St Peter's Church, Ealing, is an Anglican parish church in Mount Park Road, North Ealing, in the Diocese of London, regarded by Sir John Betjeman a church "of which we can justafiably be proud.[1] Held to be one of the premier architectural works in Ealing, the Grade II* Listed building is noted for its combination of Arts & Crafts and late-Victorian Gothic as well as its west front and great west window.[2] In addition to Sunday and weekday services, the church and adjacent hall serve as a hub for various community activities and events.[3]
“Notable for its unusual fusion of free Gothic style used in a highly original manner, St Peter’s occupies no small place in the last great age of church building” – Sir Roy Strong.[4]
The land on for the church was donated by John Clark Record.[6] Replacing an iron church which had stood on the site for 10 years, St Peter's was built between 1892 and 1893 to accommodate the growing suburb of North Ealing. The original iron church had been dedicated to St Andrew and it was originally proposed to give the same name to the new church. However, when the Presbyterians started to build in Mount Park Road in 1889, the vestry felt that "this Church should set the example of giving way in face of a threatened dispute about the Saint's name' and with commendable tact abandoned the 'Scottish' saint in favour of St Peter."[7]
The new building was designed by John Dando Sedding, the architect of Holy Trinity, Sloane Street, but following Sedding's death it was built under the direction of his pupil and successor in practice, the noted designer and architect Henry Wilson. The foundation stone was laid in 1893 by Princess Helena, Queen Victoria's third daughter. The building was consecrated the same year by Frederick Temple, Bishop of London and later Archbishop of Canterbury.[4] Wilson created the brass pannels on the inside of the main doors, worked with flowing pattens. This decoration was accompanied by the bronze figure of an angel by F. W. Pomeroy, a feature which is now lost.[8]
Sedding's plans for the church were complimented by The Builder magazine as "a piece of real originality in design, which is refreshing to come across after seeing so many repetitions of old forms, Classic and Gothic ".[4] Pevsner notes the "admirable use of Gothic forms – especially the curvaceous forms of late Gothic – to produce a building of great originality".[2]
The church was added to extensively throughout the first quarter of the 20th century. In 1911, two doorways were created at the west end of each aisle, and in 1913 the Lady Chapel was built on the south side of the chancel. The north transept tower intended by Sedding was never built.[4]
A notable feature of the building, the west front, has two small turrets on either side of large the recessed west window, which is unusually large with fine composite tracery. The exterior of the building is also of note on account of the long steep nave roof with shallow chains of arches connecting small turrets.[2]
Inside, much of the intended ornamentation was never completed. However, the building's substantial four-bay nave with Gothic triforium,[9] allied with the clear glass of the windows and the lack of ornamentation, make the church unusually light and spacious. Singular features include the in 1913, and the inner west doors, with decorative Art Nouveau metalwork by Wilson.[4]
For several decades, until his death in 1926, the architect and architectural designer Leonard Shuffrey, was a member of the Church and contributed to its beautification. Shuffrey designed the font(executed by Messers Blackler of Torquay and dedicated in 1911) as well as the decoration of the alabaster high altar table[4] In 1896 a visit was paid to the newly completed St Peter's by the members of the Architectural Association, who afterwards received tea at Thorncote, Shuffrey's new Queen Anne style house, Thornecote, on Edgehill Road.[8] Shuffrey's son, Gilbert Shuffrey, was killed at the Battle of Gallipoli and is memorialised in St Peter's Lady Chapel and on the Ealing Town Memorial, the later designed by his father.[10] Shuffrey's brother, James Allen Shuffrey, was a notable watercolour artist.[11]
Despite a scheme of stained glass being designed for the whole church, only the six (including two in what is now an office) were ever completed. It was designed by Walter Towers of Kempe and Co.[4]
The Great War & the Lady Chapel
A Lady Chapel was built in 1913. Between 1921 and 1928, the chapel was decorated as a War Memorial. The scheme was let by the Vicar, Bertram Kite and his wife, as a memorial to their son Ralph Bertram Kite, who died fighting in Northern France, and to the fallen of the wider community. In 1921 an oak reredos by Cecil Greenwood Hare and brass memorial plaque were installed. Altar rails were donated by the social campaigner Isabella Holmes and her husband Basil, in memory of their son Wilfred Holmes.
Seven years later the scheme was completed with the decoration of the ceiling and a new screen between the Chapel and main Church. The work also included the addition fine wall paintings of the Annunciation angels over the reredos in the Lady Chapel, executed by watercolour artist Henry Charles Brewer.[12] Brewer created the paintings on canvass at his studio in Acton. A practicing Catholic, it the paintings are his only known church decoration work. The face of Brewer's painted Angel Gabriel is thought to be based on that of his brother James Alphege Brewer, the notable creator of etchings. An etching by James Alphege Brewer donated in 2022 by a descendent of the Brewer family hangs in the Chapel.[13] The chapel was conserved and restored in 2022.[14]
In the south aisle is a painting by late Pre-Raphaelite Edward Arthur Fellowes Prynne of 'Christ before Pilate'. Prynne was the brother the architect George Fellowes Prynne and lived in the parish. The picture was given to the church by Prynne's widow following his death in 1921.[4] Executed in 1898 in the artist's studio in the garden of his house at 1 Woodville Road, the picture is presumed to be the painting of the same name which Fellowes Prynne exhibited at the Dussledorf Exhibition of Religious Art.</ref> The chapel was conserved and restored in 2022.[15]
Community
St Peter's holds services on Sunday mornings and throughout the week in addition to major services at Easter and Christmas.[3] It runs a local walking group, hosts the Ealing Churches Winter Night Shelter[16] and an organ recital series. St Peter's also holds an Amnesty letter writing group, book club, junior church and Sunday choir. The church is also used by local schools for concerts and carol services.[3]
Clergy
Vicars[4] 1894 - 1909: William Petty 1909 - 1916: Henry Austin Thompson. Thompson later became Vicar of St Peter's Eton Square, where he was killed by enemy action in 1941. 1916 - 1939: Joseph Bertram Kite. Kite was formerly Dean of St David's Cathedral, Hobart, in Tasmania from 1897 to 1916. 1939 - 1946: Frank Challoner Pond 1946 - 1953: George Maurice Bosworth 1953 - 1963: Henry Cooper 1963 - 1971: Derek Tyrie 1972 - 1974: John David Wheeler 1974 - 1981: Charles Gilbert Francis Dare 1982 - 1991: Richard Hayes 1991 - 2000: William Taylor. Taylor was later Dean of Portsmouth Cathedral and is now Vicar of St John's Notting Hill. 2000 - 2011: Mark Powell. Powell is currently Canon Steward of St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle. 2012–present: David Neno
Other notable former clergy
Morris Maddocks was a curate of the church in the 1950s and was later Assistant Bishop of Bath and Wells. While at St Peter's he married Anne Maddocks, Assistant Organist of Chichester Cathedral.
Emmanuel Phillips Fox, Australian artist, married Ethel Carrick at St Peter's on 9 May 1905.
Harry George Hawker, Australian aviation pioneer, married Muriel Alice Peaty at St Peter's on 14 November 1917.
Isabella Holmes was a well known social reformer and expert on London's burial grounds. St Peter's Lady Chapel alter rails were given by Holmes and husband Basil Holmes, a local Councillor in Ealing, in memory of their son Wilfred, killed in 1913. Isabella Holmes was the daughter of chemist John Hall Gladstone and half sister of Margaret Ethel MacDonald, wife of Prime Minister Ramsay Macdonald.[19]
Sir Stephen Holmes was the Son of Isabella Holmes and Basil Holmes. He was appointed High Commissioner to Australia for the United Kingdom between 1952 and 1956.[19]
George Frederick Bodley was an English Gothic Revival architect. He was a pupil of Sir George Gilbert Scott, and worked in partnership with Thomas Garner for much of his career. He was one of the founders of Watts & Co.
George Halford Fellowes Prynne (1853–1927) was a Victorian and Edwardian English church architect. Part of the High Church school of Gothic Revival Architecture, Prynne's work can be found across Southern England.
John Dando Sedding was an English church architect, working on new buildings and repair work, with an interest in a "crafted Gothic" style. He was an influential figure in the Arts and Crafts movement, many of whose leading designers, including Ernest Gimson, Ernest Barnsley and Herbert Ibberson, studied in his offices.
St Cyprian's Church is a parish church of the Church of England in the Marylebone district of London. The church was consecrated in 1903, but the parish was founded in 1866. It is dedicated to Cyprian, a third-century martyr and bishop of Carthage and is near the Clarence Gate Gardens entrance to Regent's Park, off Baker Street. The present church was designed by Ninian Comper and is a Grade II* listed building.
Saint Augustine's, Kilburn, is a Church of England church in the area of Kilburn, in North London, United Kingdom. Because of its large size and ornate architecture, it is sometimes affectionately referred to as "the Cathedral of North London", although the church is not a cathedral in any official sense.
Henry Wilson was a British architect, jeweller and designer.
St John the Evangelist Church is a non-parochial church on Iffley Road in Oxford, England. It was built as the community church of the mother house of the Anglican religious order known as the Society of St. John the Evangelist. Since 1980 it has served also as one of the college chapels of St Stephen's House, Oxford.
St Mark's Church is an Anglican church in the village of Hadlow Down in the district of Wealden, one of six local government districts in the English county of East Sussex. Founded in 1834 by a committed local resident who petitioned the Archbishop of Canterbury for permission to establish a chapel in the poor agricultural village, the church proved popular—despite the competing presence of two Nonconformist chapels nearby—and was extended in 1913. The stone-built church, with its tall spire and well-regarded "living churchyard" nature reserve, is now Hadlow Down's only remaining place of worship. English Heritage has listed it at Grade II for its architectural and historical importance.
Cecil Greenwood Hare was an architect and designer based in England.
Henry Charles Brewer (1866–1950) was a British painter well known in the first half of the 20th century for his watercolour landscapes and architectural paintings.
St Mary's Church, Ilford or St Mary's Church, Great Ilford is a Church of England parish church in Ilford in the London Borough of Redbridge. A new ecclesiastical parish for Great Ilford was split off from that of Barking in 1830 and its church building completed the following year. The church's principal benefactor was Robert Westley Hall-Dare, M.P. His daughter, Mary Hall-Dare, laid the foundation stone and the church was opened on June 9, 1831, by Charles James Blomfield, Bishop of London, “and the day was spent in general festivity from the highest to the lowest classes”. Its first vicar was appointed in 1837 - its advowson was initially vested in All Souls College, Oxford. A tower was added in 1866 and a chancel, lady chapel and vestries in 1920. St Clement's Church was completed as a chapel of ease for it in 1896, before becoming the parish's main church in 1902.
The Ealing Art Guild was founded in 1910, to further the interests of local artists of all disciplines, whether professional, amateur or lay. The society later broadened its scope to become the Ealing Arts Club and, in due course, became the present day Ealing Art Group, which has a membership of around 120.
Leonard Shuffrey was a British architect and architectural designer of the late Victorian and Edwardian period. He was a leading figure of the aesthetic movement that had a significant impact on the development of buildings and their interiors and their settings, both across London and the South of England. Noted for his wallpaper, fireplaces and ornate plasterwork, Shuffrey was thought the equal of William Morris in his creativity and skill as a craftsman. His output is often found in decorative schemes with William Morris, Edward Ould, William De Morgan, and other preeminent Arts & Crafts and late Pre-Raphaelite decorative artists of the day.
Edward Arthur Fellowes Prynne (1854–1921) was a leading British late Pre-Raphaelite painter of portraits and subject pictures, who in later life became one of the country's best-known creators of decorative art for churches.
James Alphege Brewer (1881-1946) was a well-known early 20th century producer of colour etchings - notably of English and European Cathedrals and churches and other scenes.
Paul Shuffrey (1889–1955) was a British colonial administrator, editor and publisher.
St Saviour's Church was a late-Victorian Church of England church in the London Borough of Ealing, designed by the architect George Fellowes Prynne and destroyed during the Second World War.
Isabella Matilda Holmes (1861-1949) was a notable Victorian social campaigner and an advocate of opening up London's green spaces to the poor.
Acton Cemetery is an historic late–Victorian burial ground in the London Borough of Ealing. Managed by Ealing London Borough Council, the site is located in North Ealing, near to North Acton Underground Station.
References
↑ Gardner, K. Betjeman on Faith: An anthology of his religious prose, SPCK, 2011.
1 2 3 Cherry, B. and Pevsner, N. The Buildings of England London 3: North West, Yale, 2002.
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