St Luke's Church, Kew

St Luke's Church in The Avenue, Kew, in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames, is a late-Victorian parish church that has, in recent decades, been imaginatively reinvented as both a place of worship and a community centre. Built in the Gothic Revival style to serve a rapidly growing suburb, it is today the spiritual home of a living congregation and the hub of much community activity in Kew, combining its religious life with a wide range of secular uses. Its story is, in many ways, a parable of how the Church of England has adapted its great Victorian buildings to the needs of the modern age.

The church owes its existence to the suburban growth of Kew in the later nineteenth century. As the railways spread — the District line was extended to Richmond and a station opened at Kew Gardens, while the London and South Western Railway reached Kew and Richmond — the population of the area increased considerably, and the existing provision for worship became inadequate. A temporary "iron church" was first opened in Sandycombe Road (later becoming a working men's club), and to replace it the permanent St Luke's Church was built in The Avenue in 1889.

It was a large and ambitious building, designed by the architects Goldie, Child and Goldie to seat a congregation of 400, in anticipation of the growing population the railways were bringing. Built of irregularly coursed sandstone, it had a large towerless nave and a chancel of equal height; a spire was included in the initial design but was never built. The hopes of its builders for a great and growing congregation, however, were not fully realised — it is doubtful whether the church ever regularly enjoyed full congregations, and by the 1970s the congregation had dwindled, sometimes to as few as a dozen people, with frequent complaints that the great Victorian building was uncomfortable and cold to use.

Faced with this, the parish made a bold decision. In the late 1970s ambitious plans were drawn up to convert much of the church into a secular day centre for the elderly, with a much-reduced area kept for worship. A substantial budget was raised, the church hall was sold to help fund the work, and the conversion was carried out in two phases, in 1984–85 and 1989. The works reduced the worship space to the former chancel and aisles, while the rest of the building was given over to secular community uses, occupied by the Kew Community Trust, which leases the premises from the parish. This part of the building, known as the Avenue Halls, can be hired for adult and children's activities, and an upstairs room, opened in 1990 by HRH Princess Alexandra and named after her, added further community facilities. In this way the great Victorian church found a new and sustainable life, serving the whole community of Kew.

Today St Luke's continues as an active Anglican parish church, one of two parishes in the united benefice of Kew, alongside the Barn Church of St Philip and All Saints, and a member of Churches Together in Kew. It combines its worshipping life with its role as a community centre, and publishes a parish magazine, The Link. Its reinvention as a shared building, part sacred and part secular, has allowed it to remain at the heart of Kew's community life.

The church stands in The Avenue, in the leafy and prosperous district of Kew, on the south bank of the River Thames in south-west London. Kew is famous above all for the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew — a UNESCO World Heritage Site and one of the most important botanical gardens in the world, with its great Victorian glasshouses, its pagoda and its treetop walkway. The attractive Kew Green, the older parish church of St Anne, the riverside and Kew Bridge, the National Archives, and the wider attractions of Richmond and the Thames valley are all close at hand.

From a temporary iron church serving the railway suburb of Kew, through the building of the large Victorian church of St Luke in 1889, to its dwindling congregation and its bold reinvention in the 1980s as a shared place of worship and community centre, St Luke's Church gathers the story of a changing suburb into one building. A Victorian Gothic church given new life for the modern age, it remains the living parish church of St Luke, Kew — a place where worship and community meet in the heart of one of London's most attractive districts.