London churches - existing and envisaged

One of my regular readers has drawn my attention to two post by other bloggers which make for interesting reading.

The first, from last November, on the Jacobite Intelligencer is an account of the oldest Catholic churches in London, and can be read here. Of these I have worshipped at St James Spanish Place, which is very splendid, and seen St Patrick Soho Square from the outside, and hear good things of its life as a parish. I knew of the former Sardinian chapel in Kingsway but have not so far seen it. The old Royal Bavarian Chapel in Warwick Street has, of course, been in the news and on the blogosphere recently, and not for its architecture but rather for hosting rather debatable activities.

In any case an inducement to do a church crawl in London sometime to view the architecture.

The other post is more recent and from Andrew Cusack with a "what might have been" - the design by Sir Ninian Comper for a new church at Clerkenwell for the Venerable Priory of St John of Jerusalem, that is the nineteenth centuryAnglican re-establishment of the English branch of the Order of Malta. The design looks very fine indeed, and an interesting, indeed exhilarating, combination of styles.

Image: Ayla Lepine / Watch This Space

I suspect the central altar owes something to the Crusading knights chapel at Tomar in Portugal, about which there is an article here, and ultimately the Holy Sepulchre itself. As so often in these case of grand designs it is to be regretted that the scheme was not carried out. The article can be read here.