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St. Gabriel’s Pimlico – a
Victorian Glory
In the 1840s, 50s and 60s Pimlico was a
rapidly expanding residential area and in each of these decades
at a least one new church was built, ours in 1852-3. The Marquis of Westminster, who
then owned all the land, granted £5,000 and the
freehold of a plot at the south-western end of Warwick Square for a
church. It was to be designed by Thomas Cundy Junior, the
Surveyor of the Grosvenor Estates covering all of Belgravia and Pimlico. It would complete
Cubitt’s vision for this most majestic of city squares,
dominating the skyline as it still does today.
Cundy also designed our neighbouring
churches,
St.Barnabas and St.Saviour’s as well as
St.Paul’s, Knightsbridge: all beautiful buildings but none
of them matches the cathedral-like proportions of
St.Gabriel’s.
To finance the construction, funds were
subscribed from the new residents, coming fortunately right in
the middle of Victorian zeal for church building in London. The parish of St.Gabriel was
carved out of one of the wards of St.George’s, Hanover Square, with
whom we still have a relationship as our mother church, and the Church of St.Gabriel, Pimlico was
consecrated on May 12th 1853. The London Illustrated News
recorded the event with satisafaction.
It is a middle-pointed building in
decorated Gothic style with a graceful tower of 160 feet, into
which in 1855 went a peal of eight bells, which we still ring
occasionally today. The
building is all Kentish ragstone with Caen
stone dressings – despite these materials already falling
out of favour with the Victorian builders for the reasons that we
can easily see now – the discolouration and decay of the
stone caused by London’s
corrosive atmosphere. The tower had already started to
deteriorate as early as 1887 when, after a falling stone nearly
killed a member of the congregation, it had to be taken down and
rebuilt!
Originally the nave was a central aisle
formed under the 60’ high pitched slate roof and one aisle
each side, with wooden galleries over their whole length. The
side galleries were removed in the 1890s reportedly to improve
the ventilation and acoustics, and outer side-aisles were added
to replace the lost capacity, making the exceptionally wide and
open nave we have today. However it wasn’t so light –
the whole nave was lit by stained glass windows. A church hall
was also added,
but this was soon to become a choir vestry as the
St.Gabriel’s Parish House in Glasgow Terrace (a few
minutes’ walk away in the present-day Churchill Gardens
estate) became the centre of church social life and mission.
Immediately following on from all this
work came a period of magnificent improvements in the chancel,
funded in the main by Lord Edward Pelham-Clinton. A new high altar had been
installed,
designed by Bentley, architect of Westminster
Cathedral, and now the whole chancel was lined with alabaster by
Powell with Italianate mosaic designs. The floor is of red and white
marble squares with solid marble steps. The Lady Chapel was added to
the south of the chancel and some of the original reredos
(thought to be by Gilbert Scott) from the original high altar,
installed there.
Crowning it all was the new East Window
by Kempe, one of the great Victorian stained-glass window
designers,
depicting Christ in Glory with Saints.
After all this activity little was done for
decades. St.Gabriel’s was lucky in the 2nd world
war – although a bomb blew out most of the windows,
miraculously the East Window was spared. In the event, the result of
clear glass windows is an exceptionally light and airy interior. In fact only that one bomb did
any significant damage - there was structural damage to the Lady
Chapel too -
whereas there were actually four other bombs,
virtually one at each corner, that didn’t go off. St.Gabriel had clearly been on
watch.
Since then, it’s been a case of
holding back the tide.
After a many problems with water ingress (which is
responsible for much of the deterioration of the interior today)
much work has been done in the last twenty years on the roofs and
rainwater drainage and they are now sound. A great deal of financial help
has been given by English Heritage for this. With their help we’re
about to embark on another tranche of work to the troublesome
tower, and are saving up what we can to tackle the interior as we
can afford to do so. We’re also embarking on a programme of
facilities improvements which will better equip
St.Gabriel’s to become more attractive to people in the 21st
Century, and to encourage more community involvement.
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