All Saints, Margaret Street
All Saints, Margaret Street | |
---|---|
Clergy | |
Bishop(s) | Jonathan Baker |
Vicar(s) | Peter Anthony |
Laity | |
Director of music | Stephen Farr |
All Saints, Margaret Street, is a Grade I listed Anglo-Catholic church in London. The church was designed by the architect William Butterfield and built between 1850 and 1859. It has been hailed as Butterfield's masterpiece[1] and a pioneering building of the High Victorian Gothic style that would characterize British architecture from around 1850 to 1870.[2]
The church is situated on the north side of Margaret Street in Fitzrovia, near Oxford Street, within a small courtyard. Two other buildings face onto this courtyard: one is the vicarage and the other (formerly a choir school) now houses the parish room and flats for assistant priests.
All Saints is noted for its architecture, style of worship, and musical tradition.
History
All Saints had its origins in the Margaret Street Chapel which had stood on the site since the 1760s. The chapel had "proceeded upwards through the various gradations of Dissent and Low-Churchism"
In 1845, Alexander Beresford Hope realised that the chapel rebuilding scheme could be combined with the project of the Cambridge Camden Society to found a model church. His proposal met with the approval of Upton Richards, George Chandler, rector of All Souls, and Charles James Blomfield, the Bishop of London. It was decided that the architectural and ecclesiological aspects of the project would be put entirely under the control of the Cambridge Camden Society, who appointed Sir Stephen Glynne and Beresford Hope to oversee the work. In the event, Glynne was unable to take an active part, and Beresford Hope took sole charge.[5]
William Butterfield was selected as the architect and the site in Margaret Street purchased for £14,500.[5] The last service at the old chapel was held on Easter Monday, 1850, and the foundation stone of the new building was laid on All Saints' Day of that year by Edward Bouverie Pusey. Services were held in a temporary chapel in Titchfield Street for the next nine years, until the new church was finally consecrated on 28 May 1859.[7] The total cost of the church, including the site and endowments was around £70,000; several large individual donations helped to fund it.[5]
Architecture
All Saints marked a new stage in the development of the
The design of the church showed Butterfield (in
Butterfield's use of building materials was innovative. All Saints is built of brick, in contrast to Gothic Revival churches of the 1840s, typically built of grey
All Saints is particularly celebrated for its interior decoration. Every surface is richly patterned or decorated; the floor in diaper patterned tiles, wall surfaces in geometrical patterned brick, tile, and marble, as well as tiles with painted decoration, large friezes executed in painted tiles, a painted ceiling, and painted and gilded timberwork behind the altar. The architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner described the interior as "dazzling, though in an eminently High Victorian ostentatiousness or obtrusiveness. ... No part of the walls is left undecorated. From everywhere the praise of the Lord is drummed into you."[14]
The rear of the chancel features a series of paintings on gilded boards, within a delicately carved brightly patterned gothic screen, the work of
The
The baptistery in the south-west corner of the church is noted for its marble tiling which features an image of the Pelican in her Piety in the ceiling tiles, a symbol of the fall and redemption of man.[17]
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The Nativity Scene in the tiled frieze
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Baptistery tiling
The reredos, by Butterfield, was moved to St Catherine's Church, Wickford, at some time during the 20th century.[18]
Anglo-Catholicism
The church's style of worship is Anglo-Catholic, "the Catholic faith as taught by the Church of England", offering members and visitors a traditional style of liturgy, as advocated by the Oxford Movement of the mid-nineteenth century, including ritual, choir and organ music, vestments and incense.
As a traditional Anglo-Catholic parish, All Saints passed a resolution under the House of Bishops' Declaration on 26 November 2016 (affirmed on 13 July 2020
Incumbents
- 1859–1873 William Upton Richards
- 1873–1886 Berdmore Compton
- 1886–1905 William Allen Whitworth
- 1905–1908 George Frederick Holden
- 1908–1934 Henry Falconar Barclay Mackay
- 1934–1942 Dom Bernard Clements OSB
- 1943–1951 Cyril Edric Tomkinson
- 1951–1969 Kenneth Needham Ross
- 1969–1975 Michael Eric Marshall
- 1976–1981 David Alan Sparrow
- 1982–1985 David Michael Hope
- 1986–1995 David Handley Hutt
- 1995–2019 Leslie Alan Moses
- 2021–present Peter Benedict Anthony
Services
- Sunday
- High Mass at 11.00 am
- Low Mass at 5.15 pm
- Solemn Evensong and Benedictionat 6.00 pm
- Monday to Friday
- Low Mass at 12 noon and 6.30 pm
- Confessions by appointment
- Saturday
- Low Mass at 12 noon and 6.30 pm (first Mass of Sunday)
- Rosary at 12 noon on the second Saturday of the month (Walsingham cell)
- Weekday Solemnities (please see notices)
- High Mass at 6.30pm
Music
A choir school was established at the church in 1843, which provided music for daily choral services. The choir was widely recognised for its excellence and choristers sang at the Coronations of Edward VII (1902), George V (1911), George VI (1937) and Elizabeth II (1953) as well as at Victoria's Jubilees (1887 and 1897). Amongst its alumni is Laurence Olivier. The school closed in 1968,[21] at which point the boys' voices were replaced by adult sopranos. The survival of the choir school had been discussed many years earlier. Writing to parishioners in 1894, the vicar lamented that the changing demography of the area meant that there were now few children left in the parish, and that the number of wealthy patrons in the congregation had decreased as they moved further west.[22]
The present-day choir maintains the exacting standards of its predecessors.
The repertoire for choir and organ stretches from before the Renaissance to the 21st century and includes several pieces commissioned for the church, most famously Walter Vale's arrangement of Rachmaninoff's Liturgy of St John Chrysostom and All-Night Vigil for Western-Rite Mass and Evensong respectively. Rachmaninoff heard Vale's adaptations during his two visits to the church, in 1915 and 1923, and pronounced his approval of them. They are still sung on Palm Sunday.
All Saints' organ is a superb four-manual
The tonal changes made to 10 stops in 1957 – like those made to many other organs at that time – altered the tone of the instrument, to a very limited extent, to a more 'classical' sound. Therefore, when the organ next required major restoration work, the decision was taken to try to restore the sound nearer to that of 1910: to return it to an 'Edwardian Romantic' organ. The completed restoration was celebrated with two inauguration concerts in March 2003.
Organists have included Richard Redhead, the first organist and remembered today as the composer of Rock of Ages and Bright the Vision, Walter Vale (1907–1939), William Lloyd Webber (1939–1948), John Birch (1953–58), Michael Fleming (1958–68) and Harry Bramma (1989–2004), many of whom wrote music for use at All Saints and beyond.
- Directors of Music (selected)
- 1839–1864 Richard Redhead[23]
- 1860–1868 Christopher Edwin Willing
- 1868–1907 William Stevenson Hoyte
- 1907–1939 Walter S. Vale
- 1939–1948 William Lloyd Webber
- 1949–1951 John Williams[24]
- 1952–1953 Garth Benson
- 1953–1958 John Birch
- 1958–1968 Michael Fleming
- 1968–1988 (James) Eric Arnold
- 1988–1989 Murray Stewart
- 1989–2004 Harry Bramma
- 2004–2013 Paul Brough[25]
- 2013–2018 Timothy Byram-Wigfield
- 2020–present Stephen Farr
See also
- List of churches and cathedrals of London
References
- ISBN 978-0-00-741567-0.
- ISBN 0-500-20171-4.
- ^ a b Oakeley, Frederick (1865). Historical Notes on the Tractarian Movement. London: Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts, & Green.
- ^ Dictionary of National Biography. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885–1900. .
- ^ a b c d e f Eastlake, Charles Locke (1872). A History of the Gothic Revival. London: Longmans, Green & Co. pp. 251–253. Retrieved 26 December 2011.
- ISBN 9780852445068.
- ^ Wakeling, G. (1895). The Oxford Church Movement: Sketches and Reflections. London: Swan Sonnenschein. pp. 95–96.
- ^ ISBN 978-0-141-03930-5.
- ^ Thurley, Simon (5 January 2014), "The ten most important buildings in England", The Daily Telegraph, retrieved 24 April 2014
- ISBN 0-7195-2640-X.
- ISBN 978-1-60206-703-5.
- ^ All Saints, Margaret Street. Norwich: Jarrold. 2005. p. 6.
- ISBN 0-14-056115-3.
- ISBN 0-14-071006-X.
- ^ "Tiling". All Saints Margaret Street website. Retrieved 29 July 2013.
- ^ "Stained Glass Windows". All Saints Margaret Street website. Retrieved 29 July 2013.
- ^ "Inside the Church". All saints Margaret Street website. Retrieved 29 July 2013.
- ^ Historic England. "Church of St Catherine (Grade II) (1338415)". National Heritage List for England. Retrieved 24 March 2021.
- ^ "Pastoral Letter from the Bishops" (PDF). ALL SAINTS MARGARET STREET. 22 July 2020. Retrieved 5 August 2020.
- ^ "Information Pack for discussionson the Resolution: ALL SAINTS MARGARET STREET RESOLUTION" (PDF). ALL SAINTS MARGARET STREET. 29 November 2016. Retrieved 22 July 2020.
- ^ Crutchley, Leigh (5 November 1968). "Death of a Choir School: All Saints Margaret Street London 1968". BBC Radio. Archived from the original on 22 December 2021. Retrieved 3 May 2018.
- ^ "All Saints', Margaret Street choir school". The Guardian. 24 October 1894. p. 1650 – via newspapers.com.
- ^ Love, James (1841) Scottish Church Music: its Composers and Sources. Edinburgh: Blackwood; p. 233
- ^ John Williams: obituary[dead link] The Independent
- ^ "The Choir". All Saints Margaret Street website. Retrieved 26 May 2012.
Further reading
- Almedingen, E. M. (1945) Dom Bernard Clements: a portrait. London: John Lane
External links
- Media related to All Saints, Margaret Street at Wikimedia Commons
- All Saints Margaret Street