Visiting St Mary's

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How To Find Us

Tube: The nearest station is Temple (Circle and District lines). Please note that this station is closed on Sundays, alternative nearby stations are Covent Garden, Holborn, Charing Cross and Embankment.

National Rail: St Mary's is near to Charing Cross, Waterloo and Blackfriars stations.

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What to See When Visiting the Church

The present Church is one of those built following the 1711 Act for building new churches in London and its suburbs. These are generally known as the Queen Anne churches and the Queen herself is known to have taken an interest in the building of St Mary Le Strand. Other Queen Anne churches include Thomas Archer's St Paul's Depford, John James' St George's Hanover Square and Nicholas Hawksmoor's churches at Spitalfields, Limehouse and St George's in the East.

The architect of St Mary Le Strand was James Gibbs, who was born in Aberdeen in 1682. Although he never admitted it publically during his lifetime, Gibbs was a Roman Catholic and trained for the priesthood in Rome. However, he abandoned his studies and trained instead as an architect under the Papal architect, Carlo Fontana. It is no surprise, then, that his early work shows clear signs of his training in Rome.

The foundation stone of St Mary Le Strand was laid on 25 February 1715 but work was halted due to the Jacobite Rebellion later that year. Gibbs, who was widely believed to have Jacobite sympathies, was dismissed as Surveyor to the Commissioners for building New Churches in August 1715 but was allowed to complete the church without pay. The other official surveyors, Hawksmoor and James, were also closely involved in building St Mary's.

The original design of the church did not include a spire but only a small bellcote where the spire now stands. Instead there was to have been a column 250 feet high in front of the church, rather similar to Trajan's Column in Rome, celebrating the building of the churches. Crowning it was to have been a 17 feet high bronze statue of Queen Ann by the Italian sculptor Giovanni Baptista Fogginni. Following the Queen's death and the Jacobite rebellion, the column was abandoned and Gibbs produced several designs for a spire on the church. As building was already well advanced, the foundations could not be strengthened and the spire is therefore a slender rectangle in shape.

Gibb's design for St Mary's was based less on the churches which had recently been completed in Rome than on the designs of Mannerist architects of the sixteenth/seventeenth centuries. The side elevation of the exterior, which is divided into two orders is thought to be based on the Palazzo Branconio dell'Aquila designed by Raphael. The west front with its semi-circular porch is reminiscent of Cortona's Sta Maria della Pace in Rome. The east front, however, is similar to the east end of Wren's St Paul's Cathedral. The interior has a dramatic triumphal arch-like setting to the chancel, based on Santa Maria del Carmine in Florence, while the ceiling is based on the ceiling of the church of SS Luca e Martina in Rome.

The Apse                  

The church is built to an extremely lavish standard, being faced with carved stone inside and out. All the carvings of the chancel and apse are carved in stone. To cope with the noise of the eighteenth century Strand, Gibbs designed the walls without windows in the lower order. The building of the church and the carvings were carried out by the Townsend brothers, who were responsible for other major public buildings in London and Oxford.

The woodcarving in the church was done by John Simmonds. Most of the present woodwork in the church is original, although the box pews of Gibbs' time have been cut down to form the present pewing. Of particular note is the carving of the panelling in the chancel, the door cases to the eastern vestries and the alter rails. Also by Simmons is the pulpit, which once stood on a higher base and was crowned by a sounding board in the shape of a shell.

The interior arrangements of the church have been altered several times since its opening in 1725. From 1828 to 1870, shallow galleries were inserted on the north and south walls to provide additional accommodation. Although the church could originally accommodate over 400 people, the parishoners numbered over 1500, so many attempts were made to expand the seating capacity. The pulpit was sited by the south wall towards the west end of the church when it opened with the result that the pews east of it faced west and the parishoners sat with their backs to the communion table. The font, which is original, originally stood in the central aisle near the entrance doors and beyond it a 40 foot long bench ran down the aisle with free seats for the poor.

The interior was altered drastically in 1869-70 by the architect R J Withers during the incumbency of Dr Alfred Bowen Evans (1861-1878). Dr Evans was an early and leading Tracterian who had served at St Andrew's Wells Street in the 1840s and had run a proprietary chapel in St George's in the East at the rime of the Ritualistic riots there in 1859. Under him, all the pewing was altered to form the present open pews and the chancel was expanded. The red and black tiled floors date from this period, as does the green and yellow "Cathedral Glass" in the nave windows. The Victorian colour scheme of green and Indian red for the walls, with texts in gold running round the cornices, survived until the last redecoration in 1952.

The carvings in the apse represent the worship of God in heaven and earth. Above the cornice level is the worship in heaven. At the centre of the apse ceiling is a triangle containing the name of Jehovah in Hebrew. The three sides of the triangle represent the three Persons of the Trinity. The whole is surrounded by a sunburst of glory while in the adjacent panels the worship of the Trinity by the heavenly host is represented. Below the cornice level is the counterpart worship of God on earth, while the form in which the Godhead is manifested on earth is represented by the bunches of grapes and ears of corn which are emblematic of the bread and wine of Holy Communion. Immediately below this iconography stands the altar.

The panels in the side walls of the chancel contain paintings by the American artist, Mather Brown, which were erected in 1785. They represent on the north side "The Salutation of the Angel Gabriel to the Blessed Virgin Mary" and on the south side "The Agony in the Garden of Gethsemane". Brown was a pupil of Benjamin West and fled to this country at the time of the American Revolution. These are some of his earliest works and show a similarity to paintings carried out by West at Windsor. Both paintings were restored in 1994 at the cost of the Cookson Group.

The panelling of the chancel is original, although the compartment behind the altar was once surmounted by a broken pediment and vase. The carvings immediately above the doors to the vestries are particularly fine. The present altar was made in 1994 and follows the proportions of the original communion table.

The ornaments of the altar and sanctuary mainly date from the late nineteenth century. The crucifix behind the altar was a gift from the parishoners in 1893. The large Sarum candlesticks were purchased in 1902 and the sanctuary lamps date from around 1900. The light burning by the crucifix denotes that the Blessed Sacrament is reserved in the tabernacle for the communion of the sick. The silver-plated candlesticks on the altar were the gift of a former churchwarden, Lt Col Edward Harcourt Hillersdon in the 1960s.

There are three memorials in the sanctuary to former Rectors. The earliest, on the north wall, commemorates the Revered  Joshua Frederick Denham, Rector from 1839 to 1861. On the south wall is a plaque to his successor, the Reverend Dr Alfred Bowen Evans. To the south side of the altar is a memorial to Alderman the Reverend Frederick Harcourt Hillersdon, Rector from 1891 to 1944 and Mayor of Westminster in 1909.

The windows in the apse were originally filled with clear glass. In Regency times, painted glass windows depicting instruments of the Passion in brown and yellow hues were inserted. These were replaced by stained glass by Heaton, Butler and Bayne in the 1860s. The central window, as mentioned in his memorial, was in memory of the Reverend J F Denham and represented the Crucifixion. The window on the north side was to the memory of Mary Bowen Evans and that on the south side to George Thorpe. All three were damaged by blast and  replaced in 1946 by the present blue glass designs by Sidney Toy FRIBA,  who was architect to the church  and churchwarden from 1924 to 1933.   

  The magnificent ceiling