Union Chapel, Islington

Union Chapel in Islington is one of the most remarkable buildings in north London — a working Congregational church, an internationally renowned live-entertainment venue, and a charity drop-in centre for the homeless, all under one soaring Gothic roof. Built in the late nineteenth century and listed at Grade I, it stands at the north end of Upper Street, near Highbury Fields, and it has become famous far beyond its congregation: voted London's best live music venue by the readers of Time Out, celebrated for its extraordinary acoustics, and home to a wide-ranging ministry of practical compassion. Few churches in Britain combine worship, music and social action so fully, or so successfully.

The congregation's origins lie at the very end of the eighteenth century. It first met in 1799 in a house in Highbury Grove, as a "union" of evangelical Anglicans and Nonconformists — and it is from this coming together of different Protestant traditions that the chapel takes its name. Between 1805 and 1809 a new chapel was built by Henry Leroux on the present site in Compton Terrace, just off Upper Street, and the congregation moved into it in 1806. This first chapel was a two-storeyed building in the classical style, with a central pediment and houses on either side; a girls' school was founded in 1807 and a boys' school in 1814. The Reverend Thomas Lewis — father of the topographer Samuel Lewis — was minister from 1804 to 1852, living next door.

It was under his successor, the Reverend Henry Allon, minister from 1852 to 1892, that the chapel rose to prominence. Allon greatly increased the congregation as the population of Islington grew, and the original building became, as the records put it, "inconveniently crowded"; by the 1870s it had been enlarged and given a colonnaded façade. Eventually it was replaced altogether by the present magnificent building, designed in the Victorian Gothic style by the architect James Cubitt and built between 1874 and 1877, with further additions up to 1890. The choice of Gothic was unusual for a Nonconformist church, most of which favoured classical styles, and Cubitt's design was unusual in another way too: its plan is based on the early medieval church of Santa Fosca at Torcello, in the Venetian lagoon, giving it a centralised, almost octagonal form quite unlike the long naves of most churches. This bold and original design created a vast preaching auditorium seating 1,700 worshippers, with every seat close to the pulpit, and behind it a great Sunday School built on the "Akron Plan" with a hall for a thousand children. The solid tower was completed in 1889.

It is the building's centralised design, conceived to gather a great congregation around the spoken word, that gives Union Chapel the superb acoustics for which it is now famous — and which have made it, in modern times, one of London's most sought-after concert venues. The chapel today hosts around 250 events a year, embracing live music, film, spoken word and comedy, and has been voted London's best live music venue by Time Out readers more than once; artists of every kind have performed beneath its Gothic arches, drawn by the unique atmosphere and the remarkable sound. The chapel was first listed in 1972 and is protected at Grade I, while the former Sunday school, lecture hall and vestry block were separately listed at Grade II* in 2011.

Yet for all its fame as a venue, Union Chapel remains first and foremost a living church and a centre of social action. It is a Congregational church, part of the Congregational Federation, describing itself as "a community of Christians of diverse backgrounds committed to living lives that are spiritual, sustainable and responsive to the Gospel's prophetic call for justice and peace", and it gathers for worship every Sunday morning. Its congregation has long been distinguished: two Liberal Prime Ministers, William Ewart Gladstone and Herbert Henry Asquith, were at different times members. Alongside its worship and its concerts, the chapel is home to the Margins Project, which provides a range of support services to people facing homelessness, crisis and isolation — a twice-weekly drop-in offering advice, showers and laundry facilities, a Supported Employment Programme, a Winter Night Shelter and access to therapy. In this way the building serves its community in body, mind and spirit, putting into practice the social gospel that the chapel has always preached.

Union Chapel stands on Compton Terrace at the northern end of Upper Street, one of the liveliest thoroughfares in London, lined with shops, bars, restaurants and theatres. The green open space of Highbury Fields lies just to the north, and nearby are the Almeida Theatre, the antique shops and market of Camden Passage, the Business Design Centre, and the wider attractions of Islington and the borough's elegant Georgian and Victorian squares, with the King's Cross and Angel districts and central London a short distance to the south.

From a union of evangelical Anglicans and Nonconformists meeting in a house in 1799, through the classical chapel of 1806 and the great congregation gathered by Henry Allon, to James Cubitt's astonishing Gothic auditorium of the 1870s — modelled on a Venetian church and graced by two future Prime Ministers — and its modern life as a celebrated concert venue and centre for the homeless, Union Chapel gathers more than two centuries of Nonconformist history and social conscience into one extraordinary building. A Grade I listed church at the heart of Islington, it remains a living Congregational church, one of London's finest music venues, and a place where worship, art and compassion meet beneath the same Gothic roof.