St. Andrew's Church, Fulham, also known as St. Andrew's Church, West Kensington, is a
Church of England
The Church of England (C of E) is the State religion#State churches, established List of Christian denominations, Christian church in England and the Crown Dependencies. It is the mother church of the Anglicanism, Anglican Christian tradition, ...
church located in
West Kensington
West Kensington, formerly North End, is an area in the ancient parish of Fulham, in the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham, England, 3.4 miles (5.5 km) west of Charing Cross. It covers most of the London postal area of W14, includ ...
, near
Fulham
Fulham () is an area of the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham in West London, England, southwest of Charing Cross. It lies in a loop on the north bank of the River Thames, bordering Hammersmith, Kensington and Chelsea, London, Chelsea ...
in southwest London. The church was founded in 1873.
The church is notable for the fact that some of its parishioners were responsible for establishing
Fulham Football Club. It has been
Grade II listed
In the United Kingdom, a listed building is a structure of particular architectural or historic interest deserving of special protection. Such buildings are placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, H ...
since 2009.
History
The foundation stone of St. Andrew's was laid on 14 June 1873 by
John Jackson,
Bishop of London
The bishop of London is the Ordinary (church officer), ordinary of the Church of England's Diocese of London in the Province of Canterbury. By custom the Bishop is also Dean of the Chapel Royal since 1723.
The diocese covers of 17 boroughs o ...
. The church was designed by
Newman
Newman is a surname of Germanic Anglo-Saxon origins. Newman is the modern English form of the name used in Great Britain and among people of British ancestry around the world (as is 'Numan'), while Neumann (with variant spellings) is used in Ger ...
and
Billing, and the architectural style was 13th-century
French Gothic
French Gothic architecture is an architectural style which emerged in France in 1140, and was dominant until the mid-16th century. The most notable examples are the great Gothic cathedrals of France, including Notre-Dame Cathedral, Reims Cathed ...
. The church was officially consecrated on 25 July 1874, and on 30 November an
Order in Council
An Order in Council is a type of legislation in many countries, especially the Commonwealth realms. In the United Kingdom, this legislation is formally made in the name of the monarch by and with the advice and consent of the Privy Council ('' ...
was made by
Queen Victoria
Victoria (Alexandrina Victoria; 24 May 1819 – 22 January 1901) was Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 20 June 1837 until Death and state funeral of Queen Victoria, her death in January 1901. Her reign of 63 year ...
which gave St. Andrew's its own
parish
A parish is a territorial entity in many Christianity, Christian denominations, constituting a division within a diocese. A parish is under the pastoral care and clerical jurisdiction of a priest#Christianity, priest, often termed a parish pries ...
, carved out of areas previously in the parishes of All Saints and St John's in Fulham, and St Mary's in West Kensington.
The pioneer
Channel swimmer, Captain
Matthew Webb and his wife Madeleine Kate Chaddock were married at the church on 27 April 1880.
In 1893 the parish hall was completed. In 1894 it was discovered that St. Andrew's was becoming too small to support its congregation, and so the vicar decided to have the church enlarged slightly.
Aston Webb
Sir Aston Webb, (22 May 1849 – 21 August 1930) was a British architect who designed the principal facade of Buckingham Palace and the main building of the Victoria and Albert Museum, among other major works around England, many of them in par ...
and
Ingress Bell designed new
vestries
A vestry was a committee for the local secular and ecclesiastical government of a parish in England, Wales and some English colonies. At their height, the vestries were the only form of local government in many places and spent nearly one-fi ...
to the west of the tower, and a new
baptistry
In Christian architecture the baptistery or baptistry (Old French ''baptisterie''; -4; we might wonder whether there's a point at which it's appropriate to talk of the beginnings of French, that is, when it wa ... ''baptisterie''; Latin ''baptist ...
adjacent to the south aisle. The organ was moved to a new loft.
In 1973 the Victorian church hall was sold and demolished, and a new hall installed at the west end of the church. This was further altered in 2011 when it was turned into a four-storey community centre, separated from the main part of the church by a glass screen. At the same time, the church building was given a new floor and
baptismal font
A baptismal font is an Church architecture, ecclesiastical architectural element, which serves as a receptacle for baptismal water used for baptism, as a part of Christian initiation for both rites of Infant baptism, infant and Believer's bapti ...
and the pews were replaced by chairs.
Architecture
The church is built in the
Gothic Revival
Gothic Revival (also referred to as Victorian Gothic or neo-Gothic) is an Architectural style, architectural movement that after a gradual build-up beginning in the second half of the 17th century became a widespread movement in the first half ...
style of yellow stock
brick
A brick is a type of construction material used to build walls, pavements and other elements in masonry construction. Properly, the term ''brick'' denotes a unit primarily composed of clay. But is now also used informally to denote building un ...
banded with red brick and Box stone dressings. It includes a distinctive
tower
A tower is a tall Nonbuilding structure, structure, taller than it is wide, often by a significant factor. Towers are distinguished from guyed mast, masts by their lack of guy-wires and are therefore, along with tall buildings, self-supporting ...
and
spire
A spire is a tall, slender, pointed structure on top of a roof of a building or tower, especially at the summit of church steeples. A spire may have a square, circular, or polygonal plan, with a roughly conical or pyramidal shape. Spire ...
at the west end, a nave with round thick-traceried windows in the low clerestory, lean-to aisles, north and south
transept
A transept (with two semitransepts) is a transverse part of any building, which lies across the main body of the building. In cruciform ("cross-shaped") cruciform plan, churches, in particular within the Romanesque architecture, Romanesque a ...
s, and separate, lower
chancel
In church architecture, the chancel is the space around the altar, including the Choir (architecture), choir and the sanctuary (sometimes called the presbytery), at the liturgical east end of a traditional Christian church building. It may termi ...
, and a semicircular baptistery, added by Webb and Bell, with a conical roof and single foiled lights in flush stone surrounds.
The church was given the bell of the former
St Martin Outwich in the
City of London
The City of London, also known as ''the City'', is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county and Districts of England, local government district with City status in the United Kingdom, city status in England. It is the Old town, his ...
, said to be the only church bell to have survived the
Great Fire of London
The Great Fire of London was a major conflagration that swept through central London from Sunday 2 September to Wednesday 5 September 1666, gutting the medieval City of London inside the old London Wall, Roman city wall, while also extendi ...
, and still in use today.
Inside the church, the
rood screen
The rood screen (also choir screen, chancel screen, or jubé) is a common feature in late medieval church architecture. It is typically an ornate partition between the chancel and nave, of more or less open tracery constructed of wood, stone, o ...
beam was designed by
Aston Webb
Sir Aston Webb, (22 May 1849 – 21 August 1930) was a British architect who designed the principal facade of Buckingham Palace and the main building of the Victoria and Albert Museum, among other major works around England, many of them in par ...
and erected to mark the
Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria
The Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria was officially celebrated on 22 June 1897 to mark the occasion of the 60th anniversary of Queen Victoria's accession on 20 June 1837. Queen Victoria was the first British monarch ever to celebrate a Diamond ...
in 1897. It is made of
sequoia wood. The current
altar
An altar is a table or platform for the presentation of religion, religious offerings, for sacrifices, or for other ritualistic purposes. Altars are found at shrines, temples, Church (building), churches, and other places of worship. They are use ...
was installed in 1900, along with the current
reredos
A reredos ( , , ) is a large altarpiece, a screen, or decoration placed behind the altar in a Church (building), church. It often includes religious images.
The term ''reredos'' may also be used for similar structures, if elaborate, in secular a ...
, designed by the notable sculptor and woodcarver
Harry Hems
Harry Hems (12 June 1842 – 5 January 1916) was an English architectural and ecclesiastical sculptor who was particularly inspired by Gothic architecture and a practitioner of Gothic Revival architecture, Gothic Revival. He founded and ran a la ...
. The reredos is made of
Caen stone
Caen stone () is a light creamy-yellow Jurassic limestone quarried in north-western France near the city of Caen. The limestone is a fine grained oolitic limestone formed in shallow water lagoons in the Bathonian Age about 167 million years ...
accompanied by
lapis lazuli
Lapis lazuli (; ), or lapis for short, is a deep-blue metamorphic rock used as a semi-precious stone that has been prized since antiquity for its intense color. Originating from the Persian word for the gem, ''lāžward'', lapis lazuli is ...
mosaics, and depicts the risen Christ with the Archangels Michael and Gabriel. The altar, in memory of Rosa Adeline Gibbs (1874–97), is of Derbyshire
alabaster
Alabaster is a mineral and a soft Rock (geology), rock used for carvings and as a source of plaster powder. Archaeologists, geologists, and the stone industry have different definitions for the word ''alabaster''. In archaeology, the term ''alab ...
with a Sicilian
marble
Marble is a metamorphic rock consisting of carbonate minerals (most commonly calcite (CaCO3) or Dolomite (mineral), dolomite (CaMg(CO3)2) that have recrystallized under the influence of heat and pressure. It has a crystalline texture, and is ty ...
slab top, and base and jambs of Devonshire marble.
Hems and his company also made the wooden choir stalls, which were installed in 1902 to mark the
coronation of Edward VII and Alexandra
The coronation of Edward VII and his wife, Alexandra, as king and queen of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions took place at Westminster Abbey, London, on 9 August 1902. Originally scheduled for 26 June of that year, the ceremony h ...
that year, and the wooden
pulpit
A pulpit is a raised stand for preachers in a Christian church. The origin of the word is the Latin ''pulpitum'' (platform or staging). The traditional pulpit is raised well above the surrounding floor for audibility and visibility, accesse ...
, installed in 1903.
Murder of David Paget
On 31 May 2001, the parishioners of St. Andrew's were shocked and saddened to hear that their vicar, the Reverend David Paget, had been stabbed to death in his own vicarage. He had failed to turn up to a Eucharist that morning and the church's treasurer entered the vicarage to discover his dead body lying there. He was described by one local as "a very happy guy who never had a problem with anyone" and "he would always be the sort of chap who would try and solve problems out". A parishioner remarked that "he was always free for anyone to talk to and I think this is why he got killed. He was vulnerable and he often had strange characters around. Nobody was bad in his eyes".
On 16 June 2001, the prime suspect was found dead next to a tower block in east London.
It was later revealed that the murder had been committed by a young man whom the vicar had taken to his home for counselling, who committed suicide afterwards.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Saint Andrew's Church Fulham
19th-century Church of England church buildings
Church of England church buildings in the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham
Churches completed in 1873
Diocese of London
Fulham
Fulham
Fulham () is an area of the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham in West London, England, southwest of Charing Cross. It lies in a loop on the north bank of the River Thames, bordering Hammersmith, Kensington and Chelsea, London, Chelsea ...