St Peter's Church

St Peter's Church is an Anglican church in Streatham, in the London Borough of Lambeth, a Grade II* listed building that occupies a commanding position on the rising ground of Leigham Court Road. A picturesque essay in Victorian polychrome brickwork, it was built to serve a parish that grew up almost overnight around the new suburban railway, and it remains a lively church of the Diocese of Southwark.

Until the opening of Streatham Hill and West Norwood stations in 1856, the area that would become St Peter's parish was largely rural, dotted with a few large villas along Leigham Court Road and Crown Lane. The railway that linked these stations to Victoria changed everything, drawing in not only more substantial houses but great numbers of modest semi-detached and terraced homes, and with them a population that needed a church. The parish of St Peter, Streatham, was carved from parts of St Leonard's, Streatham, and St Luke's, West Norwood. Around 1866 a temporary iron church, dedicated to St Peter and St Paul, was raised on the west side of Leigham Court Road, opposite the present site. The parish itself was formed in 1870, the year the first portion of the permanent church — designed by Richard Drew — was consecrated by Samuel Wilberforce, Bishop of Winchester. In 1886–87, as further funds came in, the building was enlarged to plans by George Fellowes Prynne.

The young parish reflected the rhythms of suburban faith. In 1886 its population stood at 2,889, served by three clergy, with combined morning and evening attendance reaching almost 40 per cent of the parish; by 1901 the population had risen to 4,780 but attendance had fallen to under 20 per cent. The neighbourhood has since filled out completely: the Diocese of Southwark estimated the parish population at 12,400 in 2001 and 14,300 in 2011.

The building makes the most of its sloping site on the east side of Leigham Court Road, facing a curve in the road just south of Glennie Road. Polychrome brickwork, clay-tile roofs, turrets, varied windows, a stair-turret and a great wheel window combine to give the west front an asymmetrical, picturesque character. The fall of the land allowed the architects to set a suite of parish rooms at ground-floor level beneath the church, so that the worship space occupies the whole upper part of the structure, reached by a flight of steps and a ramp leading to an entrance on the higher ground toward the east. The church did not escape the Second World War unscathed: a flying bomb destroyed the external round turret, and much of the stained glass was lost. In the late 1980s the interior was reordered under Derek Philips RIBA, the altar moved to the west end — originally the baptistry — while the east end became a day chapel with choir stalls.

The surviving and replacement glass tells the story of that wartime loss and post-war recovery. On the north wall only fragments remain in the tracery, one dedicated to Georgina Tarbutt, wife of the first vicar, by Ward and Hughes, and another, possibly by Clayton and Bell, showing four angels with ribbons bearing a verse from the Book of Kings. The rose window in the west wall, displaying the twelve disciples with Matthias in place of Judas, was reinstated by Lawrence Lee after the war and further restored in 1994; Lee also designed the nine windows of the former baptistry that is now the sanctuary, three symbolising baptism and six the other traditional sacraments, as well as the east window of 1955 above the original High Altar. The south wall keeps fragments of a Queen Victoria memorial window, notable for having been erected as early as March 1901, made by Chater & Son to a design by G. V. Ostrehan. The four-manual organ by William Hill & Sons came through the bombing unscathed, and the church maintains a choir and youth choir and offers an annual choral scholarship.

In the churchyard stands the war memorial, separately Grade II listed, unveiled in 1922 and restored and rededicated in 2018 by Christopher Chessun, Bishop of Southwark. St Peter's has been served by a notable line of clergy since Arthur Charles Tarbutt, its first vicar from 1870; among his successors was Dr John Hall, vicar from 1984 to 1992 and later Dean of Westminster from 2006 to 2019 — a reminder of the reach of this confident, railway-age church above the streets of Streatham.