All Saints Notting Hill

All Saints Notting Hill is a Church of England parish church on Talbot Road in Notting Hill, London, affiliated to the Anglo-Catholic Forward in Faith movement — a Grade II* listed Victorian Gothic Revival church of striking polychromatic decoration, whose tower is said to resemble the medieval belfry of Bruges, and whose church hall hosted the very first performances by Pink Floyd at the events that grew into the Notting Hill Carnival.

The building was begun in 1852 for the Reverend Dr Samuel Walker, a wealthy property speculator — one of several buying up land in the area then to be known as Kensington Park. The church was designed by the architect William White, working with Sir George Gilbert Scott, as the centrepiece of Walker's development — and, notably, as a church without pew rents, free to all. But Walker's speculation failed financially, he sold his interests to other speculators in the emerging district, and the church was left unfinished for years — standing forlorn amid the half-built streets and earning, in some quarters, the unforgettable epithet "All-Sinners-in-the-Mud". It was eventually completed in 1861, at a cost of £25,000 and without its intended spire, for the incumbency of the Reverend John Light of Trinity College Dublin. The tower stands 100 feet high, its Bruges-like silhouette a Notting Hill landmark, and the chancel carries paintings by Henry Holiday, the Pre-Raphaelite-circle artist.

The Blitz hit All Saints hard. The first bombs fell on 26 September 1940 — damaging the church along with neighbouring buildings including Pinehurst Court at 1–9 Colville Gardens — and it was hit again in March and June 1944, destroying the Lady Chapel and the south transept chapel. Restoration was completed in 1951. The church's organs have led a wandering life of their own: the first, by Gray & Davison, was displayed at the 1862 International Exhibition before installation in the south transept — to some criticism, since White had specifically designed the north transept for the organ, with a great traceried rose window high in the wall, and the south position "completely blocked up a very beautiful four-light window". A new three-manual Norman and Beard organ followed in 1902 in the north chancel and transept, and in 1952 Percy Daniel & Co reconstructed the instrument with the pipework inside the tower, speaking into the church through an opening onto the west gallery. The roll of organists includes the Victorian hymn-composer Henry John Gauntlett — writer of "Once in Royal David's City" — and Sir Nicholas Jackson, 3rd Baronet; the comic baritone Walter Passmore, famous for his Gilbert and Sullivan roles with the D'Oyly Carte, was a choirboy here.

The church's High Church identity was established by the outgoing and gregarious Father John Twisaday, vicar from 1932 to 1961, whose three decades fixed the Anglo-Catholic worship tradition that continues today. His successors have included John Brownsell, whose remarkable forty-two-year incumbency (1976–2018) carried the parish through Notting Hill's transformation from bedsit-land to one of London's most fashionable quarters, Philip Corbett (2019–2024), and from January 2025 the Reverend Charles Card-Reynolds.

The church hall earned its own place in cultural history. On 14 October 1966, Pink Floyd played the first of a number of events known as the Notting Hill Fayre at All Saints church hall — staged by the London Free School, the countercultural community group whose happenings were the forerunners of the internationally renowned Notting Hill Carnival. Three years later Hawkwind also played the hall: the polychrome church of the failed speculator thus stands at the origin point both of British psychedelia and of Europe's biggest street festival. From "All-Sinners-in-the-Mud" to the home of the Carnival's first sparks, All Saints has always belonged, completely, to Notting Hill — its Bruges tower rising over Talbot Road, its incense-laden worship continuing in the Forward in Faith tradition, at the heart of the streets it was built to crown.