Church of Our Lady of Grace

Our Lady of Grace Church is a Roman Catholic church in Charlton, in the Royal Borough of Greenwich, south-east London — built between 1905 and 1906 in the Neo-Romanesque style to the designs of the French architect Eugène-Jacques Gervais, for the Oblates of the Assumption as part of their international mission work in England during the French religious exile of 1901–1914. Its story joins French anti-clericalism, a pre-Reformation Marian shrine, pioneering concrete engineering, and a villa whose former owners include the rocket inventor who inspired a line of the American national anthem.

The parish began in exile. In 1903, driven from France by anti-clerical legislation, a community of the Oblate Sisters of the Assumption established themselves in Charlton by purchasing a private residence, Highcombe House, in coordination with the Augustinians of the Assumption and the Diocese of Southwark. Mass was first celebrated in the house on 18 July 1903 by Father Benedict Caron AA, the first mission priest, and the chapel was opened to local residents, gradually building a Catholic mission. The foundation stone of the present church was laid on 27 August 1905 by Bishop Amigo, and the building opened a year later, on 8 September 1906, by Father Darbois, Superior of the Assumptionist Mission in New York. The dedication to Our Lady of Grace was chosen because a pre-Reformation shrine of Our Lady of Grace had once existed in the area — the exiled French religious reviving a devotion the English Reformation had extinguished four centuries before.

Gervais designed in Neo-Romanesque — rare for Catholic churches in England at a time when Gothic Revival dominated, and one of the few examples of Continental Romanesque Revival in British Catholic architecture. Built by Jones & Sons of Erith in stock brick laid in English bond with stone dressings under a slate roof, the church was also among the earliest in England to use reinforced concrete extensively, employing the innovative technology in its columns, arches and vaults. The west elevation has buttresses dividing nave and aisles, blind arcading below the eaves, and an aedicule niche with a statue of the Madonna and Child above a cusped circular window and gabled porch. Inside, the five-bay nave carries a barrel vault on Corinthian columns with scagliola shafts; instead of a windowed clerestory there is a triforium with quatrefoils in circles containing symbols from the Litany of Loreto. The sanctuary originally featured a dramatic statue of the Virgin and Child standing on clouds, lit by concealed windows in the apse — reportedly inspired by a similar arrangement at Saint-Sulpice in Paris.

The 1920s brought new furnishings — an organ, pulpit and benches carved by Father Gregory Chedal AA, with the tribune gallery on the south side probably of the same era — and the purchase of Woodlands House as a convent. The church was significantly restored and expanded in 1959 under Father Walter Robertson AA, the first English parish priest: an outer north aisle was added, the foundations strengthened, a concrete floor laid, the high altar remodelled and the whole redecorated, with the cloud-borne Virgin replaced by a painting of Our Lady of Grace — a copy of an icon from the Augustinian church of S. Patrizio in Rome — and a rood cross. The Stations of the Cross, carved by Virgilio Prugger and painted by Henry Farmer around 1959, and the octagonal timber pulpit carved with the Four Evangelists and Christ, complete the interior. Bishop Cowderoy consecrated the church on 13 September 1960. The Assumptionists, who had served alongside the Oblate Sisters from the 1903 foundation, handed pastoral care to diocesan clergy in 1989. The parish founded Our Lady of Grace Catholic Primary School in 1928, continuing the educational legacy the Oblate Sisters began at Highcombe House — over a century of continuous teaching on the site.

Highcombe House itself, now the presbytery and community centre, is a Grade II listed early-to-mid nineteenth-century stucco villa with hipped slate roof, deep eaves and semi-circular bays — the last surviving mansion of the historic Eastcombe estate that once spread between Greenwich and Charlton Village, and one of only two structures remaining from the Westcombe and Eastcombe estates. It is believed to have been commissioned around 1825 by Sir William Congreve, 2nd Baronet — MP for Plymouth, friend of George IV, and prolific inventor whose Congreve Rocket inspired Francis Scott Key's "the rockets' red glare" in "The Star-Spangled Banner". Later residents included General Sir George Whitmore, Commandant of the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich, and from about 1865 William Henry Barlow — the engineer of St Pancras Station's great roof and the second Tay Bridge — who is commemorated with an English Heritage blue plaque. The wider Eastcombe estate's residents ranged from Captain William Saunderson of HM Yacht William and Mary to the Countess of Buckinghamshire, widow of the Colonial Secretary after whom Hobart, Tasmania is named.

Today Our Lady of Grace serves its Charlton parish within the Archdiocese of Southwark, its Romanesque barrel vault and Loreto quatrefoils sheltering a community whose roots run from a pre-Reformation shrine through French exile to the modern multicultural parish — with the rocket-maker's villa still standing guard beside the church the exiles built.