St Alban's Church, Teddington

St Alban's Church in Teddington — now the Landmark Arts Centre — is one of suburban London's grandest might-have-beens: a vast French Gothic church begun in the ambition of becoming "the Cathedral of the Thames Valley", never finished, abandoned by its congregation, rescued by its neighbours, and now alive with concerts and exhibitions. Dedicated to St Alban, the first English Christian martyr, the Grade II* listed building in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames is still owned by the Church of England but leased to the arts centre that saved it.

The church stands on Ferry Road directly opposite Teddington's historic parish church of St Mary's, on part of the grounds of Teddington Place — the property Charles Duncombe acquired in 1683 from the Marquis of Winchester. The house, later renamed Udney Hall, was demolished in 1946, and its site is now Udney Hall Gardens. The new church was the project of the Rev Francis Leith Boyd, appointed Vicar of Teddington in 1884 at the age of twenty-eight, whose congregation at little St Mary's dreamed on a heroic scale: their new church was based on Notre-Dame de Paris. The foundation stone was laid in 1887, the building rose in 1889 and was consecrated in 1896 — but the money ran out. The planned tower of two hundred feet was never built, the nave fell short of its intended length, and a "temporary" wall closed the west end. Though never designated a cathedral, the church was known informally as the Cathedral of the Thames Valley all the same.

The architect was William Niven (1846–1921), born in Pershore, who had worked with Sir George Gilbert Scott on the restoration of the chapter house at Westminster Abbey and lived at Udney House while engaged on St Alban's; his name is engraved on the external wall at the west end of the south aisle. He built in Doulting limestone from near Shepton Mallet in Somerset, with finer-grained Corsham limestone from Wiltshire for the internal partitions. The internal fittings were by A. H. Skipworth, and the pulpit stands halfway down the nave in the French manner; its simple canopy was replaced in 1902 by a carved oak design embellished with gilded representations of three orders of angels. The glass tells a layered story: the Jonah and the Whale window on the east side of the north transept was designed by Charles Eamer Kempe on the model of a window in Christ Church, Oxford; the original 1890s glass, much of it later vandalised, was by W. F. Dixon; the east window of St Alban and the clerestory windows of Saints Peter, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John and Paul are by Morris of Westminster (1953); and the west wall holds a window of about 1850 by Ward and Hughes, originally installed in St Peter's Church, Islington, rescued in 1987 by the London Stained-Glass Repository of the Worshipful Company of Glaziers, and re-leaded for installation here in 1992.

The great church's parish life lasted barely seventy years. In 1967 the congregation moved back across the road to the historic but far smaller St Mary's, and in 1977 the building ceased to be used altogether, sitting empty and vandalised for years — though not entirely unloved: in 1985 the Norwegian pop band A-ha filmed the video for "The Sun Always Shines on TV" inside it. Salvation came from local residents, led by Jean Brown, who started the campaign and later served as President of the Landmark Arts Centre until her death in 2011, and Irene Sutton, secretary of the Friends of St Alban's, who fought to save the deconsecrated church as a community arts venue. In 1993 the temporary west wall was finally replaced with a permanent one as the building was adapted to its new role.

Today the Landmark Arts Centre, an independent charity, runs a wide-ranging arts and education programme in Niven's soaring nave — classes, concerts, exhibitions and fairs — and the building is open to general visitors on weekdays from 9.30am to 5pm, its surviving architectural features on show. The Cathedral of the Thames Valley never got its tower, but it found, in the end, a congregation of a different kind.