Hackney, east London, UK; c.2016 the nave looking east
The church of St John of Jerusalem in Hackney, east London, UK; c.2016 the nave looking east
The church of St John of Jerusalem in Hackney, east London, UK; c.2016 the chancel.

The parish dates from about 1810 and the current church was built in 1848. As the pictures show it is a rather lovely building, and the area around the church is much gentrified of late.

 

The church of St John of Jerusalem in Hackney, east London, UK; c.2016 the west gallery.
The church of St John of Jerusalem in Hackney, east London, UK; c.2016 the west gallery.
The church of St John of Jerusalem in Hackney, east London, UK; c.2016, Wyvern ST60 console.
The church of St John of Jerusalem in Hackney, east London, UK; c.2016, the nave, looking west.

Sadly the large and imposing west-gallery pipe organ (by the firm of Gray & Davidson c.1873) was removed in the early 1980s; only the facade pipe-display remains. It was replaced with one of the world’s first “dual specification” electronic analogue organs, the Wyvern ST60. Then cutting-edge, but now more than 30 years on a fine example of left-behind technology. In this age of advanced digital sound it does not sound good,  although we can be impressed by the quality of the workmanship that ensures it still works.

blog | All Saints Edmonton

All Saints, Edmonton, London N9

Back in June I made a visit to All Saints, Edmonton, north London.

The east end of All Saints church Edmonton, north London, c.1880, showing the 15th-century tower.
The east end of All Saints church Edmonton, north London, c.1980, showing the 15th-century tower.
All Saints church, Edmonton, north London, c.1980, a view of the south side, looking east.

Edmonton is an ancient settlement, rural and well-to-do and genteel in tone until the coming of the railway and London’s massive c19 expansion. I was born in the area at a time when the population was largely blue-collar lower-middle and working class.

All Saints is where, as a schoolboy in the 1970s, I learned to play the organ and sang in the choir. It was interesting to return after 40 years, and even to be remembered by some of the old ‘uns I bumped into.

All Saints church, Edmonton, north London, The present-day organ seen past the north side of the chancel arch.
All Saints church, Edmonton, north London, The present-day organ seen in the first bay of the chancel, north side.
All Saints church, Edmonton, north London, The present-day organ seen in the chancel, north side. Peggy Dell – who in the 1970s kept teenage choristers like me out of mischief – looks on.

The organ dates back to 1772, the gift of a City businessman called Samuel Spragg who had his country house in the parish. The organ was originally the work of George England (fl. 1740–88). Over the years and as the building has been altered much of the original work by George England  has been removed. A recent renovation of the organ has restored the organ to the condition of its last major rebuilding in 1927, but in doing so it seems to me that quite a bit of the tonal vivacity that had been covertly added since 1927  – and which I remember from my school days – has been lost.

However, the church itself is most attractive, with fine nineteenth-century painting on the east wall. With its pleasant churchyard, sadly cleared of the majority of ancient tombs, the church is worth a visit, especially on a fine summer evening when the bellringers are practising.

Lamb’s Cottage. Church Street, Edmonton, north London
Plaque to John Keats on a building in Keats Parade, Church Street, Edmonton, north London.
Lamb’s Cottage, Church Street, Edmonton, north London. Photograph sourced (xi. 2021) from estate agent website kingslygroup.com.

The essayist Charles Lamb (1775–1834) and and his sister, the writer Mary Lamb (1764–1847) are buried in the churchyard, and their house survives opposite the church on Church Street.

The poet John Keats (1795–1821) was a trainee pharmacist in a shop nearby. A more recent building on the same site in Church Street was still a pharmacy when I was a teenager, but it is currently a betting shop; a blue plaque notes the facts.

It was pleasing to see still remaining on Church Street the late eighteenth–century building that was formerly home to a Blue Coat Charity School for Girls and the original teacher’s cottage next door.

The teacher’s cottage for the former Blue Coat Charity School for Girls in Church Street, Edmonton, north London.
The former Blue Coat Charity School for Girls in Church Street, Edmonton, north London.

blog | Five Precious Wounds Stonebridge

The Five Precious Wounds, Stonebridge, London NW10

It’s been quite a while since I played the Norman & Beard (1911) pipe-organ in the Duke’s Hall at the Royal Academy of Music, London; I was a post-graduate student there some thirty-six years ago.

1911: the stage of the Duke’s Hall in the Royal Academy of Music during the opening festivities.
1930s: the stage of the Duke’s Hall in the Royal Academy of Music,

So it was with a real sense of pleasure that this week I snapped up the chance to play this instrument once again, in its new home in the Catholic church of The Five Precious Wounds in Stonebridge, north-west London. As the pictures indicate, this is a rather fine Catholic building of 1968.

Five Previous Wounds Catholic Church, London NW10, UK: exterior north side
Five Previous Wounds Catholic Church, London NW10, UK: interior facing east. ground level
Five Previous Wounds Catholic Church, London NW10, UK: interior facing east. from the gallery
Five Previous Wounds Catholic Church, London NW10, UK: looking west towards the organ gallery.

The instrument was transplanted here in 1988, when the Royal Academy of Music acquired a new organ for the Duke’s Hall. In being moved the instrument has been only slightly altered by the addition of a couple of stops (see specifications, below) – and, I might add, some enitrely unnecessary electronic playing aids (gadgets!) that didn’t work for me – but all  without compromising the organ’s structural or tonal integrity as originally conceived.

Five Previous Wounds Catholic Church, London NW10, UK: organ facade, facing south.
Five Previous Wounds Catholic Church, London NW10, UK: organ facade, facing north.
Five Previous Wounds Catholic Church, London NW10, UK: organ console, builder’s plate.
Five Previous Wounds Catholic Church, London NW10, UK: organ console, dedication plate.
Five Previous Wounds Catholic Church, London NW10, UK: organ console, stop jambs for Choir and Great.
Five Previous Wounds Catholic Church, London NW10, UK: organ console, stop jambs for Choir and Great.
Five Previous Wounds Catholic Church, London NW10, UK: organ console.

The acoustic of this well-maintained church is pleasantly reverberant and the organ sounds very good in its gallery location, speaking directly down into and along the high-ceilinged nave. Thus it is well placed and well designed not only to support the liturgy,  congregational hymns and even plainsong, but also – as the opportunity demands – to raise the roof with some clever showing-off!

I could find no details of which company transplanted the organ or any details of the company that currently maintains the instrument.

blog | St Benet Kentish Town

St Benet & All Saints, Kentish Town, London NW5

During the summer  of 2016 I had the chance to play the organ at the church of St Benet & All Saints in  Kentish Town, north London and to attend some Sunday services. While the parish adheres to traditional ‘high’ Anglican principles its worship is very nicely fitted to modern liturgical sensibilities.

St Benet’s Kentish Town, exterior, south side.
St Benet’s Kentish Town, the nave.
St Benet’s Kentish Town, the chancel.
St Benet’s Kentish Town, the chancel ceiling.
St Benet’s Kentish Town, the nave pulpit.
St Benet and All Saints church, Kentish Town, London; west end, c2016. [Source: londonremembers.com]

St Benet’s is an impressive building perched atop a hill that rises above the valley of the Fleet river. It is built on a site given for this purpose in the late 1870s by St. John’s College, Cambridge, then developing its land-holding in the area for well-to-do housing. The parish was formally established through an ‘Order in Council’ before Queen Victoria at Windsor Castle on 2 March 1881 [LMA].

St Benet and All Saints, Kentish Town, London. Interior, c.1935, facing east. [Source: 'In jubilaeo' (London: 1935)]
St Benet and All Saints, Kentish Town, London. Interior of the ‘tin mission’ church, c.1881, facing east. [Source: ‘In jubilaeo’ (London: 1935)]
The first church building was a temporary ‘tin mission’ building – later used as the church hall- that opened for worship on 17 July 1881

The first permanent building was built to the design of the architect Joseph Peacock (1821–93), opened for worship on 31 October 1885.

St Benet and All Saints church, Kentish Town, London; west elevation and cross section (1877). Drawing by Joseph Peacock. [Source: RIBA ref. RIBA94819]
St Benet and All Saints church, Kentish Town, London; north elevation (1877). Drawing by Joseph Peacock. [Source: RIBA ref. RIBA94818]
St Benet and All Saints church, Kentish Town, London; ground plan (1877). Drawing by Joseph Peacock. [Source: RIBA ref. RIBA94818]

Contemporary photographs show how Peacock’s designs were translated into brick and stone. The planned chancel was never realised so that the east end of the nave terminated with a solid wall. For a short period c.1901-05 the east wall was decorated to “give the impression of a stone screen pierced by various openings […] a young local artist, Mr W. Kingsley, painted three huge canvases in tempara to represent stained glass windows glowing in richest colours and a rising Belgian artist very kindly painted in a more than lifelike crucifix.” (In junilaeo, p.16).

St Benet and All Saints, Kentish Town, London. exterior, west end, c.1900, facing east. [Source: ‘In jubilaeo’ (London: 1935)]
St Benet and All Saints, Kentish Town, London. high aktar, c.1900. [Source: ‘In jubilaeo’ (London: 1935)]
St Benet and All Saints, Kentish Town, London. the vicarage, c.1930, since demoilished. [Source: ‘In jubilaeo’ (London: 1935)]
St Benet and All Saints, Kentish Town, London. high aitar, c.1901-5. [Source: ‘In jubilaeo’ (London: 1935)]

St Benet and All Saints church, Kentish Town, London; parish room and song school, unbuilt (1880). Drawing by Harry Sirr (1860-1945). [Source: RIBA ref. RIBA22108]
St Benet and All Saints church, Kentish Town, London; parish room and song school, unbuilt (1880). Drawing by Harry Sirr (1860-1945). [Source: RIBA ref. RIBA22108]
A rather stylish seeming parish room and song school was designed (1880) by Harry Sirr (1860-1945) but alas the building was never erected.

In 1906 a spacious and lofty new chancel was added to Peacock’s nave, to the design of Cecil Greenwood Hare (1875–1932).

St Benet and All Saints, Kentish Town, London. the Blessed Sacrament chapel, c.1930. [Source: ‘In jubilaeo’ (London: 1935)]
St Benet and All Saints, Kentish Town, London. the new chancel exterior, c.1930. [Source: ‘In jubilaeo’ (London: 1935)]
St Benet and All Saints, Kentish Town, London. Interior, c.1935, facing east. [Source: ‘In jubilaeo’ (London: 1935)]
St Benet and All Saints, Kentish Town, London. Chancel, c.1910. [Source: ‘In jubilaeo’ (London: 1935)]
“Proposed New Chancel,. St. Benet’s Church, Kentsh Town, CECIL G. HARE, Architect. Builder: Dorey and Co., Ltd., Brentford. Hangings: Watts and Co., 30 Baker street, W.” [Source: Academy Architecture and Architectural Review. Vol. 33 (1908), 13.]

The church by Peacock seems to have been poorly designed and despite several attempts to shore-up the walls the nave was dismantled and rebuilt (1927-28) to a new design by Cecil Greenwood Hare, incorporating Hare’s 1908 chancel and using much material from Peacock’s  former structure. This is the church we see today.

An often repeated canard about the demolition of Peacock’s church is that it was unknowingly built over underground springs of water that undermined the foundations. However, the Diocesan surveys undertaken prior to the rebuilding by Hare reveal the problem to have been a timbered roof that was too heavy for the walls; that roof is briefly glimpsed in the images on this page. There is no mention anywhere in the surveys of problems caused by underground springs. [LMA]

St Benet's Kentish Town, the chancel pipe organ and its gallery.
St Benet’s Kentish Town, the chancel pipe organ and its gallery.

The pipe organ

As we see in the 1908 image (above) the organ was originally sited in a gallery at the north east corner of the 1884 nave. This instrument had been designed as a house organ by the eminent London firm of Gray and Davison and was exhibited at the Great Exhibition (1861). During the construction of the new nave this organ was placed in storage.

After the completion of the nave a new organ gallery was created in the north-west corner of the chancel and in 1933 the rebuilt and somewhat enlarged instrument was installed by the little-known firm of Richards & Matthews of Finchley.  In its elevated chancel position the reinstalled organ struggled to support worship in the nave.  The pipe organ is no longer in use.

In 2000 the parish purchased a large, brand new electronic (pipeless) instrument from Wyvern Organs; more … . The instrument’s specification is large by any standard

Name plate on the Wyvern electronic organ at St Benet’s Kentish Town.
The Wyvern organ at St Benet’s Kentish Town: console, stop jamb, r/h side (Choir, Great, Couplers).
The Wyvern organ at St Benet’s Kentish Town: console, looking east.
The Wyvern organ at St Benet’s Kentish Town: console, stop jamb, l/h side (Swell, Pedal, Couplers).
The Wyvern organ at St Benet’s Kentish Town: console, looking west.

Built to an early form of digital technology whose reproduction of organ pipe sound is not uniformly good to our present-day ears, the Wyvern instrument is nonetheless rather nice to play, not only for the well-designed console, keyboard action and powerful amplification but also for the extraordinarily resonant acoustic of the building. Despite my caveats this ‘new’ instrument is perfectly able to support the needs of parish worship in general and congregational singing in particular. The folk of St Benet’s do sing well.

A small confession here is that on my first visit I was a bit disappointed to find  only an electric, pipeless instrument to play on, even though I knew the pipe organ here to be no masterpiece. You see, I had played it before, some 30 years or so ago and rather enjoyed it …  not so much for the instrument but for the crows-nest position of the organist!

But this rather splendid electric, pipeless machine has won me over to the potential of the pipeless organ.

—

Trivia/l point: according to Rev’d Dr Peter Anthony, the priest in charge, the large crucifix above the high altar was originally part of the set decoration for the 1964 film ‘Becket’. 

References

blog | Sacred Heart Holloway

Sacred Heart of Jesus, Holloway, London N7

Sacred Heart Church, Eden Grove, Holloway, London, N7
Sacred Heart Church, Eden Grove, Holloway, London, N7
Sacred Heart Church, Eden Grove, Holloway, London, N7
Sacred Heart Church, Eden Grove, Holloway, London, N7; parish school

This summer (2016)  I had the opportunity to play the pipe-organ at the Catholic church of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in Holloway, north London. The building is a nice example of seemingly little altered, nineteenth-century red-brick Catholic gothic, tucked away in the backstreets of Holloway. More …

At the time of the church’s building in 1869–70 and for much of the twentieth century Holloway has been a largely lower middle class neighbourhood of respectable office clerks and tradesmen, many being first and second generation immigrants from Ireland and eastern Europe. Of course, to literary types Holloway is well-known as the purlieu of the Grossmith brothers’ Mr Pooter. More ….

But these days the area is moving helter-skelter into the twenty-first century, with the replacement of old infrastructure and light industry by developments of upscale apartment blocks, high-tech start-up companies, business incubator hubs, the new Arsenal Football Club stadium, and the striking buildings of the London Metropolitan University. An air of youthful enterprise and increasing affluence abounds. This church community also appears to be in good shape judging by its most impressive-looking brand new parish primary school building opposite the church.

For some while I have hankered after playing the pipe organ in this church – an instrument by the firm of J. W. Walker and Sons (1961) –  inspired by pictures I’d seen of its distinctive modern case. From the outward design I imagined a bright and direct sound as produced by the Walker instrument made three years later for the neighbouring Catholic church of Our Lady and St Joseph; discussed here. The reality of the Sacred Heart instrument was rather a disappointment, not least because of its much gentler than expected tone.

The instrument sits in the north aisle of the chancel, quite separate from the main body of the church, and is designed on the ‘extension‘ principle, using just five ranks of pipes to derive 30 stops. Furthermore at Sacred Heart church all the pipework is enclosed in a swell box except for the diapason rank, part of which is in the facade of the case. Such all-enclosed instruments are not uncommon in convent and monastery chapels.

The ‘extension’ organ is an idea that originated in cinema-organ technology and in days gone by it seemed to provide a satisfactory technical solution for squeezing more out of less, but it never really provided a satisfactory musical solution and these days is no longer in favour.

The Walker pipe-organ in the Sacred Heart church was installed when the church was undergoing a decluttering, all at considerable expense. However, the timing of the instrument’s arrival in 1961 could not have been worse because in October that year the Second Vatican Council (Vatican 2) began five years of deliberations that would eventually lead to radical changes in Catholic liturgical practice, spatially as well as theologically.

Thus, even though a substantial west gallery was installed in 1961, where Vatican 2 would later encourage the musicians to be located, the new organ was placed in its traditional pre-Vatican-2 place in the refurnished chancel’s north aisle, somewhat out of sight, along with some new and  equally out-of-sight choir stalls. The new organ’s role was – with trained singers – to support and beautify the canon of the mass, rather than to unite all the people in song. This goes some way to explain the gentler-than-expected quality of the organ’s voicing and its out of the way location.

Some 60 years on, and now isolated in its corner of the building the instrument seems an anachronism, underpowered for accompanying post-Vatican-2’s all-inclusive Catholic worship, for which an amplified electric piano now has pride of place in front of the chancel steps.

In time perhaps, with Holloway’s fast pace of regeneration, the parish will share in enough of the area’s increasing affluence to make possible some consideration of a further re-ordering of the liturgical space to see the organ rebuilt and relocated – maybe to the west gallery where it will serve to best advantage – or even passed on to somewhere else and its fortunes revived.

Sacred Heart Church, Eden Grove, Holloway, London, N7; organ builder’s plate
Sacred Heart Church, Eden Grove, Holloway, London, N7
Sacred Heart Church, Eden Grove, Holloway, London, N7
Sacred Heart Church, Eden Grove, Holloway, London, N7

blog | St Peter and St Paul Dagenham

St Peter & St Paul, Dagenham, London RM10

SS Peter and Paul parish church, Dagenham, Essex
SS Peter and Paul parish church, Dagenham, Essex
SS Peter and Paul parish church, Dagenham, Essex
SS Peter and Paul parish church, Dagenham, Essex

On Tuesday this week I visited the parish church of SS Peter & Paul in Dagenham, way out east, along the north bank of the Thames. It is a place still thought of by my generation of southerners as Dagenham, Essex even though for decades now it has been under the aegis of the London Boro’ of Barking and Dagenham.

The ancient heart of Dagenham – a veritable ‘rus in urbs’ if cleverly photographed – is now just the Saxon-thru-late-Georgian church, the c16 pub and the c17 vicarage. The old and very large burial ground of the church is a prize-winning wildlife haven

The rest (for miles around) is modern, mass-produced housing from the 1930s up to the present, indifferently extending the London sprawl. The more recent of it covers the traces of defunct light industry that grew up round the now much shrunken Ford car factory.

But what about the pipe-organ? Well, on the face of it this 1939 instrument, by the organ builder Rutt is very modest indeed – no recital instrument this –  but it is ideally suited to its location and its purpose in leading a congregation in hearty singing.

SS Peter and Paul parish church, Dagenham, Essex; organ gallery, west end
SS Peter and Paul parish church, Dagenham, Essex; organ builder’s plate
SS Peter and Paul parish church, Dagenham, Essex
SS Peter and Paul parish church, Dagenham, Essex

blog | Our Lady and St Joseph Kingsland

Our Lady & St Joseph, Balls Pond Road, London N1

I recently found my way to the church of Our Lady and St Joseph located on the Balls Pond Road in north London. The road is said to have been named after a pond owned by a John Ball who in much earlier times ran the Salutation Tavern (aka the Boarded House), which provided facilities for bull baiting and – on its pond – duck hunting.

Balls Pond, north London, shown on Ordnance Survey First Series, Sheet 7 (1856)
The first church of Our Lady & St Joseph and school, London N1, late c19. Source: Taking Stock
The location of Our Lady & St. Joseph’s church, London N1 4AG.

The parish was established in 1855 by Fr William Lockhart of the Rosminian Order. The first parish church (1856-c.1960) was located at the corner of Culford Road and Tottenham Street, Hackney. This church was converted from a disused warehouse by W. W. Wardell (1823-99), with further adaptation by E. W. Pugin (1834–75) completed in 1860.

The current buidling was designed by William C Mangen (1884-?) and was opened in 1964.

Church of Our Lady & St Joseph, London N1. Source: Geograph
The church of Our Lady & St. Joseph, Islington, N1. Source: parish website.
Church of Our Lady & St Joseph, London N1. Source: Evinson
Church of Our Lady & St Joseph, London N1. Source: Geograph
Church of Our Lady & St Joseph, London N1. Source: Geograph

The pipe organ

The organ here is by J. W. Walker and Sons (1964).

The J. W. Walker organ in the church of Our Lady & St Joseph, London N1. Source: Andrew Pink
The J. W. Walker organ in the church of Our Lady & St Joseph, London N1. Source: Andrew Pink
The J. W. Walker organ in the church of Our Lady & St Joseph, London N1. Source: Andrew Pink

It is a very nice English interpretation of the organ reform movement or Orgelbewegung, a twentieth-century organ design tradition that began in Germany. Here no concessions are made to ‘romantic’/’symphonic’ organ design, although the temperament is equal.

The J. W. Walker organ in the church of Our Lady & St Joseph, London N1. Source: Andrew Pink
The J. W. Walker organ in the church of Our Lady & St Joseph, London N1. Source: Andrew Pink
The J. W. Walker organ in the church of Our Lady & St Joseph, London N1. Source: Andrew Pink
The J. W. Walker organ in the church of Our Lady & St Joseph, London N1. Source: Andrew Pink
The J. W. Walker organ in the church of Our Lady & St Joseph, London N1. Source: Andrew Pink

The instrument is beautifully crafted and more than 50 years on is still lovely to play. Works by the Baroque masters and Paul Hindemith ‘et al’ suit it very nicely. Sadly, I had no opportunity to record the instrument. Next time maybe.

References