Brompton Oratory

Brompton Oratory, more properly the London Oratory and formally the Church of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, is one of the grandest and most beautiful Catholic churches in London, standing on the Brompton Road in Kensington, next to the Victoria and Albert Museum. A magnificent building in the Italian Baroque style, consecrated in 1884, it is served by the Oratorians — the priests of the Congregation of the Oratory of St Philip Neri — who live in the Oratory House next door. Famous for its splendid architecture and for the magnificence of its liturgy and music, it is the spiritual home of a great Catholic community in the heart of London.

The Oratory grew out of the Catholic revival of the nineteenth century. The Oratorians, a community of priests founded in sixteenth-century Rome by the much-loved St Philip Neri, were brought to England by St John Henry Newman, the great theologian who was received into the Catholic Church in 1845 and who founded the Birmingham Oratory. A London Oratory was established by another distinguished convert from Anglicanism, Frederick William Faber, and his companions, who settled at Brompton. As their community and congregation grew, a great new church was needed, and after a competition the present church was built to the designs of the young architect Herbert Gribble, in the rich Italian Baroque style — a deliberate evocation of the great churches of Rome, very different from the Gothic Revival then fashionable in England. The church was consecrated in 1884, and its great dome over the crossing was completed a little later, in the 1890s.

The Oratory is a building of real splendour. It consists of a wide, three-bay nave, transepts, and an apsed chancel, all crowned by the dome, and it is one of the largest Catholic churches in London. Its interior is richly adorned with marble, gilding and statuary in the Italian manner — including a magnificent set of large marble statues of the Apostles, carved by the seventeenth-century sculptor Giuseppe Mazzuoli, which originally stood in Siena Cathedral, and a Lady Altar brought from Brescia. The effect is of warmth, colour and Baroque grandeur, unlike any other church in the city. It is listed at Grade II* for its architectural significance.

The Oratory is celebrated above all for the beauty of its worship. Mass is celebrated daily by the Oratorians in both the modern and the traditional Latin forms, and the church has a great reputation for the quality of its liturgical music, with three choirs and a tradition of fine organists, among them the renowned Ralph Downes. Because of its character and its central location, it attracts worshippers and visitors from many countries — after the Second World War it temporarily hosted the parish of London's Polish community — and it is closely connected with the London Oratory School, founded by the Oratorians. The church has also entered popular culture, as the place where the film director Alfred Hitchcock was married, and through its appearances in fiction and film.

Today Brompton Oratory continues as a thriving Catholic parish church in the Archdiocese of Westminster, served by the Oratorian community, and a place of worship, music and beauty drawing people from across London and beyond. Its Italian Baroque splendour and its devotion to the dignity of the liturgy make it one of the most distinctive and admired churches in the capital.

The church stands on the Brompton Road, in the South Kensington district of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, in central London. The great museums of South Kensington — the Victoria and Albert Museum next door, the Natural History Museum and the Science Museum — lie close by, along with the shops of Knightsbridge, including Harrods, the Royal Albert Hall and Hyde Park, and the wider attractions of central London, all within easy reach.

From the bringing of the Oratorians to England by St John Henry Newman and the founding of the London Oratory by Frederick William Faber, through the building of the great Italian Baroque church by Herbert Gribble and its consecration in 1884, to its renowned liturgy and music, Brompton Oratory gathers the story of the Victorian Catholic revival into one building. A Grade II* listed masterpiece of the Baroque and one of the grandest Catholic churches in London, it remains a living centre of Catholic worship in the heart of the capital — the London Oratory of St Philip Neri.