Church of St Peter

St Peter's Church, Ealing, is an Anglican parish church in Mount Park Road, North Ealing, in the Diocese of London — regarded by Sir John Betjeman as an example of a Victorian-built church "of which we can be proud", and held to be one of the premier architectural works in Ealing. The Grade II* listed building is celebrated for its combination of Arts and Crafts and late-Victorian Gothic, its remarkable west front and great west window; Sir Roy Strong judged that "notable for its unusual fusion of free Gothic style used in a highly original manner, St Peter's occupies no small place in the last great age of church building."

St Peter's was built as a mission church of Christ the Saviour, Ealing, whose rector raised funds for four daughter churches — St John's, St Stephen's, St Saviour's and St Peter's. The land was donated by John Clark Record, and the new church, built between 1892 and 1893 to serve the growing suburb of North Ealing, replaced an iron church that had stood on the site for ten years. That iron church had been dedicated to St Andrew, and the same name was proposed for its successor — until the Presbyterians began building in Mount Park Road in 1889, and the vestry felt "this Church should set the example of giving way in face of a threatened dispute about the Saint's name", abandoning, with commendable tact, the Scottish saint in favour of St Peter.

The architect was John Dando Sedding, designer of Holy Trinity, Sloane Street — one of the great figures of the Arts and Crafts church — but following Sedding's death the church was built under the direction of his pupil and successor in practice, the noted designer Henry Wilson. The foundation stone was laid in 1893 by Princess Helena, Queen Victoria's third daughter, and the building was consecrated the same year by Frederick Temple, Bishop of London and later Archbishop of Canterbury. The Builder magazine praised Sedding's plans as "a piece of real originality in design, which is refreshing to come across after seeing so many repetitions of old forms, Classic and Gothic", and Pevsner noted the "admirable use of Gothic forms — especially the curvaceous forms of late Gothic — to produce a building of great originality". The west front carries two small turrets flanking the recessed west window — unusually large, with fine composite tracery — while the long steep nave roof is linked by shallow chains of arches connecting small turrets. Wilson himself created the brass panels on the inside of the main doors, worked with flowing Art Nouveau patterns, originally accompanied by a bronze angel by F. W. Pomeroy, now lost. Inside, much of the intended ornamentation was never completed — but the substantial four-bay nave with its Gothic triforium, clear-glazed windows and lack of ornament makes the church unusually light and spacious. Sedding's intended north transept tower was never built; two aisle doorways were added in 1911, and only six windows of a planned full scheme of stained glass by Walter Tower of Kempe and Co were completed.

The architect and designer Leonard Shuffrey, a parishioner for decades until his death in 1926, beautified the church, designing the font (executed by Blackler of Torquay and dedicated in 1911) and the decoration of the alabaster high altar table; in 1896 the Architectural Association visited the new church and took tea afterwards at Thorncote, Shuffrey's Queen Anne house on Edgehill Road. His son Gilbert was killed at Gallipoli and is memorialised in the Lady Chapel and on the Ealing Town Memorial — which Leonard himself designed.

The Lady Chapel, built in 1913 on the south side of the chancel, became the parish's war memorial. The scheme was led between 1921 and 1928 by the vicar, Bertram Kite — formerly Dean of St David's Cathedral, Hobart, Tasmania — and his wife, in memory of their son Ralph Bertram Kite, who died fighting in northern France, and of the fallen of the wider community. An oak reredos by Cecil Greenwood Hare and a brass plaque came in 1921; altar rails were given by the social campaigner Isabella Holmes — the expert on London's burial grounds, daughter of the chemist John Hall Gladstone and half-sister of Margaret MacDonald, wife of the Prime Minister — and her husband Basil, in memory of their son Wilfred. The scheme was completed in 1928 with a decorated ceiling, a new screen, and fine wall paintings of the Annunciation angels over the reredos by the watercolour artist Henry Charles Brewer, painted on canvas at his Acton studio — his only known church decoration, the face of his Angel Gabriel thought to be based on his brother, the etcher James Alphege Brewer, one of whose etchings, donated by a family descendant in 2022, now hangs in the chapel, which was conserved and restored that year. In the south aisle hangs "Christ before Pilate" by the late Pre-Raphaelite Edward Arthur Fellowes Prynne — brother of the architect George Fellowes Prynne and a parish resident — painted in 1898 in his garden studio at 1 Woodville Road, presumed to be the work he exhibited at the Düsseldorf Exhibition of Religious Art, and given to the church by his widow after his death in 1921.

The church's registers record notable names: the Australian artist Emmanuel Phillips Fox married Ethel Carrick here in 1905; the Australian aviation pioneer Harry Hawker married Muriel Peaty here in 1917; the broadcaster Kenneth Allsop in 1942 and General Sir Anthony Farrar-Hockley in 1945 were married here; and the funeral of the poet and essayist Henry Austin Dobson was held at St Peter's in 1921. Its clergy went on to high places: Henry Austin Thompson (vicar 1909–1916) was later killed by enemy action at St Peter's Eaton Square in 1941; William Taylor (1991–2000) became Dean of Portsmouth Cathedral; Mark Powell (2000–2011) is Canon Steward of St George's Chapel, Windsor; curates included Morris Maddocks, later Assistant Bishop of Bath and Wells, and Michael Tavinor, later Dean of Hereford. David Neno has been vicar since 2012.

Today St Peter's holds Sunday and weekday services with major celebrations at Easter and Christmas, and serves as a community hub — running a walking group, hosting the Ealing Churches Winter Night Shelter, an organ recital series, an Amnesty letter-writing group, book club, junior church and Sunday choir, with local schools using the church for concerts and carols. Sedding and Wilson's luminous free-Gothic vessel remains what Betjeman saw: a Victorian church to be proud of, alive at the heart of its suburb.