The Importance of Church and Community in Victorian London
St James's Gardens provides a glimpse into how Victorian London's suburbs were created, demonstrating the relationship between religious, social, and architectural ambitions in creating new communities. Through planning and considerable investment, what began as a brickfield on London's expanding frontier would become a notable example of mid-Victorian suburban development.
This transformation began in 1844 when Charles Richardson, the main developer of the Norland Estate, sold the northernmost portion of the estate to William Naylor Morrison, a local brickmaker who had leased the land.
Charles Richardson also donated land for the construction of St James's Church, which would become both the spiritual and architectural anchor of the new development.
This was more than a gesture of religious philanthropy. In Victorian society, the parish church served as the essential foundation of respectable community life. For the aspiring middle-class residents Richardson hoped to attract, the presence of a church signified social legitimacy and respectability.
The church was to be built in the centre of the communal gardens, laid out in an informal woodland style. Chestnut and lime trees, dating back to the 19th century, still dominate the garden. Small marker stones map out the land donated to the church.
The Church Building Commission established in 1818 sought to provide churches for London's growing population. The Commision contributed £500 to the project. Voluntary church-building societies provided £2,400. Local residents, led by a committee that included Walter Richardson (Charles's brother and future churchwarden), raised an additional £2,000. A vicarage was constructed that would help recruit an ambitious vicar.
Construction of the Church began in June 1844 guided by Lewis Vulliamy, already a significant figure in Victorian ecclesiastical architecture.
The church is built of white Suffolk bricks, with minimal stone cornices, hood moulds, pinnacles and stringcourses. It is orientated east-west, and the tower is positioned south of the central bay, where it projects as the centrepiece of a symmetrically composed south elevation.
The entrance is through a porch of brick set in the base of the tower. A gable containing a trefoil panel extends upwards over the porch into a large light enriched with handsome tracery.
The simplicity of the body of the church sets off the elegant three-stage tower, which was being 'raised' in 1850. The first stage has gabled buttresses with roll moulded edges, and contains the porch and large traceried window.
The very short second stage has a clock-face set in on each side in a shallow circular recess flanked by blind lancet panels.
The final belfry stage is lighter and richer, with two deeply-recessed paired lancets flanked by single blind lancet panels set within a panel framed by pilaster-buttresses. A drawing in Kensington Public Library shows that the tower was to have been surmounted by a stone broach spire. This was never built, and with its thin octagonal pinnacles set on each corner, the tower seems somewhat abrupt without it.
The body of the church is broad and barn-like and consists of a five-bay clerestoried nave with lean-to aisles. Galleries were added in 1850. They rested on supports which spanned from brackets on the cast-iron columns of the nave to the north and south walls, and must have given an appearance of solidity to the interior which has now been dissipated by their removal. The columns, quatrefoil on plan, are widely spaced, and support an elegant arcade above which is the clerestory, pierced by small single lancets, two to each bay.
The aisles are lit by two ranges of paired lancets, above and below the former galleries. The roof is carried on simple wooden trusses of meagre design, supported on brackets. Each truss is placed over the top of an arch of the arcade, and the resulting division of each bay into two parts tends to confuse the architectural logic of the design.Vulliamy's original design provided polygonal apsidal projections at the east and west ends, but these were not built.
In 1876 the east end was extended under the direction of the architect, R. J. Withers, to provide the present chancel and vestries and an organ chamber. The east wall of the chancel is a scholarly composition in the Early English style with three stepped lancets set in five stepped-lancet panels. In 1880 a faculty was given for the erection of a reredos, for the reseating of the north and south galleries, and for the opening out of an arch westwards from the organ chamber. The organ, built in 1895 by James Jepson Binns of Bramley, Leeds, is listed on the register of Historic Organs and is renowned for its tonal beauty, gravitas and majesty.
The reredos is of wood with a finely carved Last Supper, and has polychromatic decoration. Subsequent to a faculty of 1894, the chancel floor was extended westwards, a dwarf screen wall and ironwork were erected, new stalls were provided, and the walls of the organ chamber were raised in what is now the Lady Chapel north of the chancel. In 1921 the organ was removed to its present position in the west gallery. Beneath this there is a robustly designed font in which green marble and glazed tiles figure prominently.
In 1921 the Lady Chapel was also designed to be a Chapel of Remembrance, to honour the parishioners who died in the First World War. It was constructed to coincide with the building of the Cenotaph in Whitehall The chapel contains a wooden case on the North Wall purpose-built to display a beautifully illuminated Book of Remembrance, listing the names of all 171 who fell in the Great War and also the names of those who returned alive. The Book of Remembrance was restored on 2023 and is now displayed every Remembrance Sunday. The Lady Chapel altar contains an altar stone taken from the ruins of Ypres Cathedral.
Until 1948 the greater part of the interior was coloured, and the whole of the surfaces of columns and arcading up to the stringcourse was covered with printed patterns, with angel motifs in the spandrels. The ceiling surfaces of the nave and aisles were decorated with repeat patterns, that to the nave being an I.H.S. motif.
On the wall spaces between each window of the north and south aisles were murals painted on canvas, but these were removed in 1950.
Whilst financial constraints prevented the completion of the intended spire - a situation the vicar of Kensington optimistically linked to future house occupation - the church was consecrated on 17th July 1845, and its tower was completed in 1850. Since then there have been attempts to complete the work creating a spire and adding a belfry, but the suggestion of such additions has met with opposition in the face of the need for poverty alleviation in North Kensington and weakening of the association between churches and their immediate neighbourhood.
The building's position at the northern axis of Addison Avenue, with a square laid out around it, demonstrated sophisticated urban planning principles that would organise the entire northern portion of the estate.
The development of the houses around the square, which began in 1847, represented a significant departure from contemporary London housing. They were designed by John Barnett, who had established his reputation with developments in Clapham and Highbury, St James's Gardens emerged as an innovative interpretation of suburban domestic architecture. Rather than following the conventional London terrace pattern, Barnett introduced a sophisticated arrangement of paired houses, each pair linked by recessed entrance bays. This design created a rhythm along the street whilst maintaining architectural coherence.
The façades of the houses combined stucco at ground level with stock brick above, featuring elegant architectural details such as stucco architraves, modillioned cornices, and semi-circular headed openings.
Their internal planning offered marked improvements over conventional London houses, with wider frontages allowing for more generously proportioned rooms and better natural lighting. The relatively shallow basements, only 1.5 metres deep, further distinguished these houses from the deeper service areas typical of metropolitan properties.
Construction proceeded in distinct phases between 1847 and 1851. A tablet set into the front wall of Nos. 1 and 2 records the laying of the first stone on 1st November 1847. Development continued with the western end in early 1848, followed by the north side in late 1849, and culminating with the south side and eastern range in 1850-51.
The project faced financial challenges when the initial contractor, Robert Adkin, declared bankruptcy in 1848 after submitting an unsustainably low tender. The development was completed by David Nicholson senior and junior, builders from Wandsworth, though one of the planned six terraces remained unbuilt due to Charles Richardson's mounting financial difficulties.
The 1851 census reveals the social character that emerged in St James's Gardens. Whilst its residents maintained domestic servants, the average of one per household positioned it as respectable but not quite as elite as neighbouring Royal Crescent and Norland Square. The church played a crucial role in this social fabric, providing not just spiritual guidance but also opportunities for community gathering and social networking through church committees, services, and associated activities.
Today, St James's Church and Gardens illustrtes the Victorian belief that successful urban development required more than just houses - it needed carefully cultivated social and spiritual infrastructure to transform mere buildings into genuine communities. The development pattern established here, with church and square working in harmony to create a unified architectural and social composition, exemplified the period's ideals of suburban planning and became a model for subsequent Victorian suburban expansion.
The story of St James's Gardens thus illustrates the complex interweaving of religious, social, architectural, and commercial imperatives in Victorian London's growth.
Whilst the final execution may have fallen short of its original vision - lacking both the Church's spire and one planned terrace - it nevertheless created a distinctive and enduring community that continues to reflect the ambitious spirit of Victorian suburban development. This is a link to the parish website https://www.stclementandstjames.org.uk .
The Church has provided base for a number of community ventures, from a nursery school to the W11 Youth Orchestra, now known as the London Youth Opera. The W11 Opera was founded in 1971 by local residents, the music teacher Serena Hughes and conductor Nicholas Kraemer. Their vision was to create an annual opera production that would involve a large ensemble of young people. They started with Britten's "Noyah's Fludde," the organization established itself as a unique platform for youth arts, regularly commissioning original works and bringing together both emerging and established composers.
A key principle of their operation is accessibility - they require no previous experience or formal training, and welcome all children who want to sing. Rather than using auditions as a barrier, they use them to match children with suitable roles. While they continue to use St. James' Norlands Church for rehearsals, since 2003 they have moved their performances to professional venues, allowing their young artists to experience performing on larger stages.
Its core mission has remained a constant: making opera accessible to young people regardless of their background or experience.
Splendid though the church is, magnificent though St James's Gardens are, the parish of St James’s Norland, is amongst the poorest 8% in the country. A reminder that it stretches north to the big estates across the way on St Ann's Villas and north towards the shrouded Grenfell Tower .
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