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Our History

The whole of England is divided into parishes, making a map of the country look rather like a patchwork quilt of spiritual care by the Church of England.One such “patch” is the parish of Saint George the Martyr, Queen Square, established in 1723, situated at the very heart of the bustling global crossroads that is London.

Map of Bloomsbury 1746 with thanks to Queen Square Archive

Before the late seventeenth century, the area now covered by St George the Martyr, Queen Square was still rural.Built in 1706, St George’s began life as a chapel of ease for the inhabitants of the new houses on Queen Square, which lay some way from the old parish church of St Andrew’s, Holborn Circus.As London expanded rapidly, the 1711 Commission for Building Fifty New Churches made the chapel a new parish church in 1723. They upgraded and expanded the building, including a magnificent ceiling by Nicholas Hawksmoor, and gave the church responsibilities for education and poor relief in the area. A site was also acquired for a burial ground, now known as St George’s Gardens.The church has a fascinating history and is associated with a range of figures who have changed the architectural, literary, medical and social landscape of the country. Our research into this history is ongoing, but here are some aspects we know already.We owe special thanks to Maresha Mead, parishioner and volunteer historian, for all her research to date.

Architecture

St George’s has been remodelled several times.Changes were made to the church in 1721 by Nicholas Hawksmoor, an English Baroque architect and apprentice to Sir Christopher Wren, to make the building more suitable for use as a parish church, with responsibilities for births, marriages, care for the poor and funerals.As well as a ceiling employing the classical circle in a square motif, signifying eternity within the four corners of the earth, this renovation added a font, a reredos with the Ten Commandments, pillars and all-round gallery seating to ensure the whole community could see the worship.A Crang and Hancock organ was added in 1776.

Georgian Reredos

In 1867-68 Reverend John Back employed the English Gothic Revival architect S. S. Teulon to remodel the building. Teulon lived for some time in the parish and his children were baptised in the church.He turned the church to face south instead of east, removing the south and east galleries to create a chancel for a choir and a huge new window, with stone and mosaic reredos depicting Abraham, Moses, Solomon, St Peter, St John and St Paul, along with a new pulpit.He also remodelled the clock and its tower.

Reverend John Back 1872 with thanks to Queen Square Archive

Done during a period of intense social reform in the parish, Teulon’s ‘muscular Gothic’ style probably aimed to connect a neo-classical building, whose style now connoted impersonality and dehumanising regularity, back to the more person-centred, craft-centred and socially equal world of the early Middle Ages.This, at any rate, was the architectural thesis of John Ruskin, who taught at the Working Men’s College, and of William Morris, who had a house and shop featuring fairly-waged, artisanal homewares at 26 Queen Square.

Medicine

The best-known rector of St George the Martyr was the Reverend William Stukeley, who led the church from 1747 until his death in 1765. He had a wide-ranging and enquiring mind and had been a medical practitioner before taking Holy Orders at the age of 42.Turning his expertise in anatomy towards the unpeeling of the layers of history in archaeological sites, he became fascinated by the stones of Stonehenge and Avebury, believing them to be the remnants of a pre-Christian Druidic religion, an idea that also inspired the poet William Blake. Stukeley’s careful maps of Stonehenge, as detailed in the book he wrote in 1740, Stonehenge: A Temple Restor’d to the British Druids, are still useful to archaeologists today because they record the site before it was disturbed by later digging.Florence Craven Lees pioneered district nursing in London – nursing care provided at home or in convalescent homes. She was friends with Florence Nightingale, served in the Franco-Prussian War and eventually wrote Guide to District Nurses and Home Nursing (1889), which became the central manual for all London nurses. She was awarded numerous medals for her work and became famous before marrying Reverend Dacre Craven, rector of St George, in 1879.The John Back Ward in the Neurology Hospital is named in honour of this former rector who was a generous supporter of the hospital.

Literature & Arts

William Cowper (1731-1800), the poet and hymnwriter, worshipped at St George’s in his younger years as he trained for the bar.The multi-talented William Brockedon (1787-1854), artist, travel writer and inventor, was a parishioner for over thirty years and his memorial stone is on the inner north wall of the church. Born into a lower-middle class watchmaking family in Totnes, Brockedon’s talent and energy were spotted by the local rector and he was given an artist’s training at the Royal Academy.Beginning his career as a painter of mythological subjects and society portraits, his quest to find the original route Hannibal had taken across the Alps led him to branch out into illustrated travel books for Alpine adventurers, as war receded and tourism became more possible.Often made uncomfortable by mountain weather, he invested in Mackintosh’s new waterproofing system, and used the rubber technology to invent more airtight seals for chemical flasks.His dissatisfaction with the quality of pencils available for his sketches led him to invent a new kind of artificial compressed lead – graphite, still in use. Unexpectedly, this also led to the development of the first accurate pill-compressing machine that required no extra binders or fillers to interfere with the medicine’s effect, a discovery for which he is remembered in the Science Museum today.He is one of the very few people to have been a member simultaneously of the Royal Academy, the Royal Geographical Society and the Royal Society, and his portraits of mid-Victorian artists, explorers, writers and scientists can still be seen at the National Portrait Gallery.

Brockedon’s Memorial Plaque

Social Reform

St George’s is sometimes called “The Sweeps Church”. This name derives from the benefaction of Captain James South, who in 1834 bequeathed £1,000 to the rector and the church wardens to apply the interest to providing “a Christmas dinner for one hundred poor boys” apprenticed to chimney sweeps in the Cities of London and Westminster.Each Christmas, the chimney sweeps’ apprentices came to the church and, after the service, had their dinner.The terms of the will provided that each should receive half a pound of roast or boiled beef, half a loaf of bread, half a pound of potatoes, half a pint of ale or porter, half a pound of plum pudding and a new shilling.

Memorial to Captain James South

In 1854 the Working Men’s College was founded in Great Ormond Street. The Reverend F. D. Maurice was one of the founders of the movement. An early Christian socialist and brilliant scholar, he had been professor of theology at King’s College London until being dismissed for holding heterodox views on the afterlife.He lived at number 24, Queen Square. He is recognised by many as a pioneer of the liberal tradition of Anglicanism.In the Episcopal Church of the United States of America his life is commemorated on 1 April.

Reverend Prof F. D. Maurice credited to Getty’s Open Content Program

St George the Martyr School

There was a firm intention from the first that the church would involve itself in the education of children. This work started in the church’s vestry around 1709.By 1839 the girls were still in a room over the vestry, but the boys had moved meanwhile to Devonshire Street where there was a schoolhouse. At this time there were 140 pupils in total, compared with 90 in 1735.In 1854 the buildings in Devonshire Street (now Boswell Street) were replaced by the new buildings for girls and infants in Old Gloucester Street. There was a boys’ school in Theobalds Road which continued at that site until the 1870s.In the 1970s the church school moved from its old buildings near the church to take up residence in new buildings in John’s Mews.

Schools for the Parish of St George the Martyr Queen Square with thanks to the Queen Square Archive