St Mary's Church, Hampton

St Mary's Parish Church, Hampton, is an Anglican church in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames, standing tall on Bell Hill at the junction of the roads to Twickenham, Kingston and Sunbury — the ancient heart of Hampton, beside the Thames and within sight of Hampton Court Palace, whose kings and gardeners thread through its whole history.

The site is said to be that of a Romano-British chapel, and a house of worship has certainly stood here for at least 650 years: the historical record begins in 1342, when the site came into the possession of the Priory of Takeley in Essex, in whose annals it is described as a rectory of that monastery. Before then a simple wooden structure may have existed — or services may even have been held under the ancient yew that stood in the churchyard until 1829.

The first church for which records survive was built of flint and stone. Its interior had galleries round the north, west and south sides, with a singing loft for choir and instruments, and a three-decker pulpit — the first level for the clerk, the second for the lessons, the uppermost for sermons — with the royal pew at the front of the north gallery. From 1557 the old church also housed a schoolroom and provided a master for Hampton School, which still gathers in the church on its Founder's Day each year. In the time of Henry VIII a new nave, south aisle and porch were rebuilt in brick — the old ones "having got out of repair and become unsafe" — while the original flint and stone chancel and tower were retained. When the tower in turn became unsafe in 1671, a new brick tower was erected, Charles II contributing £350; and in 1726 the north aisle, the vault beneath it and the vestry room at the north-west corner were added, George I giving £500 toward the work. This much-patched building was described as Hampton's "brick church in pre-eminence, with fresh-painted and accommodating covered benches in the churchyard"; it was well attended, with twelve or more carriages waiting outside on Sundays, and its worshippers included George FitzClarence, 1st Earl of Munster — the eldest illegitimate son of King William IV.

By the 1820s the growing population demanded more. An extension was planned in 1821 — the Crown promising a contribution if seats were provided for the residents of Hampton Court Palace — but funds fell short, and after eight years of schemes and design competitions the old building closed on 27 December 1829 and was demolished, the congregation worshipping meanwhile in the Great Hall of Hampton Court Palace. The architect of the new church was Edward Lapidge, a local man whose father Samuel had been assistant to Lancelot "Capability" Brown and head gardener at Hampton Court; both father and son are buried in the churchyard. Prince William, Duke of Clarence laid the foundation stone on 18 April 1830, and the church was consecrated on 1 September 1831 — an occasion so significant that Queen Adelaide, Prince George and Princess Augusta attended and the roads were blocked with carriages a quarter of a mile away. The Duke of Clarence himself, by then King William IV and due to be crowned just one week later, did not attend, but presented the organ to the parish. Memorials from the old church were preserved and re-erected, including those to Susannah Thomas (died 1731); to Sibel Penn (died 1562), nurse to Edward VI; to Edmond Pigeon and his son Nickolas, Yeoman of the Jewel House; and to Huntington Shaw (died 1710), the blacksmith who "designed and executed the ornamental Iron work at Hampton Court Palace".

The Victorian decades filled the new shell with life. The parish was subdivided as Hampton grew — St James's, Hampton Hill was created in 1863 for the new northern district, and All Saints followed in 1929. The churchyard filled by 1879, when burials moved to the new Hampton Cemetery on Holly Bush Lane; the same year the organ moved from the west gallery to the north-west corner as a surpliced choir began, being reconstructed in 1901. Under the energetic Prebendary Digby Ram (1882–1911), the box pews were replaced in 1885 and the nave refurbished — and when Bishop Walsham How re-opened the building, there immediately followed the first Confirmation service since 1831. For Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee in 1887 the chancel was built, with the impressive Heaton, Butler and Bayne east window inspired by the Te Deum, flanked by the "Magnificat" window on the north of the chancel and the "Nunc Dimittis" on the south. A war memorial screen was added in the 1920 re-ordering, with matching choir and clergy stalls in 1931.

The twentieth century gave St Mary's its most distinctive artworks: the stained glass on the north and south walls by Eric Fraser — the celebrated illustrator — depicting the Annunciation and the four Archangels Michael, Raphael, Gabriel and Uriel; and the striking west-wall mural painted in 1952–53 by his son, the Reverend Geoffrey Fraser, whose left panel shows figures from local history, the right panel members of the congregation of the day, with the figure of Christ rising above the River Thames between them. A north aisle chapel with stainless steel fittings was consecrated in 1967; St Luke's Chapel in the west porch was dedicated in 1990, its doors etched with the Virgin Mary and the Archangel Gabriel from drawings by Eric Fraser, presented by his family in his memory. Later improvements brought a kitchen and toilets, a stage area, Millennium floodlighting, an extensive exterior restoration in 2005, and a 2013 reordering that moved the side chapel to the south aisle.

The churchyard reads like a Hampton Court staff register. Here lie Huntington Shaw the ironsmith; Samuel Lapidge, Capability Brown's assistant, and his architect son Edward; George Lowe (1716–1758), master gardener to George II, "father of the royal gardener at Hampton Court" — his son planted the palace's Great Vine in 1768; George FitzClarence, Earl of Munster; the judge Sir William Wightman; Lord Alfred Paget, soldier, courtier and politician; Captain Hugh Campbell of the royal yacht Victoria and Albert, who died of typhoid at Hampton Court Palace in 1877; and Sir James Mantle Greenwood, the advertiser and local politician knighted in 1962. Most curious of all is the Grade II listed pyramidal tomb of John Greg (1716–1795), a plantation owner in Dominica, and his wife Catharine, who died at Hampton in 1819 "full of years and of benevolence". And the church holds a small literary celebrity: in Jerome K. Jerome's Three Men in a Boat (1889), Harris insists on stopping at Hampton Church "to go and see Mrs Thomas's tomb" — "a lady that's got a funny tomb" — the floridly classical memorial to Susanna Thomas on the south aisle's east wall, with its partly draped female figures that may have surprised some Victorians and amused others, Jerome included.

St Mary's remains a lively parish church, a member of Churches Together around Hampton, and in 2013 it opened a Church of England primary school in Oldfield Road under the Free School programme — the schoolmaster's church of 1557 still teaching Hampton's children, nearly five centuries on.