St. Stephen's is a former church building in Hampstead,

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

. It is sited on

Rosslyn Hill Rosslyn Hill is a road in London, connecting the south end of Hampstead High Street to the north end of Haverstock Hill. It is the site of the Rosslyn Hill Unitarian Chapel, St. Stephen's Church and the Royal Free Hospital. It is served by t ...

at its junction with Pond Street, a steep slope adjacent to the Royal Free Hospital, and held up to 1,200 worshippers at its peak.

History

It was designed in the

Neo Gothic Gothic Revival (also referred to as Victorian Gothic, neo-Gothic, or Gothick) is an architectural movement that began in the late 1740s in England. The movement gained momentum and expanded in the first half of the 19th century, as increasingly ...

style by

Samuel Sanders Teulon Samuel Sanders Teulon (2 March 1812 – 2 May 1873) was an English Gothic Revival architect, noted for his use of polychrome brickwork and the complex planning of his buildings. Family Teulon was born in 1812 in Greenwich, Kent, the son of a ...

and he considered it the best of the 114 churches he designed, calling it his "mighty church" – it was also the most expensive of them. He accepted the commission to design it after Sir Thomas Maryon Wilson, Lord of the Manor of Hampstead, offered Hampstead Green to be the site for a new church in 1864. From 1864 to 1867 funds were raised (the projected cost was estimated as £7,500; the final sum was actually £27,000). External sculptures are by Thomas Earp. Some mosaics by Salviati have survived in the chancel. Work began in January 1869, with the foundation stone being laid May that year and consecration by John Jackson the

Bishop of London A bishop is an ordained clergy member who is entrusted with a position of authority and oversight in a religious institution. In Christianity, bishops are normally responsible for the governance of dioceses. The role or office of bishop is ca ...

occurring on 31 December. It was fully complete by 1870, but was continually prone to subsidence due to its hilly site. The performer and composer Marie Lloyd Jr. married here in 1907, while the Christian suffragist, writer and female pioneer

Margaret Nevinson Margaret Wynne Nevinson (née Jones) (11 January 1858 – 8 June 1932) was a British suffrage campaigner. Nevinson was one of the suffragettes who split from the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) in 1907 to form the Women's Freedom ...

was buried here in 1932. By the later 1960s concerns had been raised on structural grounds and, with maintenance costs rising and its congregation declining, it was closed for worship in 1977. The building was made a Grade I

listed building In the United Kingdom, a listed building or listed structure is one that has been placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Historic Environment Scotland in Scotland, in Wales, and the Northern Irel ...

in 1974, which saved it from demolition to provide a car park for the hospital and from being converted into residential flats. However, it went into a slow decay, with squatters moving in, while discussions for a new use dragged on. In 1999 a lease on the church was awarded to the St Stephen's Restoration and Preservation Trust, and after this body raised over £4 million from

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, the

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, local businesses and individual donors, it was restored to a usable condition in three phases.

References

External links

St Stephen’s Restoration & Preservation Trust official site
{{DEFAULTSORT:Saint Stephen's Churches in the London Borough of Camden Grade I listed churches in London St Stephen's Church, Rosslyn Hill Former churches in London Gothic Revival church buildings in London Samuel Sanders Teulon buildings Churches completed in 1870 1870 establishments in England 19th-century Church of England church buildings Grade I listed buildings in the London Borough of Camden