Church of St James, Twickenham

The Church of St James, Twickenham, is a Roman Catholic church on Pope's Grove, in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames, dedicated to St James the Apostle. A modest but charming Gothic Revival building of the 1880s, recognised as a building of Townscape Merit, it has a history out of all proportion to its size, for it became the parish church of exiled royalty — most notably the last King of Portugal — and it stands in a corner of Twickenham steeped in literary and aristocratic associations. Its windows, paintings and carvings bear witness to a remarkable web of connections linking this suburban church to the royal houses of France and Portugal.

The church was built to serve the Catholic community of Twickenham, which had previously worshipped at a mass centre in Grosvenor Road in the town. It was paid for by a benefactor, James de Lacey Towle — hence its dedication to his name-saint, St James — and was opened in 1885 by Cardinal Henry Edward Manning, the great Archbishop of Westminster, who returned to consecrate it in 1887. It has been described as "a relatively modest Gothic Revival building which takes its cues from thirteenth-century architecture", a dignified essay in the Early English style. Within, it is rich in works of art, including a copy of Raphael's Madonna and Child, donated around 1900 by Sir Mountstuart Grant Duff; a striking representation of St James as "Matamoros", the conqueror of the Moors, painted by Vicente de Arroyabe in 1995; and a painting of the church itself by the Dutch-born writer and artist Hilda van Stockum.

The setting is one of great literary fame. Alexander Pope, the Catholic satirist and poet — one of the greatest English poets of the eighteenth century — lived at Pope's Villa a short distance away in Cross Deep from 1718 until his death in 1744, and gave his name both to Pope's Grove, on which the church stands, and to the famous Pope's Grotto that survives nearby. That a Catholic church should rise in the very district where the persecuted Catholic poet had lived gives St James's a special resonance, a sign of the long journey of English Catholicism from the penal era to the freedoms of the Victorian age.

The church's most remarkable associations, however, are royal and continental. The fleur-de-lys carvings on the ceiling above the sanctuary bear witness to the support given to the parish by the French Royal Family — the exiled House of Bourbon-Orléans — who lived in the locality for several decades, and the side altar dedicated to the apparition of the Sacred Heart to St Margaret Mary Alacoque further reflects the church's French connections. Princess Marie-Amélie of Bourbon-Orléans was born at York House in Twickenham — now the offices of the local council — in 1865; she married King Carlos of Portugal, and became the mother of King Manuel II, the last King of Portugal.

It is King Manuel II who is the church's most famous parishioner. After he was driven from his throne by the Portuguese revolution of 1910, Manuel settled in Twickenham, living at Fulwell Park, and became a devoted member of St James's, regularly attending Mass and taking an active part in local affairs. During the First World War he supported the Allied cause and Portugal's entry into the war, and engaged in many activities to relieve the suffering it caused; he and his wife, Queen Augusta Victoria, stood as godparents to many children at their Confirmation in the church. The King donated two of the church's windows: one dedicated to St Anthony, the patron saint of Lisbon, bearing the royal crest, and the other to St Edmund of Abingdon, Archbishop of Canterbury, installed in memory of a former priest of the parish. He also opened the parish hall in December 1927, and after his death in 1932 the parish acquired various sacred vessels associated with him, so that the memory of the exiled king is woven through the fabric and furnishings of the church to this day.

These royal connections give St James's a unique character among suburban London churches — a place where the tragedies and devotions of the deposed royal houses of Europe found a home, and where their generosity still adorns the building. Yet it remains, above all, a living and active Roman Catholic parish church, serving the Catholic community of Twickenham within the Archdiocese of Westminster.

The church stands in Twickenham, a riverside town on the Thames in south-west London, famous as the home of English rugby at Twickenham Stadium. Nearby are Horace Walpole's Gothic fantasy house at Strawberry Hill, the Palladian villa of Marble Hill House, the bohemian Eel Pie Island in the Thames, the riverside walks and the elegant streets of Richmond and Twickenham, and the great royal parks and palaces of the Thames valley, with Pope's own grotto preserved close at hand.

From a church built for Twickenham's Catholics in 1885 and consecrated by Cardinal Manning, through its connections with Alexander Pope's old neighbourhood, the exiled French Bourbon-Orléans family, and above all the last King of Portugal who worshipped and gave so generously here, the Church of St James gathers a remarkable history into one modest Gothic building. A building of Townscape Merit in the Archdiocese of Westminster, it remains the living Roman Catholic parish church of Twickenham — a suburban church touched by the royal exiles of Europe and the memory of one of England's greatest poets.