YMCA History Bourchier and Starmer

Centenary Book

St Jude-on-the-Hill is one of the most distinctive of modern English churches. The ecclesiastical masterpiece of Sir Edwin Lutyens, of cathedral-like proportions, and decorated with an extensive mural scheme by Walter Percival Starmer, it expresses the unconventional Christianity of the founders of the model community of Hampstead Garden Suburb and the radical outlook of its early inhabitants. Making use of the church’s own considerable archive as well as recently discovered Starmer papers the Centenary Book celebrates the consecration of the church in 1911 with a close examination of its foundation and early years. It suggests this ordinary parish church was as much a temple to fin de siècle spirituality as to Anglican orthodoxy.

Published in August 2011.

Order now.

Campaign from on high at St Jude's

A full page about the Lady Chapel murals in this week's Church Times (31 July 2015)

Study Day 23 September 2017

Remembrance Sunday 2016 at the Free Church

Crucifix at Anneaux and Bourlon Wood 1916 by W. P. Starmer

Joint Suburb Service of Remembrance 
Sunday 13 November 2016 
1045 at the Free Church

Said Requiem Eucharists at St Jude's at 8am and 10am in the Lady Chapel

Unrealised design for a Second World War memorial by W. P. Starmer

Open House 17 - 18 September 2016

St Albans U3A Architecture Group visit to the church

St Albans U3A Architecture Group

We had a really lovely visit to St Jude's today - and we are very grateful to you for giving the time to us to bring to life the history of Hampstead Garden Suburb and your beautiful church.

I particularly liked the wall paintings in the Lady Chapel, and the insights you gave us into what Henrietta Barnett and her colleagues were trying to achieve.  We walked around the Suburb after our visit with new eyes.

I hope that your lottery bid is successful - an uphill struggle indeed to maintain such a large building!  I attach two photos I took and hope they are useful.

What a lovely programme for the St Jude's Proms - although we will be away so I won't be able to come to any of them - but I will look out for them again next year.

Once again,  thank you for your time and expertise, and for making us so welcome.

Edith Cavell Centenary

Edith Cavell was arrested, tried, found guilty of assisting the enemy, and shot by a German firing squad on October 12 1915. 

Read more about her here.

Her image appears among the 'Eminent Women' in the Lady Chapel at St Jude's.

Read more about Walter Starmer's mural here.

The High Altar in about 1925

The church has recently acquired this unusual image of the high altar made between c1923 
when the east wall was reconstructed and c1928 when Starmer painted the mural of the Last Supper.  
Most of the items displayed are still in the possession of the church.

Victory in Europe 1945

VE Day 1945 was marked at St Jude's by a Thanksgiving Mass and special services the folowing Sunday.

St Jude's has no Second World War Memorial.  The church muralist Walter Starmer, still a worshipper and sidesman at the church, made designs for one, but the church council decided to raise funds instead for a memorial hall, as the church hall had been requisitioned during the conflict.  The memorial hall was never built.  Memorial windows Starmer designed for the Lady Chapel were not commissioned.

Starmer designed stained glass windows as Second World War memorials for other churches including All Saints, Leavesden, St Aldhelm's, Edmonton and this one for Wealdstone Methodist Church.

Talk and Tea: Sunday 17 May

Walter Starmer 17 May

Michael Rennie Memorial

Jennifer Robertson, Assistant Curator at the Merseyside Maritime Museum, visiting the church today to view the Michael Rennie Memorial in preparation for an online exhibition marking the 75th anniversary of the sinking of the City of Benares later this year. 

The witch's hat

James Alexander Cameron, a second-year PhD research student at the Courtauld Insitute of Art researching sedilia, the seats for the priest, deacon and subdeacon found in the walls of many of England’s parish churches, recently visited the Suburb and St Jude's.  

He posted his reactions - and links to his photos - on his blog stainedglassattitudes.wordpress.com

"I don’t need this “Open House” nonsense to get in interesting buildings, I left the queuing to hoi polloi and went on a guided tour of Hampstead Garden Suburb, in which we got to tramp through a newly-moved-in-resident’s back garden which was rather exciting. I feel it is above and beyond my call of duty to upload and label my pictures of the various properties (this is also the third time I’ve been round with a Pevsner) so I’d just like to say I think I decided that day I would like to live in this one, with a Neo-Elizabethan glazed bay, the most (please).

The centrepiece of course to the suburb is Nedi’s bizarre witch’s hatted, at the very least stylistically bizarre and at worst downright reckless (barrel vaulted nave with open timber aisles?? What are you thinking, you fool?!) St. Jude-on-the-Hill. The most amazing thing about the church are the paintings, over seemingly every inch of wall and ceiling space, by Walter Starmer, 1919-30. If you’ve never heard of him that’s probably because much of his career was spent here. The New Testament is absolutely ransacked for subjects: Christ’s ministry, but also His parables and aphorisms. There are some clever formal parallels, such as Christ dragging His Cross mirroring Him riding a donkey on the other side of the vault, as well as the spectacular, where by looking up and spinning round, one can recreate “Woman, behold thy son, son behold thy mother“. All of Starmer’s paintings are a bizarre stylistic oddity: still with Victorian Arts and Crafts ambition and ornamental motifs, but infused with a proto-cinematic realism akin to Tissot’s Gospel Illustrations, yet still with the broad heroic gestures of history painting, with a whiff of the Art Deco. It’s a marvel it ever got finished."

Epiphany 2014

This Sunday (5 January) we celebrate the Feast of the Epiphany - the visit of the 'Magi' (the wise men) to the infant Jesus. Starmer's mural painting in St Jude's portrays them as oriental kings travelling with a magnificent train and carrying lavish gifts. 

The word 'epiphany' means 'manifestation' and refers to the interpretation of the Magi as the representatives of the Gentiles recognizing the infant Jesus as the King of the World.

In Search of Starmer Tuesday 21 May 2013

The Vicar is giving an illustrated talk on Walter Starmer 
the artist who painted the murals in the church and was also a war artist in the First World War. 

'In Search of Starmer' is at Fellowship House 

at 2.30 on Tuesday 21 May 2013.  

Entrance is £2 for non-members including tea and biscuits.

The Stations of the Cross

The Way of the Cross

The Way of the Cross has formed part of Christian devotion at Passiontide for many centuries because they enable us to engage actively with the path of suffering walked by Jesus. They originated when early Christians visited Jerusalem and wanted to follow literally in the footsteps of Jesus, tracing the path from Pilate’s house to Calvary along the via Dolorosa - the street of suffering.

They would pause for prayer and devotion at various points or stations. Eventually those pilgrims brought the practice back to their home countries and ever since then Christians have used this form of devotion.

In the late fourteenth century the Franciscans were given the responsibility for the holy places of Jerusalem and they erected pictures or tableaux to aid the devotion of the visitors.

The Stations in St Jude's are the work of W. P. Starmer.

During the weekdays of Lent - beginning tomorrow and continuing until the Friday before Palm Sunday - we will be publishing short meditations based on the Stations in the St Jude's.

New Article on Starmer

The December 2011/January 2012 edition of Stand To! The Journal of the Western Front Association has an article on Starmer by David and Judith Cohen of David Cohen Fine Art.

Starmer's signature