St Matthew's, Bethnal Green, is an 18th-century

church Church may refer to: Religion * Church (building), a place/building for Christian religious activities and praying * Church (congregation), a local congregation of a Christian denomination * Church service, a formalized period of Christian comm ...

Bethnal Green Bethnal Green is an area in London, England, and is located in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. It is in east London and part of the East End of London, East End. The area emerged from the small settlement which developed around the common la ...

London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...

England England is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is located on the island of Great Britain, of which it covers about 62%, and List of islands of England, more than 100 smaller adjacent islands. It ...

. It is an

Anglican Anglicanism, also known as Episcopalianism in some countries, is a Western Christianity, Western Christian tradition which developed from the practices, liturgy, and identity of the Church of England following the English Reformation, in the ...

church in the

Diocese of London The Diocese of London forms part of the Church of England's Province of Canterbury in England. It lies directly north of the Thames, covering and all or part of 17 London boroughs. This corresponds almost exactly to the historic county of ...

History of the building

The church was built 1743–46, to a Classical design by

George Dance the Elder George Dance the Elder (1695 – 8 February 1768) was a British architect. He was the City of London Surveyor (surveying), surveyor and architect from 1735 until his death. Life Originally a mason, George Dance was appointed Clerk of the ci ...

. There is a tower, to the centre of the west end, rising above a pedimented, slightly advanced central section. Dance's design was not the first:

Nicholas Hawksmoor Nicholas Hawksmoor ( – 25 March 1736) was an English architect. He was a leading figure of the English Baroque style of architecture in the late-seventeenth and early-eighteenth centuries. Hawksmoor worked alongside the principal architects ...

had produced a plan for the 1711

Commission for Building Fifty New Churches The Commission for Building Fifty New Churches (in London and the surroundings) was an organisation set up by Act of Parliament in England in 1711, to implement the New Churches in London and Westminster Act 1710, with the purpose of building f ...

, but, like most of the ambitious target, it failed to come to fruition. A fire in 1859 destroyed the interior of the church, although the registers and the church plate were saved. It was rebuilt (including a

cupola In architecture, a cupola () is a relatively small, usually dome-like structure on top of a building often crowning a larger roof or dome. Cupolas often serve as a roof lantern to admit light and air or as a lookout. The word derives, via Ital ...

being added to the tower) in 1861 to a design by Thomas Knightley. The roof and interior were destroyed by enemy action in 1940. A temporary church was created within the shell in 1954 by A Wontner Smith and Harold Jones. The old church was rebuilt from 1958 to 1961 (without the side galleries) by Anthony Lewis of Michael Tapper & Lewis, with what the list entry describes as a 'bold post-war interior'. That post-war interior includes works by a roll-call of eminent 20th-century ecclesiastical artists: an upper-level

Lady Chapel A Lady chapel or lady chapel is a traditional British English, British term for a chapel dedicated to Mary, mother of Jesus, particularly those inside a cathedral or other large church (building), church. The chapels are also known as a Mary chape ...

at the east end with panelling carrying the apostles by

Peter Snow Peter John Snow (born 20 April 1938) is a British radio and television presenter and historian. Between 1969 and 2005, he was an analyst of general election results, first on ITV and later for the BBC. He presented ''Newsnight'' from its lau ...

; a

bas-relief Relief is a sculptural method in which the sculpted pieces remain attached to a solid background of the same material. The term ''relief'' is from the Latin verb , to raise (). To create a sculpture in relief is to give the impression that th ...

depicting the war between Heaven and Hell and St Michael and the angels doing battle with the devil by Kim James; wall paintings by Barry Robinson; sand-blasted glass doors by

Heather Child Heather Josephine Child (3 November 1911 – 18 June 1997) was an English calligrapher, heraldic artist, botanical illustrator and author. Biography Child was born in Winchester, the daughter of Francis Child, a doctor. She was the great-ni ...

; sculptured panels on the altar by Robert Dawson; a vesica-shaped marble font by Anthony Lewis; and fired ceramic

Stations of the Cross The Stations of the Cross or the Way of the Cross, also known as the Via Dolorosa, Way of Sorrows or the , are a series of fourteen images depicting Jesus in Christianity, Jesus Christ on the day of Crucifixion of Jesus, his crucifixion and acc ...

by Donald Potter. The church was reconsecrated by

Henry Montgomery Campbell Henry Colville Montgomery Campbell (11 October 1887 – 26 December 1970) was a Church of England bishop. He was ordained in 1910 and served as vicar or rector in a number of London parishes before being consecrated as a bishop in 1940, ...

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 ...

, in 1961. The earliest organ of which the

National Pipe Organ Register The British Institute of Organ Studies (BIOS) is a British organisation and registered charity which aims to promote study and appreciation of all aspects of the pipe organ. Further, it acts as a lobbying body to raise awareness of organ issue ...

has details was an instrument which was installed in 1772 from a church in Newbury and rebuilt by Byfield and

Green Green is the color between cyan and yellow on the visible spectrum. It is evoked by light which has a dominant wavelength of roughly 495570 nm. In subtractive color systems, used in painting and color printing, it is created by a com ...

. That organ was destroyed in the 1859 fire. It was replaced by a Henry Jones organ dating from 1861. The Jones organ was destroyed in the war-time bombing. Services were held in the ruins, and an Estey reed organ was played.

Noel Mander Noel Percy Mander Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, MBE, FSA (19 May 1912 – 18 September 2005) was a British organ builder and founder of the firm N.P Mander later known as Mander Organs Limited. A native of Crouch, Se ...

Mander Organs N.P Mander Limited later Mander Organs Limited was an England, English pipe organ maker and refurbisher based in London. Although well known for many years in the organ building industry, they achieved wider notability in 2004 with the refurbi ...

installed and slightly modified an 1877 Eustace Ingram organ in the temporary church in 1954. The National Pipe Organ Register states that this organ came from the Bethnal Green Lutheran Church, but Maxim states that it was from the former church of St Matthias, Bethnal Green, and refers to the evidence of plaques on the organ. Mander then reinstalled the Ingram organ in the rebuilt church in 1961. The church has a ring of eight bells, all cast in 1861 (after the 1859 fire) by George Mears of the

Whitechapel Bell Foundry The Whitechapel Bell Foundry was a business in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. At the time of the closure of its Whitechapel premises, it was the oldest manufacturing company in Great Britain. The bell foundry primarily made church bells ...

. The church itself is Grade II* listed; it is the classical exterior that is the primary reason for the high level of listing. The railings, wall and gate piers to the churchyard are separately listed Grade II, as is the parish watch house, which dates from 1826.

History of the parish

Until the time of Joseph King (rector, 1809–61), the rectors held the

advowson Advowson () or patronage is the right in English law of a patron (avowee) to present to the diocesan bishop (or in some cases the ordinary if not the same person) a nominee for appointment to a vacant ecclesiastical benefice or church living, a ...

in plurality and in absence: there is no record of William Loxham, rector for 43 years, of ever having even visited the parish. Day-to-day pastoral work was left to poorly-paid

curate A curate () is a person who is invested with the ''care'' or ''cure'' () of souls of a parish. In this sense, ''curate'' means a parish priest; but in English-speaking countries the term ''curate'' is commonly used to describe clergy who are as ...

s. It was King who sought, initially with some success but ultimately unsuccessfully, to counter the corrupt regime of the churchwarden Joseph Merceron. In 1823 King moved to a wealthier and less populous parish which he had inherited in 1821. Septimus Hansard (rector, 1864–95) was a

Christian Socialist A Christian () is a person who follows or adheres to Christianity, a monotheistic Abrahamic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. Christians form the largest religious community in the world. The words ''Christ'' and ''Chr ...

and a friend of F. D. Maurice; he and

Edward Pusey Edward Bouverie Pusey (; 22 August 180016 September 1882) was an English Anglican cleric, for more than fifty years Regius Professor of Hebrew at the University of Oxford. He was one of the leading figures in the Oxford Movement, with interest ...

were active in assisting cholera victims in 1866. Hansard introduced a daily

Eucharist The Eucharist ( ; from , ), also called Holy Communion, the Blessed Sacrament or the Lord's Supper, is a Christianity, Christian Rite (Christianity), rite, considered a sacrament in most churches and an Ordinance (Christianity), ordinance in ...

and reservation of the sacrament. It was during Hansard's incumbency that St Matthew's had its most notable curate: the Christian Socialist

Stewart Headlam Stewart Duckworth Headlam (12 January 1847 – 18 November 1924) was an English Anglican priest who was involved in frequent controversy in the final decades of the nineteenth century. Headlam was a pioneer and publicist of Christian socialism, ...

(Curate, 1873–78) who established the

Guild of St Matthew The Guild of St Matthew was an English high-church Christian socialist association led by Stewart Headlam from its establishment in Bethnal Green on 29 June 1877 when Headlam was Curate at St Matthew's to its dissolution in 1909. While the guild ...

in the parish in 1877. Headlam's socialist views were so extreme that he was never offered an incumbency, and, for 14 years, was even refused a licence to officiate. Hansard's successor was

Arthur Winnington-Ingram Arthur Foley Winnington-Ingram (26 January 1858 – 26 May 1946) was Bishop of London from 1901 to 1939. Early life and career He was born in the rectory at Stanford-on-Teme, Worcestershire, the fourth son of Edward Winnington-Ingram (a Ch ...

(Rector, 1895–97) who had been head of the

Oxford House The term Oxford House refers to any house operating under the "Oxford House Model", a community-based approach to addiction recovery, which provides an independent, supportive, and sober living environment. Today there are nearly 3,000 Oxford Hous ...

settlement since 1888. The church, bombed on the first night of the Blitz, continued to serve the community during World War II with a temporary church erected within its bombed-out shell. During the 1990s following the 1993 ruling to ordain women as priests, the then incumbent, Christopher Bedford, converted to Catholicism and, for a time, held both Roman Catholic and Anglican services within the historically Church of England church. When he eventually departed, two thirds of parishioners followed him to Roman Catholicism. Those who remained worked with three priests-in-charge to stabilise the church before appointing Kevin Scully as the new, long-term, rector in 2002. Following his departure in 2018, and an irreconcilable dispute between the new incumbent and parish council, many of those who had remained following Christopher Bedford’s departure in the 1990s, resigned from their duties in 2021. The funerals of the

Kray twins Ronald Kray (24 October 193320 March 1995) and Reginald Kray (24 October 19331 October 2000) were English gangsters or organised crime figures and identical twin brothers from Haggerston who were prominent from the late 1950s until their arres ...

were both held at St Matthew's, in 1995 and 2000 respectively.

Churchyard

The churchyard closed to burials in the 1850s. The landscape gardener Fanny Wilkinson, for the

Metropolitan Public Gardens Association The Metropolitan Public Gardens Association (also known as the MPGA) is a charity in London for the purposes of the preservation of public parks and gardens, established in 1882. It facilitated the creation of new public open spaces, including f ...

, converted it to a public garden in 1896. Wilkinson removed all but two of the tombs, one of which is Merceron's.

Rectors

Until the mid-19th century, the parish was a college living of

Brasenose College, Oxford Brasenose College (BNC) is one of the Colleges of the University of Oxford, constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. It began as Brasenose Hall in the 13th century, before being founded as a college in 1509. The l ...

, with all rectors up to Joshua King being from Brasenose College. *1743–1747 John Brookbank *1748–1765 Edward Davenport *1766–1809† William Loxham *1809–1861† Joshua King *1861–1864† Timothy Gibson *1864–1895† Septimus C. H. Hansard *1895–1897

(subsequently

) *1898–1901 Bernard R. Wilson *1901–1916 Herbert V. S. Eck *1916-39 Sydney L. Sarel *1939-49 Francis W. Ferraro *1949-57 Alfred Arthur Gorbold *1958-68 Charles Geoffrey How *1968-74 Cyril Ashton Rowe *1974-79

Kenneth Leech Kenneth Leech (15 June 1939 – 12 September 2015), also known as Ken Leech, was an English Anglican priest and Christian socialist in the Anglo-Catholic tradition. Life and career Leech was born into a secular working-class family in Ashton-unde ...

*1981-96 Christopher John Charles Bedford *1997-2001 David Thomas Peebles, David Patent, Jon Scott (Priests-in-Charge) *2002-18 Kevin John Scully *2019–present Erin Marie Clark

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Saint Matthew's Bethnal Green

18th-century Church of England church buildings Grade II* listed churches in London Grade II* listed buildings in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets Diocese of London Bethnal Green