Tag: Finsbury Park

From Friday Street to Finsbury Park

St Thomas the Apostle, Finsbury Park, London N4

Tucked away in an undistinguished later-nineteenth-century suburb of north London is the Anglican parish church of St Thomas the Apostle, Finsbury Park. The areas will be known to many as the home of the Arsenal Football Club whose former Highbury Stadium (1913-2006) was close by the church. The football club’s new Emirates Stadium (2006) is located a little further away to the south west. The former stadium site is now a housing estate named Highbury Square.

The church of St Thomas Finsbury Park, shown on the Charles Booth ‘Poverty Maps’ (1898-99). [Source: https://booth.lse.ac.uk]
Typical houses in St Thomas Road, London N4 c.2015
Highbury Square, c.2015, site of the Arsenal Football Club’s former Highbury Stadium.
St Thomas’s Road, London, N4, looking towards the old Highbury stadium (c.2010), with the roof and spire of St Thomas the Apostle parish church visible in the mid-distance..
The geographical context of St Thomas the Apostle parish church in London N4.
Aerial view (1957) of the home of Arsenal Football Club from 1913 until 2006. Aerofilms Collection. Annotated.
St Thomas the Apostle parish church, London N4: Location. the Church is on the corner of St Thomas Road & Monsell Road, London N4 2QP a few minutes walk from Arsenal tube station.
Highbury Square, c.2015, site of the Arsenal Football Club’s former Highbury Stadium.

The parish of St Thomas the Apostle was formed out of the surrounding Islington parish in 1888 and owes its origin to a decision by the Ecclesiastical Commissioners to sell-off a number of churches in the City of London (Union of Benefices Act, 1860).  The reason for the sales was that the burgeoning London suburbs had been rapidly emptying the City of its population and in order to defray the cost of the new suburban churches a number of underused City churches were sold.  St Thomas’s church was paid for by the sale of St Matthew’s Church, Friday Street for £22,005, the advowson of the new parish being held by the Archbishop of Canterbury. In 1898-99 the area was regarded as ‘middle class and well-to-do’. (Booth). The same is generally true today.

John Crowther (1837-1902) ‘Interior view of St Matthew Friday Street’ (1881). Source, London Metropolitan Archive q7706594
Anon. ‘St Matthew, Friday Street, exterior’, c18. Source: City of London TA 31328
H.W.B. ‘St Matthew’s Church: Ruins before final demolition’. Source: City of London TA 04997
Anon. ‘Plan of St Matthew, Friday Street’ (1882). Source: London Metropolitan Archive q7706660
John Coney. ‘St Matthew’s Church, Friday Street’, Engr. T Skelton (1814). Source: City of London TA 31332

The new church building of St Thomas the Apostle cost £7,500 and was the work of Ewan Christian (1814–95), architect to the Ecclesiastical Commissioners. It is built of brick and stone in Christian’s favourite Early English style and was consecrated in 1889. It consists of chancel (with a sedila of Derbyshire marble), nave (with arcades in blue stone), aisles, a chapel at the east end of the south aisle, baptistery, organ chamber, north and south porches and a turret.

St Thomas’s Road, London, N4, looking towards the old Highbury stadium (c.2010), with the roof and spire of St Thomas the Apostle parish church visible in the mid-distance..
The east end of the church of St Thomas the Apostle, Finsbury Park, London N4 Creative Commons Licence [Some Rights Reserved] © Copyright Julian Osley and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.
The west end of the church of St Thomas the Apostle, Finsbury Park, London N4 Built 1888-89 to the designs of church architect Ewan Christian (1814-1895) Creative Commons Licence [Some Rights Reserved] © Copyright Julian Osley and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.
St Thomas the Apostle parish church, London N4: west end, roof and spire.

The church building is largely unaltered since it was opened in 1889 and despite its small scale and modest appearance is – once inside – quite lovely and spacious in feeling. It is well maintained and well used. In the 1990s the chancel and sanctuary were redecorated in a period style by the English muralist Alan Dodd (b.1944).

Chancel and Sanctuary of St Thomas the apostle parish church, London N4 (c.2010) . Source: The National Churches Trust http://www.nationalchurchestrust.org
St Thomas the Apostle parish church, London N4, interior looking east, c.2013. Creative Commons Licence [Some Rights Reserved] © Copyright John Salmon and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.
St Thomas the Apostle parish church, London N4. South aisle chapel, looking east, c.2013. Source © Copyright John Salmon and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.

The pipe organ is original to the building, installed in 1889 by the (now defunct) local firm of Alfred Monk. Inevitably, after nearly 130 years of constant use the organ is now rather tired and in need of some mechanical refreshment, for which fundraising is underway. Even so, while this is no recital instrument it has a strong clear sound and continues to serve the parish well in accompanying the liturgy.

The console of the 1889 Alfred Monk pipe-organ in St Thomas the Apostle parish church, London N4, c.2009
The pipe organ by Alfred Monk (1889) in St Thomas the Apostle parish church, London N4 c.2016.
The builder’s plate on the 1889 organ in St Thomas the Apostle parish church, London N4

 

v

A Hunter’s last breath, for now …

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.