The Parliament architect honed his Gothic Revival design skills on four Islington churches.
Architect Sir Charles Barry (1795-1860) is best known for the neo-Gothic Palace of Westminster. Four lesser known churches he designed in Islington early in his career were crucial to developing his understanding and practice of the Gothic architectural styles he would later use so prominently.
Barry became a leading figure in the 19th century Gothic Revival movement, but he also continued to use classically-inspired Italianate and Baroque designs for a number of his buildings.
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Barry’s designs for the Palace of Westminster, in collaboration with Augustus Welby Pugin, won a competition in 1836, two years after the old Houses of Parliament were destroyed in a fire. The Palace was built between 1840 and 1860.
In addition to the Palace of Westminster, among the many significant London buildings designed or re-worked by Barry are the Royal College of Surgeons at Lincoln’s Inn Fields, the Reform Club on Pall Mall, Lancaster House on The Mall and the Cabinet Office on Whitehall (originally the Treasury). He was also responsible for remodelling the layout of Trafalgar Square, opened in 1844.
In other parts of the country, his major works include Manchester Art Gallery, Royal Sussex County Hospital (Brighton), Halifax Town Hall, Cliveden House, several other country houses and a number of churches.
All four of the churches Barry designed in Islington in the early years of his prolific career are still standing. These are the churches of St Paul on St Paul’s Road, St John the Evangelist in Upper Holloway, Holy Trinity in Cloudesley Square and St Peter on St Peter’s Street.
All are listed Grade II* by Historic England, apart from St Peter’s, which is Grade II. St John’s is the only one of the four still in use as a church.
St Paul’s was built between 1826 and 1828 on Hopping Lane, the road to Hackney, at the junction with what is now Essex Road. Hopping Lane’s name was changed to St Paul’s Road in honour of the church.
Barry chose grey brick with stone dressings for his Perpendicular Gothic design for St Paul's Church, which includes prominent buttresses and pinnacles and a tower at the east end.
The site was on land owned by the Marquis of Northampton (owner of the nearby Canonbury Tower - see Would Elizabeth I recognise Islington today? for more on that building). At the time the church was built, the area was still largely rural, although it was in the process of being transformed from pastures to brick fields to fully developed houses.
It ceased to be used as a church in 1980 and has been home to St Paul’s Steiner School since 1995.
St John’s, also Gothic and also built 1826-1828, stands on the corner of Holloway Road and St John’s Grove. It is the only one of Barry’s four Islington churches that is still a church.
However, the churchyard has long ceased to be used for burials. When I visited to take the photo below, it was being used to sell Christmas trees.
Barry chose white Suffolk brick for St John's and put its tower at the west end, but the overall appearance closely resembles his parallel project of St Paul’s. Both of these Perpendicular Gothic designs create a sense of symmetry and height, accentuated by the slopes of the roofs of the nave and aisles that flank the tower.
Holy Trinity in Cloudesley Square in the Barnsbury area of Islington, was constructed between 1826 and 1829 in grey brick with stone dressings. This time, Barry created a Tudor Gothic design with no tower, achieving a scaled-down near copy of the 16th century chapel of King’s College, Cambridge.
Cloudesley Square was the first residential square in Barnsbury, sparking a development phase that covered this previously rural area with housing within two decades. The square was built at the same time as the church on the Stoney Field, which had been bequeathed to the parish of St Mary Islington by Richard Cloudesley, a local landowner, when he died in 1517.
The parish sold the houses built on his land in the 20th century, but the Cloudesley Trust invested the proceeds and still gives significant sums annually to Islington-based charitable causes.
The Church of England withdrew from Holy Trinity in the 1970s. The Celestial Church of Christ, which has origins in West Africa, used it from 1980 until 2017.
In recent years, the building has undergone much needed renovations. Since November 2023 Holy Trinity has been a temporary home for the Florence Trust, an educational charity supporting artists.
St Peter’s, built 1834-1835 and not a Commissioners' church, was the last of Barry’s four Islington churches. It saw him return to a Perpendicular Gothic style with white Suffolk brick and stone dressings.
However, its most perpendicular and distinctive feature – the tower and spire – were added in 1842 by architects Roumieu and Gough (who earlier designed what is now the Almeida Theatre, also in Islington - see my post on the Almeida Theatre). To me, the spire has a more than passing resemblance to Thunderbird 3.
St Peter’s stopped being used as a church in the 1980s and was subsequently converted into flats.
Barry’s first three Islington churches were part of the Church Building Commissioners’ programme of over 600 new churches under the Church Building Acts of 1818 and 1824, which granted them a total of £1.5 million.
This followed a surge of national pride after the defeat of Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815. The churches are known as ‘Commissioners’ churches’, ‘Waterloo churches’, or ‘Million Pound churches’ (the first Act of 1818 granted one million pounds for their construction). Barry’s first Commissioners’ churches were in Lancashire and he also built two in Brighton.
His initial Islington trio were his first works of any kind in London.
They were built under the supervision of Rev Daniel Wilson, Rector of St Mary Islington. He was effectively overseeing the fragmentation of his very large parish, which extended from the Angel in the south to the Archway Bridge in the north. The rapidly growing population had become too large for St Mary on Upper Street and the newly-built chapel of ease, St Mary Magdalene (1811) on Holloway Road, which were the only two Anglican churches in Islington before Barry’s three.
The Commissioners’ programme was an important stimulus to the Gothic Revival movement, which gained popularity in the early decades of the 19th century. Barry’s Commissioners’ churches gave him the opportunity to develop his skills in this emerging style. According to a biography of the architect by his second son, Rev Alfred Barry, “he threw himself into the new study with characteristic diligence and perseverance”.
Historic England rates Barry's Islington churches as "some of the best of the period" in “the newly embraced Gothic style”. Historic England’s official listing praises Holy Trinity’s “strong Tudor-Gothic architectural qualities throughout its soaring interior and striking exterior”.
However, Barry himself did not look back on his early Islington churches with fondness. His son Alfred tells us that “he used to think and speak of them afterwards with a humorous kind of indignation”.
“[H]e carefully destroyed every drawing relating to them, and would have still more gladly destroyed the originals. Up to the day of his death he felt that he was continually advancing in knowledge of Gothic, and was unsparing in the criticism of his own earlier work”.
Sir George Gilbert Scott, also one of the leading architects of the 19th century, was more positive. He judged Barry's Islington churches “really respectable and well-intentioned”.
Perhaps Scott’s words were faint praise, but Barry’s sculpted likeness appears among some of history’s greatest architects on the Albert Memorial, which Sir George designed (please see my post on the Albert Memorial).
This accolade may have been more in recognition of Barry’s later works, surmounted by his designs for the Palace of Westminster. Nevertheless, the Islington churches were crucial in laying the foundations for his later success.
Walks available for booking
For a schedule of forthcoming London On The Ground guided walks, please click here.
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