St Cyprian's, Clarence Gate

St Cyprian's Church stands in the Marylebone district of London, close to the Clarence Gate entrance to Regent's Park, just off Baker Street. Behind its plain red-brick exterior lies one of the most beautiful church interiors in the whole of London — a masterpiece by the architect Sir Ninian Comper, who created here a vision of white and gold inspired by the great "wool churches" of medieval Norfolk. Sir John Betjeman, on entering, famously exclaimed "Ah, Norfolk, Norfolk in Baker Street!" Consecrated in 1903 and listed at Grade II*, the church is dedicated to St Cyprian, the third-century bishop and martyr of Carthage, and is regarded as one of the finest works of the Gothic Revival in the capital.

The parish has its origins in the Victorian Anglo-Catholic mission to the poor. It was the creation of the "slum priest" Charles Gutch, who, after serving as a curate at several London churches, longed for a church of his own among the overcrowded slums in the north-eastern corner of Marylebone. Overcoming the disapproval of neighbouring clergy who distrusted his Anglo-Catholic churchmanship, Gutch obtained a small mission district, and in 1866 opened a mission chapel dedicated to St Cyprian — choosing the saint, he explained, because he had been struck by Cyprian's "tender loving care for his people". The first chapel, designed by the great architect George Edmund Street as a humble and low-budget conversion of a terraced house and a mews hay barn, was a quaint and tiny building that could hold barely 150 people, yet it flourished for some thirty-six years, with daily celebrations and a devoted congregation. Gutch, however, was refused a site for a larger church by the ground landlord, and died in 1896 with his dream of a permanent church unrealised.

It was his successor, the Reverend George Forbes, who brought that dream to fruition. In 1901 the 2nd Lord Portman agreed to sell a site, on condition that enough money was raised to consecrate a church by 1904, and the new St Cyprian's was completed with almost a year to spare, dedicated to the glory of God and to the memory of Charles Gutch by the Bishop of London. The building of the church coincided with the transformation of the neighbourhood, as slums were cleared and fashionable mansion flats were built following the arrival of the Great Central Railway at nearby Marylebone station.

The new church was designed by Ninian Comper, and it was the first wholly new church to be completed to his designs — his earlier work having been the restoration and embellishment of older buildings. Built of red brick with stone dressings, with a clerestoried nave and two aisles but no tower, only a small bellcote, it takes as its model the late-medieval Perpendicular "wool churches" of East Anglia, the nave being modelled on that of Attleborough in Norfolk. Comper conceived the church as "a lantern, and the altar is the flame within it": the walls of the nave are left plain and whitened, so as to throw into contrast the richness of the sanctuary, with its delicate gilded and painted rood screen, its parclose screens, its "English Altar" surrounded by hangings and a painted reredos, and its gilded tester suspended high in the roof bearing the words, in Greek, "I am the Light of the World". The timber roof, with its hammer-beam trusses, and the stone font with its gilded classical cover of the 1930s — an example of Comper's later delight in placing classical beside Gothic, which he called "Unity by Inclusion" — complete a scheme of extraordinary harmony.

That harmony was achieved over more than fifty years, for the church was consecrated in 1904 with its interior still sparsely decorated for lack of funds, and its fittings were completed only gradually as gifts and legacies came in — the screens, font and narthex by 1930, the tester in 1948, and the west doors as late as 1952. Because the same architect supervised the work throughout, with his trusted craftsmen, the result is a single coherent vision. The screens are painted with finely worked figures of saints, each named beneath, and the church's stained glass, also by Comper, is concentrated at the east end. During the Second World War, on 7 October 1940, incendiary bombs burned part of the south aisle roof, and an area of scorched floor has been left as a testament to that night.

St Cyprian's has been celebrated by generations of writers and critics. T. Francis Bumpus called it, a year after its consecration, "one of the most beautiful, harmonious and correctly arranged churches that has been built in London for a long time"; John Betjeman described it as "a Norfolk dream of gold and light within"; and the architectural critic Ian Nairn judged it "the most joyful church interior in London", a "sunburst of white and gold and all-embracing love". Even Nikolaus Pevsner, no friend of twentieth-century Gothic, conceded that here the medieval style was "unquestionably done with joy and care". For many it established Comper's reputation as the most influential English church architect of his generation.

Today St Cyprian's continues as a living Anglican parish church in the Catholic tradition, its incomparable interior drawing visitors and worshippers alike.

The church stands on Glentworth Street in Marylebone, a short walk from Baker Street and the Clarence Gate entrance to Regent's Park. Regent's Park itself, with its gardens, boating lake and London Zoo, the Sherlock Holmes associations of Baker Street, Madame Tussauds, the Wallace Collection, and the wider attractions of the West End are all within easy reach.

From its origins in the slum mission of Charles Gutch in 1866, through the building of Ninian Comper's masterpiece in 1903 and the slow completion of its glorious interior, to its renown as "Norfolk in Baker Street", St Cyprian's Church gathers the story of Victorian and Edwardian London's Anglo-Catholic revival into one building. A Grade II* listed church and one of the most beautiful interiors in the capital, it remains a living parish church and a treasure of English ecclesiastical art.