ALL SAINTS MARGARET STREET
History and architecture
Introduction | Beginnings | Inside | Tiling | Windows | Chancel | Outside | Historic images
Introduction
'I was aware that I was standing not only in one of the great monuments of Victorian church art, arguably William Butterfield's masterpiece, but also in one of the penultimate expressions of its revived faith within a tradition which stretched back to the Caroline divines in the seventeenth century, down through the Oxford Movement in the nineteenth to our own day.' Roy Strong, on his first visit to All Saints.
'It is the first piece of architecture I have seen, built in modern days, which is free from all signs of timidity or incapacity...it challenges fearless comparison with the noblest work of any time. Having done this, we may do anything: there need be no limits to our hope or our confidence.' John Ruskin.
These
two quotations are an appropriate place to begin a survey of All Saints,
Margaret Street. Both encapsulate the sense of awe and holiness that greets
worshipper and visitor alike.
Both also set All Saints within a historical context - liturgically and architecturally. The Ruskin quotation in particular also hints at the response to All Saints upon its unveiling. Like all great things, All Saints provoked - and continues to do so - a variety of reactions, both positive and negative. Not everyone in the mid-19th century saw freedom from timidity as a good thing.
It is not possible, nor would it be accurate, to divorce the architecture from the history and worship of All Saints. That all should be deeply entwined was a fundamental principle behind the foundation and design of the church. The following pages will trace its history, from its origins as a model church for the Ecclesiological Society, to the architecturally fascinating, decoratively beautiful, but most importantly alive and spiritually enriching place of worship that we have today.