Holy Trinity, Sloane Street

Holy Trinity Sloane Street — formally the Church of the Holy and Undivided Trinity with Saint Jude, Upper Chelsea — is a Church of England parish church at the south-eastern end of Sloane Street in London, and the supreme monument of the Arts and Crafts movement in English church architecture. Built in 1888–90 to the striking design of John Dando Sedding and paid for by the 5th Earl Cadogan, on whose London estate it lay, the Grade I listed building was famously christened by John Betjeman "the Cathedral of the Arts and Crafts Movement" — and Betjeman would later help save it from demolition.

The first church on the site was a Gothic building of 1828–30 by James Savage, in brick with stone dressings, its west front flanked by octagonal turrets topped with spires. Intended as a chapel of ease to the new parish church of St Luke, it was given its own parish — sometimes known as Upper Chelsea — in 1831, and seated 1,450 in 1838, rising to 1,600 by 1881. Yet at less than sixty years old it was closed and demolished in 1888, a temporary iron church for eight hundred provided in Symons Street while Sedding's grand replacement rose.

The new Holy Trinity was built on a magnificent scale: though not the longest church in London, it was the widest — exceeding St Paul's Cathedral by nine inches. The internal fittings were the work of the leading sculptors and designers of the day, including F. W. Pomeroy, H. H. Armstead, Onslow Ford and Hamo Thornycroft. Sedding died in 1891, his memorial on the north wall of the Lady Chapel, and Henry Wilson took over the completion of the interior to the original design — though in part he failed: some glass was never installed, the planned frieze beneath the high windows was never attempted, and some internal carving remains incomplete to this day. In the 1920s F. C. Eden whitened the interior, lightening the building's character considerably.

The stained glass is among the most important in London. The enormous east window is by Edward Burne-Jones and William Morris — one of their final great collaborations — and there are windows by William Blake Richmond (including some highly decadent imagery), by Powells in the Memorial Chapel, and by Christopher Whall, whose incomplete clerestory sequence and two striking windows on the south side of the nave represent the Arts and Crafts glass tradition at its peak. The large west window, which Morris and Burne-Jones had apparently hoped to tackle before the east, was never executed; its plain glass was destroyed by enemy action in the Second World War, and the project to glaze it remains unrealised.

The church was badly damaged by incendiary bombs in the war but restored more or less to its previous appearance by the early 1960s — whereupon the church authorities themselves attempted to close and demolish it, planning something smaller. The campaign that thwarted them was led by John Betjeman and the Victorian Society, one of the conservation movement's signal victories. The worship has moved with the decades: eclectically high at the opening, less symbolic through the long tenure of Alfred Basil Carver (1945–1980) and his successors, and now returned to a liberal Catholic style, with a thriving congregation built during the incumbency (1997–2007) of Michael Marshall, the former Bishop of Woolwich, and continued under the Revd Rob Gillion — a trained actor who became rector in 2008 and left in 2014 on his election as Bishop of Riverina in New South Wales.

Music has been central since the beginning. Sedding, himself an organist, provided an unusually large chamber in the north-east corner for the noted four-manual J. W. Walker & Sons organ. Damaged in the war, repaired in 1947 and partially rebuilt in 1967, it received a definitive rebuild by Harrison & Harrison completed in August 2012, restoring and enlarging the instrument by about forty-five per cent using the surviving Walker pipework — seventy-one speaking stops and some 4,200 pipes, confirming its place among the principal organs of London. The organists' roll is dazzling: Edwin Lemare (1892–95), the greatest transcription virtuoso of his age; Sir Walter Alcock (1895–1902), who went on to play for three coronations; the composer John Ireland, Alcock's assistant, passed over for the top job as too young; and H. L. Balfour (1902–42). A full choir was maintained until the 1970s, revived from 1987 and rebuilt under Bishop Marshall, Andrew O'Brien (Director of Music 2002–2015) and the organist Michael Brough; today a professional quartet, choral scholars and the associate choir conQordia carry the tradition, with the church serving as a major concert venue — its vast nave, uncluttered by static pews, hosting the annual Chelsea Schubert Festival.

The parish's people match its art. Gladstone attended, marching down the street with Lemare before the main morning service; Sir Charles Dilke lived yards away — his house marked today by a blue plaque — and his funeral was held here. The church drew the Bohemian artists and poets loosely clustered around Oscar Wilde, whose arrest took place, famously, at the Cadogan Hotel nearby. The actor Ernest Thesiger — Dr Pretorius of Bride of Frankenstein — was a lifelong member who served as usher, read the lesson, and paid for the completion of some of the chancel's carved stonework between the wars. Memorials include Archibald Sturrock (1816–1909), Chief Locomotive Engineer of the Great Northern Railway, and in 1896 the church hosted the marriage of George Bowen, son of Sir George Ferguson Bowen and the Contessa Diamantina di Roma, to Gertrude Chamberlain, niece of the Colonial Secretary. In the 1920s, under the rector Christopher Cheshire, the extensive clergy team included for a time Percy Dearmer, the great ecclesiologist and hymnographer.

On 1 November 2011 the parish of St Saviour, Upper Chelsea, was united with Holy Trinity, the Walton Place church becoming a chapel of ease. From 2004 to 2012 Holy Trinity hosted the Awareness Foundation for interfaith understanding, and an arts and crafts guild founded under Bishop Marshall keeps the founding spirit alive — the widest nave in London still doing what Sedding built it for: gathering art, music and worship into one undivided whole.