St Stephen's Church

The Church of St Stephen and St Thomas stands on the Uxbridge Road at the corner of Coverdale Road in Shepherd's Bush, west London, a short walk from the tube station. Built in 1849–50 to designs by Anthony Salvin — the great Victorian architect better known for restoring castles like Windsor and Alnwick — it is a Grade II listed Gothic Revival church whose true distinction lies as much in its social history as its stones: this is the church that welcomed the Windrush Generation, nurtured the Church of England's first black bishop, and founded a housing association that today manages more than five thousand homes.

St Stephen's was a Commissioners' church, one of those built with money voted by Parliament under the Church Building Act of 1818 and its successors, though much of the cost was borne personally by Bishop Blomfield of London, with part of the site given by James Gomme, who is commemorated in a stained-glass window. Salvin built in Kentish ragstone with Bath stone dressings, providing a tower and what contemporaries praised as a "very well developed chancel"; the original glass was by William Wailes, donated by clergy and well-wishers. The Ecclesiologist, the campaigning journal of the Gothic Revival, noted with satisfaction at the consecration in 1850 that the church showed how far the diocese was willing to embrace arrangements and decoration that had become "novelties in England" after long disuse. The first priest in charge, William Cooke of Trinity Hall, Cambridge, was a noted hymn-writer and translator. The whole parish north of Goldhawk Road was assigned to the church — and by 1870, such was Shepherd's Bush's growth, it was already overcrowded.

The world wars left deep marks. Ninety-one parishioners died in the First World War, their names recorded on the memorial in the north aisle; among the decorated were Charles Carey MM, L. W. Moberley MC, and Captain Charles George Douglas Napier MC DCM, a flying ace credited with nine aerial victories in the Bristol Fighter before he was killed in action in May 1918 — the London Gazette praised his "greatest judgment, determination and daring". Around 1940–41 enemy bombing damaged the spire beyond saving and destroyed the original north aisle glass along with the great east and west windows; in 1949 the spire was taken down and replaced by the present low octagonal copper flèche. The centenary of 1950 was nonetheless celebrated with a "great pageant" and a dinner attended by William Wand, Bishop of London.

Then came the chapter that defines the modern church. In the 1950s many West Indian immigrants settled in Shepherd's Bush, and St Stephen's became known as a church that welcomed the Windrush Generation when many congregations did not. In 1962 the Barbadian-born Wilfred Wood became curate; a lifelong champion of racial justice, he was consecrated Bishop of Croydon in 1985 — the Church of England's first black bishop — and his influence endures in the many West Indian families still rooted in the congregation. In 1960 the parish merged with St Thomas's to form the present parish, and in 1958 the church received its organ, built by Henry Willis & Sons in 1888 for St Andrew's Haverstock Hill and rebuilt here by N. P. Mander. A quieter memorial recalls PC David Wombwell, murdered in 1966 in the notorious Shepherd's Bush murders.

That same year the vicar, John Asbridge, frustrated by the chronic shortage of local housing, founded the Shepherds Bush Housing Association from the church's choir vestry, staffed by parish volunteers; some parishioners gave their own houses for homeless families, beginning with a dilapidated house at 220 Hammersmith Grove converted into flats. Asbridge ran the association for twenty years, and it now owns and manages over five thousand homes — perhaps the most concrete legacy any London parish church has produced.

St Stephen's today ministers to a richly diverse congregation, serves a hot meal to up to a hundred homeless people every Monday, and partners closely with the neighbouring St Stephen's primary school. The building itself needs help: Historic England has placed it on the Heritage at Risk Register, with roofs and rainwater goods in poor condition letting in water, and the parish has launched an appeal to fund repairs — the latest chapter in a story of a church that has always belonged, body and soul, to its neighbourhood.