St Peter's Church, Eaton Square, London

St Peter's Church stands at the east end of Eaton Square, in the heart of Belgravia, one of the grandest and most fashionable districts of central London. A handsome neoclassical church fronted by a great portico of Ionic columns and crowned by a clock tower, it has served the elegant squares and stuccoed terraces of Belgravia since the 1820s. It is a building that has twice risen from the ashes of fire, most recently after a devastating arson attack in 1987, and yet it remains, in the words of The Times, "one of the most beautiful churches in London". A Grade II* listed building, St Peter's is both a distinguished work of Georgian architecture and a living, thriving parish church.

The church was built between 1824 and 1827, as part of the first great development of Eaton Square by the Grosvenor family, whose estate transformed the fields of Belgravia into one of the most desirable addresses in London. It was designed by the architect Henry Hakewill in the neoclassical style then in vogue, with a hexastyle portico — a portico of six columns — in the Ionic order, and a clock tower above. The interior was, in the fashion of the day, a "preaching box", with galleries on three sides and the organ and choir at the west end, an arrangement designed to focus attention on the pulpit and the spoken word; the architectural writer James Elmes called the effect "chaste and simple". St Peter's was a Commissioners' church, one of the many built in the early nineteenth century with the help of grants from the Church Building Commission: the full cost came to over £22,000, towards which the Commission contributed £5,556.

Fire has shaped the church's history more than once. The original building burnt down, and in 1837 it was rebuilt from Hakewill's own drawings by one of his sons. In 1875 the church was enlarged and reordered to the designs of the prolific architect Sir Arthur Blomfield, who added a chancel at the east end together with north and south transepts, and — in a striking change of style — "fiercely normanized" the interior, giving the chancel and transepts a Romanesque Revival character within, even as their exteriors were made to conform with Hakewill's neoclassical design without. For much of its early life the church was reckoned to be in Pimlico, and until at least 1878 it was usually recorded as St Peter's, Pimlico.

The twentieth century brought both growth and loss. After the parishes of Christ Church, Broadway, and St Andrew's, Ashley Place, were damaged beyond repair in the Blitz, much of their territory was merged into St Peter's. In 1951 the crypt, which contained some four hundred burials, was cleared and the remains reinterred at Brookwood Cemetery in Surrey, and the choir, long supplied by the London Choir School, lost its choristers when that school closed in 1958.

The most dramatic event in the church's modern history came on 20 October 1987, when an anti-Catholic arsonist set fire to the east end of the building, in the mistaken belief that it was a Roman Catholic chapel. Within hours the church was engulfed in flames, and by the time the fire was out the next day only the Georgian shell remained — roofless, gutted, and stripped of most of its furnishings. The loss was grievous, but the parish resolved to rebuild. The Braithwaite Partnership of architects was appointed to redesign the church completely, with a new and simpler interior, and to make ingenious use of the site by incorporating within it a vicarage, offices, flats for the curate, verger and music director, a meeting hall, nursery school rooms and a large playroom for the church's youth club — turning disaster into an opportunity to create a building that could serve the whole life of the parish.

Work on the new church began at Easter 1990 and was completed in 1991. The grand Georgian portico was retained, preserving the church's familiar face to Eaton Square, but beyond it the interior was rebuilt clean, bright and modern. The choir and organ were placed once more at the west end, as in Hakewill's original plan of 1827, but the fittings throughout are thoroughly contemporary, and the building was made fully accessible. Behind the altar is an apse decorated entirely with gold mosaic, glowing above the sanctuary, and around its side can be seen part of the 1873 sanctuary that survived the fire — a tangible link between the new church and the old. The result is a building that marries Georgian grandeur with modern simplicity, and it is this happy combination that won The Times's praise in 1991.

St Peter's stands in Eaton Square itself, one of the largest and most magnificent of London's garden squares, surrounded by the cream-stuccoed terraces of Belgravia. The church lies within easy reach of Belgrave Square and the embassies, the shops and restaurants of Elizabeth Street and Sloane Square, the gardens and grandeur of Buckingham Palace, and the wider attractions of Westminster and Knightsbridge — placing it at the very heart of fashionable London.

From a Commissioners' church built for the new Belgravia in the 1820s, through its rebuilding after fire in 1837, Sir Arthur Blomfield's Romanesque enlargement of 1875, the upheavals of the Blitz, and its dramatic destruction by arson in 1987 and rebirth in 1991, St Peter's Church has shown a remarkable capacity for renewal. A Grade II* listed building behind its great Ionic portico, ranked among the most beautiful churches in London, it remains the living Anglican parish church of Eaton Square — a Georgian landmark twice reborn from fire at the heart of Belgravia.