St John's Church, Waterloo

St John's Church, Waterloo, is an Anglican church in the Greek Revival style in south London, built in 1822–24 to the designs of Francis Octavius Bedford. Dedicated to St John the Evangelist, it stands on Waterloo Road opposite the London IMAX, close to Waterloo station — a striking classical church with a fine spire, and one with a remarkable history of destruction, rebirth and renewal that has made it the "Festival of Britain Church".

The church was one of the Commissioners' churches, and specifically one of the four great "Waterloo churches" built in south London in thanksgiving after the Napoleonic Wars. In 1818, as the country settled into peace and its towns expanded rapidly, Parliament voted up to a million pounds for new churches in populous parishes, "more particularly in the Metropolis and its Vicinity", and in 1822 the Commissioners allocated £64,000 to the parish of Lambeth. St John's was the result. Its architect, Francis Octavius Bedford, was a respected Greek scholar and antiquarian who designed four churches for the Commissioners — St John's among them — all in the same Greek style. At a time when fashion was turning from the Greek Revival towards the Gothic, Bedford's churches were fiercely criticised, but St John's won more appreciation, largely for its fine spire, which used classical detail to build up the more traditional shape of an English parish church.

The site was very swampy — partly a pond — and the great engineer John Rennie the Younger was consulted on the foundations. His recommendation that the walls be set on piles proved so successful that, after 125 years, heavy bomb damage and ten years' exposure to the weather, the walls were still strong enough to be reused. That endurance was tested again during the construction of the Jubilee line, when the drying of the soil beneath the church threatened its stability, and millions of gallons of water had to be pumped into the foundations to prevent collapse.

The church was renovated by Reginald Blomfield in 1885 and altered internally by the great church artist Sir Ninian Comper in 1924. Then, in 1940, it was struck by a bomb that destroyed the roof and much of the interior. For ten years it stood open to the sky, services held in the crypt, the congregation calling it "St John's-in-the-crypt", until it was restored and remodelled by Thomas Ford in 1950. In 1951 it was rededicated as the Festival of Britain Church — for it stood close to the Festival's South Bank site — its new interior decorated with Greek motifs, gilt and light pastel shades, and a fine mural by Hans Feibusch replacing the damaged Victorian reredos. The organ dates from the church's construction in 1824, restored after the war, and the tower holds a ring of eight bells of 1825.

Today St John's is a thriving, inclusive and multicultural congregation in the Anglican catholic tradition, with strong links to its local community. It hosts the popular Waterloo Festival each June, runs the community project The Bridge at Waterloo, and is home also to the Okusinza Church, a Luganda-language congregation serving mainly Ugandan worshippers. Committed to justice and environmental work — it won an EcoChurch Gold award in 2022 — it has a restored churchyard garden and food stalls outside through the week. A major restoration of the nave and crypt in 2021–22, led by Eric Parry Architects, included the meticulous conservation of the Feibusch mural and won national awards.

From its building as a Greek Revival "Waterloo church" in the 1820s, through its destruction in the Blitz and its rebirth as the Festival of Britain Church, to its lively life today, St John's Church, Waterloo, remains both a fine monument of the Greek Revival and a vibrant, welcoming church at the heart of one of London's busiest districts.