Guide to St Jude's

Photo by Henry Walker

Saint Jude-on-the-Hill (St Jude's) is the Parish Church of Hampstead Garden Suburb which was founded in 1907 by Henrietta Barnett to be a model community where all classes of people would live together in attractive surroundings and social harmony.

The church was built to the designs of Edwin Landseer Lutyens (1869-1944), the greatest English architect of the first part of the twentieth century. It is a hybrid. Simon Jenkins calls it "the confident application of Queen Anne Revival to traditional church form". Building began in 1909, but the west end was not completed until 1935. The church was consecrated on 7th May 1911. Externally it is 200 feet long and the spire rises 178 feet above the ground.

Inside, the church is 122 feet from the west door to the chancel steps, and forty feet to the highest part of the roof. The ceiling is barrel-vaulted and domed. There are three vaults between the west end and the crossing; a saucer dome over the crossing; one further vault over the crossing and a saucer dome over the sanctuary. The east end finishes in an apse completed in 1923.

The murals and paintings are by Walter Starmer (1877-1962). He began with the Lady Chapel in 1920 and finished with the apse in 1929. Some commentators have suggested that Lutyens would have preferred the church to have remained undecorated and that the paintings spoil the purity of the interior of the church. A recent study, however, concludes that although the architect might not have admired Starmer's style, Lutyens had no objection in principle to the use of frescoes in Saint Jude's, and it is known that he inspected and praised much of the work.

The west window (dedicated 1937) is to the design of Starmer and depicts Saint Jude holding the cross in his right hand and this church in his left. Below is his symbol, the ship; above, Christ in glory, surrounded by the traditional symbols of the four evangelists.

On the north side of the west door is a memorial to the horses killed in the First World War. Made in 1970 by Rosemary Proctor (died 1995), it replaces the original bronze model of a horse by Lutyens's father, and its replacement, which were stolen. Near it is a memorial to Basil Bourchier, the first vicar, and, on the south pillar, a commemoration of the completion of the west end.

The ceiling panels over the centre aisle depict: the wise men and the shepherds; Christ feeding the multitude and stilling the storm; Christ healing the blind and lepers; the crucifixion (dome); and the entry into Jerusalem with Christ carrying the cross (chancel).

The memorials on the north wall are to John Raphael, a popular sportsman killed in the First World War; to Father Maxwell Rennie, a bust by his daughter Rosemary Proctor; and, in the lunette above St George's altar, a painting by Starmer represents the last few moments in the life Michael Rennie, the Vicar's son, who died of exhaustion after rescuing several evacuee children after their ship, the City of Benares, had been torpedoed on its way to Canada in 1940.

The murals here and in the south aisle represent the teaching of Jesus in the parables of the kingdom. The Stations of the Cross, also by Starmer, begin here and continue into the south aisle.

The fine iron screens that flank the sanctuary are much older than the church and bear the name Matthias Heit and the date 1710. The sanctuary floor is patterned in brick and marble. The high altar includes two stones from Canada: a smaller dark one from the former French royal chapel of Annapolis Royal in Nova Scotia (where the first European settlement north of Florida was established in 1605, and where the first regular Church of England services were held in Canada in 1710), and a larger and lighter coloured one from the altar steps of Montreal Cathedral. The foundation stone on the north side of the chancel was laid on St Mark's Day 1910 and is by Eric Gill. The pulpit was also a gift from Canada.

Over the south door (into the car park) is a commemoration of the unveiling of the murals by the Prince of Wales in 1924, and, over the door, a figure of Christ by Rosemary Proctor in memory of her brother. Nearby, on the south wall, is a memorial to Edward VII.

To the left of the chancel is the Lady Chapel, the oldest part of the church, completed and opened for worship in 1910. On the pillar at the right of the entrance is a key to the pictures in the chapel (of noted Christian women). Over the arch is a memorial to the unveiling of the frescoes. In the sanctuary is a wooden statue of Our Lady, a reproduction of the early sixteenth century Mourning Virgin or 'Nuremberg Madonna' which would originally have been part of a crucifixion scene. Its curious proportions suggest that it was meant for a very high position and to be seen from far below. In the central panel of the altar is a modern reproduction of the Madonna and Child by Bernini. The Blessed Sacrament is reserved in the tabernacle behind the altar.

St John's Chapel, to the right of the sanctuary, was a gift of the Harmsworth family in 1923. The murals draw on the Gospel of John and the book of Revelation. The memorial window to Sir John Harmsworth is by Robert Anning Bell, one of the most distinguished artists of his day. It has been described as one of the most charming of his designs, and makes use of features from seventeenth century English Baroque sepulchral monuments.

The green and white marble altar is by Lutyens. In the central panel is a picture by Maurice Greiffenhagen (a friend and colleague of Anning Bell at the Glasgow School of Art, and a fellow Royal Academician) of St John holding a chalice from which is emerging a serpent. This refers to the legend in which the priest of the temple of Diana gave St John poison to drink as a test of faith. Two men had already died of the poison, but St John survived, and restored the other two to life as well. The vestries lie behind the altar of St John.

The 'Father Willis' organ comes from St Jude's church in Whitechapel where Canon Samuel Barnett, husband of Henrietta Barnett, the founder of Hampstead Garden Suburb, was vicar. It stood for ten years at the west end and was moved, after restoration, to its present position in the chancel in 1934. The organ was rededicated in October 2002 following extensive rebuilding and renovation works, including the commissioning of a new console.

‘I went to church with my parents, who had taken to frequenting Saint Jude’s, Hampstead Garden Suburb, a fine Lutyens edifice then in the charge of a highly flamboyant clergyman named Basil Bourchier . . . Personal devotees flocked to him from all parts of London. His sermons were dramatic, topical, irrational and quite without theological content. . . . Despite all Mr Bourchier’s extravagant display I had some glimpse of higher mysteries."

(Evelyn Waugh, A Little Learning, 1964)

"a building of true originality" and a "key work" of its period

(Roslin Mair, Key Dates in Art History, 1979)

Lutyens' "ecclesiastical masterpiece" and "one of the best twentieth-century church exteriors in England"

(Simon Jenkins, The Companion Guide to Outer London, 1981).

St Jude's is one of [Lutyens'] most successful buildings. It exhibits all his best qualities and even turns that 'naughtiness' or wilful originality which often mars his late buildings into a decided advantage"

(Bridget Cherry and Nikolaus Pevsner, The Buildings of England: London 4: North, 1998).

"a magnificent Edwardian period piece. . . The tunnel like domed interior contains a wonderful collection of gay furnishings, the wilful naughtiness of which was quite in keeping with the emancipated outlook of the people who lived in the hand-made red brick houses designed by Raymond Unwin, Baillie Scott, . . . and Crickmer - all of whom were then regarded as the last word of fashion. Gorgeous is the best word to use for the painted ornaments and decorations. . . ."

Peter Anson (Fashions in Church Furnishings, 1960)

"[It] broke new ground . . . the repudiation of Gothic is total; there is not a pointed arch in the building. . . . The central tower [rises] above the crossing to be surmounted by a Byzantine spire - majestic, imperious, Elgarian. . . . The interior is quieter but no less impressive. Again the overall style is Byzantine, but it is a modern, western interpretation of Byzantium"

(John Leonard, London's Parish Churches, 1997).

March 2010

Other pictures by Karri Devereux

21 May and 5 June 2017

16 May 2017 ‘Joseph Wright Of Derby’ by Lucrezia Walker

On 16 May 2017 at 2.30 at Fellowship House Lucrezia Walker will talk about ‘Joseph Wright Of Derby’.  All residents are welcome. Admission £1 for members and £3 for non-members - includes tea and biscuits afterwards.

Fellowship House Tuesday 10th May 2016

Elizabeth Vigee-le Brun: Heroine of the Revolution

Lucrezia Walker 

will give an illustrated talk about this 

femme extraordinaire

Tuesday 10th May at  2.30 pm

All welcome  

Admission  (including  tea  and  biscuits)

Members  £1  Non  members  £3

Become  a  Fellowship  member  for  £20  a  year

László Moholy-Nagy

László Moholy-Nagy by Lucia Moholy c1925

An interesting entry in the St Jude’s Register of Baptisms records the christening in March 1937 of Claudia, the daughter of the Hungarian artist László Moholy-Nagy.  

Originally László Weisz, her father changed his name to Nagy, that of his mother’s Christian lawyer, after his Jewish father abandoned the family.  He later added Moholy after Mohol the town in which he grew up.  After serving in the Austro-Hungarian army in the First World War he studied art in Budapest, and in 1923 became an instructor at the Bauhaus.  When the Nazis came to power he left Germany first for Amsterdam, and then in 1935 for London where he lived in the ISOKON building in Belsize Park, before moving to Farm Walk in Hampstead Garden Suburb.

While trying to establish an English version of the Bauhaus, Moholy-Nagy worked as a designer for Simpson's of Piccadilly and London Transport. He was commissioned by John Betjeman, the assistant editor of the Architectural Review, to photograph contemporary architecture, and published his own documentary photography studies: Street Markets in London and Eton Portrait. He made a documentary film, Life of the Lobster, and special effects for the director Alexander Korda.

Although a supporter of the short lived Hungarian Soviet Republic in 1919, and a habitué of extreme left wing circles,  Moholy-Nagy was never a member of the Communist Party.  In 1918 he had joined the Hungarian Reformed Church and in London was known to the comrades as ‘Holy Mahogany’, perhaps because of his attendance at St Jude’s.

The family moved to the United States in 1937 where László established himself as one of the major artists of his period with works today in many of the world's leading galleries. He died in 1946. In Budapest in 2006 the Hungarian University of Arts and Design was renamed the Moholy-Nagy University.

Claudia Moholy-Nagy, baptized at St Jude’s on 21st March 1937, died in 1971.

Sketches of the Proms by Ellen Gilbert

Welcome to my collection of drawings done during rehearsal time at the Proms...at St Jude's 2013

These are process prints from my tiny and discreet sketchbook, which will be worked up as really nice pictures when time allows.

I hope you enjoy your visit to this intimate collection.

And if you would like to know more, and see the finished products, please come to an event I'm planning for September.

Ellen Gilbert

A server in the 1960s

Ed Zanders as a server at St Judes c. 1965. Ed lived on the Suburb from 1954 to 1969. His A Suburb Childhood is a personal memoir of those days written for the Suburb centenary year in 2007. He has recently given three paintings by his mother Beth to the church.

Ed describes his time as a server at St Jude's:

"St Jude's church became a significant part of my life from 1960 to 1969. My mother and I used to join the congregation at Sunday services and then I became an altar boy or server. This was rather like an apprenticeship starting as boat boy, who carries the incense in a metal container to pass to the Thurifer who distributes the incense. The next stages were Acolytes holding candles, Crucifers with a cross, the Thurifer and finally Master of Ceremonies. I enjoyed the ceremony under the direction of Frank Parlett, a kind man of whom I have fond memories. Easter was always busy, with special ceremonies held over four days culminating in the Sunday which was enlivened with trumpets as well as the choir and organ. Being Thurifer involved lighting charcoal squares in the thurible which was a metal container on a chain with holes to let out the smoke from burning incense. In keeping with my pyrotechnic tendencies, I used to set up the maximum amount of charcoal possible, adding spoonfuls of incense to create a massive cloud of smoke that I would then pass over the congregation in an attempt to liven things up.

Disruptions to the services stay in the mind as well; the electrical system was always a bit unreliable, and one evensong the lights went out completely. Luckily there were enough candles burning to keep the service going, but by complete coincidence, just as "let there be light" was being read out, the lights came back on without any human intervention. The other incident was the more painful sight of a poor server colleague who managed a projectile vomit right across the area in front of the altar. The mess was hastily cleared up by the verger with a mop and bucket.

When I started going to St Jude's, the vicar was Bill Masters, a man with a larger than life personality and a great sense of fun. He left in 1962, later becoming Canon of Gibraltar. His successor was Robin Dunhill, a member of the tobacco and luxury goods family. Both of these clergymen and their curates presided over a thriving church with a great musical tradition.

The organist and choirmaster was Charles Proctor, a rather serious and intimidating man, who nevertheless produced some wonderful ecclesiastical music. This was not surprising, since he was originally talent-spotted by Proms founder Sir Henry Wood and had a long career as a composer, organist, conductor and teacher at the Trinity College of Music. St Jude's has obviously maintained this tradition and is a well-known North London venue for concerts and recordings."

Ed serving at the high altar. Fr Robin Dunhill celebrating.

Ed's sister Angela at the Crossing

Visit to the National Gallery April 2011

Lucrezia Walker led a tour of the National Gallery on the theme of the Stations of the Cross on Saturday 9 April in aid of church funds.

Visit to the National Gallery

Lucrezia Walker will lead a tour of the National Gallery on the theme of the Stations of the Cross on Saturday 9 April at 3.00. Meet in the lobby of the Sainsbury Wing at 2.45. Donation of £10 for church funds.

The Stalingrad Sword

The Stalingrad Sword was made to commemorate the sacrifice of the Russian people in the Battle of Stalingrad of 1942 which marked a turning point in the war with Nazi Germany.

It was presented to Marshal Joseph Stalin by Winston Churchill in the presence of US President FranklinD. Roosevelt during the Tehran Conference on 29 November 1943.

The personal project of King George VI, the 50 inch sword was made by the Wilkinson Sword company, and its 36 inch double-edged blade was inscribed with the words "To the steel-hearted citizens of Stalingrad, the gift of George the Sixth, in token of homage of the British people" (with the same in Russian on the reverse).

The lettering was the work of M[aurice] C. Oliver (1886 - 1958) (third from the right), acknowledged as the foremost letterer of his day and the 'father' of modern English calligraphy. Oliver taught at the Central School of Art and the Hampstead Garden Suburb Institute. He worshipped at St Jude's and was a member of the PCC at the time the sword was made. We have several examples of his lettering in the church including the list of vicars at the back of the church and the guide to Starmer's paintings in the Lady Chapel.

Before it travelled to Russia the sword was displayed in Westminster Abbey. Evelyn Waugh evokes the scene in his Unconditional Surrender (1961) (part of the Sword of Honour trilogy):

"The civilians were shabby and grubby. Some munched 'Woolton Pies'; others sucked cigarettes made of the sweepings of canteen floors. Bombing had ceased for the time being but the livery of the air-raid shelter remained the national dress. As they reached the abbey church, which many were entering for the first time in their lives, all fell quite silent, as though they were approaching a corpse lying in state. The sword they had come to see stood upright between two candles, on a table counterfeiting an altar".

Waugh, who grew up in North End Road and worshipped with his father at St Jude's, was less than impressed with the sword which symbolized for him the modern, irreligious world and the spectre of communism.

The 2001 film Enemy at the Gates, set during the Battle of Stalingrad, stars Rachel Weisz who grew up on the Suburb. The title evokes Psalm 127: 5/6.

Walter Percival Starmer: war artist

Walter Starmer, seen here at work on the memorial to Michael Rennie, was born in 1877 in Teignmouth, Devon, the son of the Reverend Henry Starmer, a Congregationalist Minister. He trained at Norwich and Birmingham Schools of Art, and seems to have begun his career as a book illustrator with Gertrude M. Faulding's Old Man's Beard and Other Tales (1909).

In the First World War he served as a war artist recording in particular the work of the YMCA with the forces. Thirty water-colours are now in the collection of the Imperial War Museum, several of which were reproduced in Sir Arthur Yapp's The Romance of the Red Triangle [the emblem of the YMCA]. After the War he illustrated two volumes of Yapp's Piers Plowman school history series.

Y.M.C.A. IN A RUINED PARISH HALL IN FLANDERS, JUNE, 1916

Y.M.C.A. MARQUEE IN THE SHELL-SWEPT SOMME AREA

A REFUGE FOR THE REFUGEES

Y.M.C.A. HUTS UNDER SHELL-FIRE

Starmer met the first vicar of St Jude's, Basil Bourchier, in Arras in 1918 when the latter was serving as a chaplain to the forces. In 1920 he was commissioned to paint the Lady Chapel as a memorial to those who had died in the war, and then, in a series of further commissions, he went on to decorate the rest of the church.

As well as the Rennie memorial of 1942, Starmer recorded the Second World War with a drawing of St Jude's filled with furniture from local houses which had been damaged through enemy action.

Caravaggio: Sacred and Profane

Lucrezia Walker in conversation with Andrew Graham-Dixon about his new book Caravaggio: A Life Sacred and Profane at the Henrietta Barnett Literary Society on Thursday evening.

A painting of the Lady Chapel

On St Jude's Day - 28 October - we celebrate the centenary of the dedication of the Lady Chapel.

The church possesses a painting of the chapel by the Belgian artist Karel Verschaeren. Verschaeren was born in Mechelen in 1881. He fled to England at the beginning of the First World War (August 1914), and lived and worked as an artist and picture restorer in the West Hampstead area. He then moved to the United States where he married in May 1916 and, after achieving some success, died in 1928. Our painting can therefore be dated fairly precisely to 1915/early 1916. It shows how the chapel looked before the introduction of Walter Starmer's murals in 1920.

St Jude's also has another painting by Karel (of the high altar), and one of the nave by his brother Barth Verschaeren (1888-1946) who travelled with him to England and America, before returning to Belgium in 1921 to become one of the best known Flemish artists of the inter-war period.

At this time the Lady Chapel was decorated with a collection of framed paintings. The one above the altar appears to be the copy of Murillo's Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception (1678) given by the first Vicar, the Reverend Basil Bourchier, in March 1913. The original is in the Prado, Madrid.

Portrait of the Reverend Basil Bourchier

St Jude's was visited today by Rosalind Henry whose grandmother painted the large portrait of the Reverend Basil Bourchier, the first vicar of the church, which until recently hung in the south-west porch. The artist, Alice Ballard, was born in November 1871. She studied at the Slade School of Art and exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1897 and 1898. She married Dr James Stewart Mackintosh and they lived at the Corner House, Platts Lane.

Rosalind is seen above in front of the portrait and holding a contemporary signed photograph of it which she kindly allowed us to copy.

'

The Vicar is wearing the purple cope dedicated on Palm Sunday 1916 and still in use here during Lent and Advent. The complementary high altar frontal (dedicated March 5, 1916) is also still in use. Clearly visible to the left is the sanctuary lamp in the Lady Chapel given by Lady Battersea in 1913 in memory of Canon Samuel Barnett. The picture on the column has not yet been identified. The spot today is occupied by a plaque of the Virgin and Child. Starmer has yet to be commissioned to paint his frescoes on the walls. The reredos, candles and cross on the high altar are as illustrated in the 1923 History of S. Jude-on-the-Hill but have since been changed. The pictures show brass railings at the top of the sanctuary steps in the style of the present gates which were dedicated by Princess Louise on 16 July 1916. As it is unlikely these have been removed (the present wooden ones are shown in Karel Verschaeren's 1916 painting and in the 1923 History) it must be that the artist included planned or proposed railings which were never in fact installed.

Pasted on the back of the photograph is a cutting from the Daily Mirror of Saturday May 19, 1934 recording Bourchier's will in which he made gifts to the royal family and the RSPCA.

On the back of the painting itself we discovered a label saying it had been presented to Bourchier by the Earl of Lytton on behalf of 1800 subscribers in July 1918.

Another records the 'survey' of the portrait on behalf of the London and Middlesex Archaeological Society in 1972 by N. Penny.

This leaflet was bound into our copy of the Parish Paper of June 14, 1918

The Parish Paper of July 19, 1918 reports that the portrait was presented to the Vicar on Friday July 12 in the Institute by the Earl of Lytton. The Vicar himself wrote "I will conclude by once again assuring Mrs Stewart Mackintosh, the originator and fulfiller of the whole idea, that St Jude-on-the-Hill will ever number her among its most kind and valued benefactors. As for myself I will cherish and treasure this gift to the end of my days".

After Bourchier's death in 1934 the portrait passed into the hands of his close friend Miss F. E. Jeffcock who presented it to the church in 1948. Miss Jeffcock (who died in 1949) was also the donor of the Bourchier Memorial (West) window and the original horse memorial.

Another picture by Alice Ballard Mackintosh at one time in the possession of the church and extensively reproduced.