The Barn Church, Kew

The Barn Church, Kew — formally St Philip and All Saints — stands at the corner of Atwood Avenue and Marksbury Avenue in Kew, in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames, and holds a unique distinction: it was the first barn church to be consecrated in England. The building was constructed in 1929 from a seventeenth (or possibly sixteenth) century barn transported timber by timber from Oxted in Surrey — some of its beams may originally have been ships' timbers — and it may also claim to be probably the cheapest church of its size ever built, at just £5,000 exclusive of fittings.

Before the Barn Church, local Anglicans in what was then North Sheen worshipped at St Peter's, a hall erected in 1910 on the corner of Marksbury Avenue and Chilton Road (demolished in the 1990s, its site now occupied by the St Philip's Court sheltered housing). The new church's story began in 1926, when the local historian Uvedale Lambert and his wife Cecily of South Park, Bletchingley — in conjunction with her Hoare banking family relations, who gave generous financial help — offered an L-shaped barn and adjoining stables from Stonehall Farm at Hurst Green, Oxted, as one of the twenty-five new churches wanted by the Diocese of Southwark. A site at North Sheen had already been provided by the generosity of Hugh Leyborne Popham; Edward Swan of Oxted was the architect and J. J. Fuller of Chiswick the contractor, with the diocese paying about half the modest cost.

In 1928 the barn was pulled down at Stonehall, each beam carefully numbered — the numbers can still be seen on the beams — loaded onto lorries and carted to North Sheen, where it was re-erected with as few alterations as possible: the roof was hipped to give greater width to the aisles and brick walls replaced the weatherboards, but the stone plinth is original, and the slate slabs in the porches are the barn's original threshing floor. The detailing was a labour of antiquarian love. Walter Hoare of Basingstoke supplied specially baked tiles and two-inch bricks in seventeenth-century style to match the timbers; the mullioned windows were copied from Compton Wynyates in Warwickshire; the tower-frame, copied from Tandridge Church near Oxted, was made from timber cut at South Park, Bletchingley; the broach spire was copied from St Swithun's at Martyr Worthy near Winchester; and the bell was given by Holy Trinity, Wandsworth. Mrs Philip Hoare laid the foundation stone, consecrated by the Bishop of Woolwich on 1 May 1928 — St Philip's day — and the Bishop of Southwark, Dr Cyril Garbett, later Archbishop of York, dedicated the completed church on 4 February 1929. It was built in memory of Henry Gerard Hoare of Stansted House, Godstone, his wife Jane Frances, their sons Henry Gerard Philip and Gerard Croft Hoare — the latter dying in 1918 of wounds received on active service in the First World War — Joyce Hoare, and Uvedale Lambert himself, who died in 1928 before the dedication; a tablet at the west end records their names.

The fittings continue the church's magpie genius for salvage and homage. The lady chapel, furnished in memory of Uvedale and Cecily Lambert by their son, was designed by Hugh Ray Easton of Cambridge and dedicated on All Saints' Day 1933, its cedar wood — like the sanctuary chairs — cut from a single great tree blown down in Godstone churchyard in 1927. The pulpit, carved by Geoffrey Hoare, copies the one in Hereford Cathedral from which Bishop Herbert Croft denounced Puritan soldiers for misusing the cathedral in Cromwell's time. The plain poppy-heads of the choir stalls came from St Dunstan-in-the-West in Fleet Street, discarded in renovations around 1860 and bought by Henry Gerard Hoare — presented by Hoare's Bank, whose Fleet Street premises stood almost opposite that church. The Jacobean altar rails came from Writtle Church in Essex, and the font, copied from Aldenham in Hertfordshire, is cut in "Surrey" marble dug at South Park, Bletchingley. The organ, an original 1894 Forster and Andrews two-manual with tracker action and thirteen speaking stops, was installed in memory of Father John Alban, the Barn Church's first vicar; the lady chapel's stained glass window, designed in 1999 by Christine Flint Sato, commemorates her father Peter Flint, churchwarden for twenty years.

The church has kept evolving. A hall was built in 1967 on part of the vicarage garden by the architect George E. Cassidy; the sanctuary was refurbished in 1998; and in 2002 Keith Murray redesigned the west end, dividing the long nave into a worship area and a large parish room with community facilities and a gallery above looking down the length of the building, all constructed in oak for consistency with the original interior. The church and hall are a hub for the neighbourhood — an almost entirely residential parish, many of whose people work in central London, with few other community facilities nearby — hosting children's activities including a nursery school, with Sunday worship at 9.30 am. St Philip and All Saints shares a joint parish with St Luke's Church, Kew, under the Reverend Dr Melanie Harrington, vicar since June 2021, and belongs to Churches Together in Kew. Notable clergy have included Timothy Beaumont, Baron Beaumont of Whitley — the former Liberal Party chairman, priest-in-charge from 1986 to 1991 — and David Frayne, later Dean of Blackburn Cathedral. The Barn Church's story even proved contagious: it inspired the building in 1930 of St Alban's, Cheam, constructed from the old barns of Cheam Court Farm — possibly connected with Henry VIII's Nonsuch Palace — with Edward Swan again among the architects. A Surrey barn, Fleet Street poppy-heads, a Hereford pulpit and a Godstone cedar: rarely has a church gathered England's fragments so charmingly under one hipped roof.