St Michael's Church, Grove Park (also called St Michael's, Sutton Court and St Michael's, Chiswick) is an Anglican church in the
Grove Park district of
Chiswick
Chiswick ( ) is a district of west London, England. It contains Hogarth's House, the former residence of the 18th-century English artist William Hogarth; Chiswick House, a neo-Palladian villa regarded as one of the finest in England; and Full ...
, opened in 1909. Its red brick architecture by
W. D. Caröe & Herbert Passmore has been praised by
Nikolaus Pevsner
Sir Nikolaus Bernhard Leon Pevsner (30 January 1902 – 18 August 1983) was a German-British art historian and architectural historian best known for his monumental 46-volume series of county-by-county guides, ''The Buildings of England'' (1 ...
.
Architecture
St Michael's Church on Elmwood Road in the Sutton Court area of
Grove Park, Chiswick
Grove Park is an area in the south of Chiswick, now in the borough of Hounslow, West London. It lies in the meander of the Thames occupied by Duke's Meadows park. Historically, the area belonged to one of the four historic villages in modern Chi ...
, was designed in the
Arts and Crafts style by the architects
W. D. Caröe & Herbert Passmore; it was founded in 1908 and completed in 1909.
It is described by
Nikolaus Pevsner
Sir Nikolaus Bernhard Leon Pevsner (30 January 1902 – 18 August 1983) was a German-British art historian and architectural historian best known for his monumental 46-volume series of county-by-county guides, ''The Buildings of England'' (1 ...
in ''
The Buildings of England
''The'' () is a grammatical article in English, denoting persons or things already mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in English. ''The'' is the m ...
'' as "one of Caröe's most interesting churches in outer London".
The "picturesque"
building is in red brick, its
buttress
A buttress is an architectural structure built against or projecting from a wall which serves to support or reinforce the wall. Buttresses are fairly common on more ancient buildings, as a means of providing support to act against the lateral (s ...
es joined by tiled arches, and with
dormer
A dormer is a roofed structure, often containing a window, that projects vertically beyond the plane of a pitched roof. A dormer window (also called ''dormer'') is a form of roof window.
Dormers are commonly used to increase the usable space ...
s in the roof. The crossing-point of the roof is marked by a turret with shingles and tiles; on the north of the crossing is "a curiously domestic excrescence"
for ventilation and the church's
belfry. The windows have decorative curving stone tracery in "free flamboyant Gothic" style;
they are recessed under tiled arches. Inside, the font, lectern, and pulpit were brought from St Michael on the Strand, while the 1911 choir stalls were designed by Caröe. The south chapel's roof has a decoration made by Antony Lloyd in 1932. The
stained glass
Stained glass is coloured glass as a material or works created from it. Throughout its thousand-year history, the term has been applied almost exclusively to the windows of churches and other significant religious buildings. Although tradition ...
windows in the south chapel and the sanctuary were made by Horace Wilkinson between 1914 and 1925.
The historian Jennifer Freeman writes of the building that "the emphasis externally is on the craftwork, on careful stone dressings, on subtle variations in the tilework, on the timbering, brickwork and leadwork",
while it fits into its environment sensitively, in a place "still leafy enough to evoke the setting of a simple country church. Yet the building is a highly complex composition of red brick and tile".
[Peacock cites Freeman's book for these quotations. ] The St Michael's church architect Patrick Crawford comments that the most remarkable feature of the church is its tiled arches.
Lord Kinnaird
Lord Kinnaird was a title in the Peerage of Scotland. It was created in 1682 for George Kinnaird. The ninth Lord was created Baron Rossie, of Rossie in the County of Perth, in the Peerage of the United Kingdom in 1831, with normal remainder to th ...
, 19 December 1908
File:St Michael (Sutton Court) Elmwood Road, back facing garden.jpg, The garden side of the church
History
The building was funded by the sale of St Michael, Burleigh Street, on
the Strand, in central London, raising the sum of £20,500.
The old church was demolished and replaced by the
Strand Palace Hotel. The vicar of
St Martin-in-the-Fields
St Martin-in-the-Fields is a Church of England parish church at the north-east corner of Trafalgar Square in the City of Westminster, London. It is dedicated to Saint Martin of Tours. There has been a church on the site since at least the mediev ...
, near the Strand, became the patron of the new church. The new church cost £8,000 to build, including its site; the vicarage cost a further £1,800. A tin-roofed wooden church hall was built at a cost of £360; it was replaced in 1998 by a brick-built parish centre.
The church was the last of the Anglican parishes of Chiswick to be created, serving the new population of the Grove Park area west of Sutton Court Road, which had consisted up until the 1900s mainly of
orchard
An orchard is an intentional plantation of trees or shrubs that is maintained for food production. Orchards comprise fruit- or nut-producing trees which are generally grown for commercial production. Orchards are also sometimes a feature of larg ...
s and
market garden
A market garden is the relatively small-scale production of fruits, vegetables and flowers as cash crops, frequently sold directly to consumer
A consumer is a person or a group who intends to order, or uses purchased goods, products, or s ...
s. The parish area was taken from the western part of the parish of
St Nicholas, Chiswick.
The church has been
Grade II listed
In the United Kingdom, a listed building or listed structure is one that has been placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Historic Environment Scotland in Scotland, in Wales, and the Northern Irel ...
since 1985.
References
Sources
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External links
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{{Churches in Hounslow
Church of England church buildings in the London Borough of Hounslow
Diocese of London
Buildings and structures in Chiswick
Grade II listed churches in London
Grade II listed buildings in the London Borough of Hounslow
Buildings by W. D. Caröe