St Peter and St Paul, Bristol

The Church of St Peter and St Paul is a Greek Orthodox church on Lower Ashley Road in the Easton area of Bristol — the principal Greek Orthodox congregation in the whole of south-west England. Built in the Gothic Revival style and completed in 1847, it began life as an Anglican church, but for more than sixty years it has been the spiritual home of Bristol's Greek and Greek-Cypriot community, a place where the ancient liturgy of the Eastern Church is celebrated in a Victorian English building. Its story is one of changing communities and enduring faith, and it stands as a symbol of the rich diversity of Christian worship in the modern city.

The church was originally built as the Anglican Church of St Simon the Apostle, designed by the architects S. J. Hicks and S. B. Gabriel in the Gothic Revival style and completed in 1847. It was established to serve the rapidly growing and impoverished population of Baptist Mills, an industrial district of Bristol. The site, near Baptist Mills, had originally been agricultural land; a document of March 1804 records its sale to a consortium that included Isaiah Sturge and Thomas Walker, who intended to build a flour mill to help the poor during a period of high wheat prices, and the land remained with the Sturge family until it was acquired for the church.

In the mid-1840s the area was constituted as a new ecclesiastical district under Sir Robert Peel's Act, carved out of the populous Trinity district of St Philip and Jacob. Contemporary reports described the new parish of roughly 2,200 people as "poor and densely populated", and the first incumbent, the Reverend J. T. Barclay, at first struggled to accommodate his congregation in a temporarily licensed schoolroom. The foundation stone of the new church was laid on 18 June 1846 by the Lord Mayor of Bristol, John Kerle Haberfield, with a bottle of silver coins and a commemorative copper plate deposited beneath it; the sermon on the occasion, by the Reverend Peter Hall, took the opportunity to denounce the Oxford Movement as a "canker" on Christianity. Construction proved difficult and expensive because of the unstable, sandy ground of the area, but the church was duly completed and served its Anglican parish for over a century.

The great change came in the twentieth century. After the Second World War, Bristol's Greek and Greek-Cypriot community expanded significantly, and following the merger of the Anglican parish of St Simon with that of St Agnes in 1959, the vacant church building was acquired by this growing Orthodox community. It was consecrated as a Greek Orthodox church, dedicated to St Peter and St Paul, in 1963 — becoming the first permanent Greek Orthodox church in the West Country. Today it is the principal Greek Orthodox congregation in south-west England, under the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of Thyateira and Great Britain, which oversees the Greek Orthodox Church throughout the British Isles.

The interior, once a Victorian Anglican church, has been adapted for Orthodox worship, with an iconostasis — the screen of icons that separates the sanctuary from the nave — and the rich icons, candles and furnishings of the Eastern tradition. Here the Divine Liturgy is celebrated in the Byzantine rite, and the great feasts of the Orthodox calendar are kept, serving not only the Greek and Cypriot community but Orthodox Christians of many backgrounds across the region.

The church stands on Lower Ashley Road in the Easton area of Bristol, an inner-city district that has long been home to many communities. Nearby are St Agnes Park and the diverse neighbourhoods of Easton and St Pauls, the city centre of Bristol with its harbourside, cathedral and historic churches, and the wider attractions of one of England's most vibrant cities, with the surrounding countryside of the West Country within easy reach.

From its building as the Anglican Church of St Simon in 1847 to serve the poor of Baptist Mills, through the decline of its first congregation and its acquisition by Bristol's Greek community, to its consecration as a Greek Orthodox church in 1963, the Church of St Peter and St Paul gathers the changing history of a Bristol community into one building. The first and foremost Greek Orthodox church in the West Country, it remains a living place of worship — a Victorian Gothic church given new life as a home of the ancient Christianity of the East in the heart of Bristol.