St Andrew's, Ashley Place, City of Westminster

The third commission which Sir George Gilbert Scott obtained, as a result of this massive redevelopment, was at the other end of Victoria Street. This was St. Andrew’s, Ashley Place, which also received a grant of £2,000 from the Commissioners. The cost of the building at £7,158, was very similar to that of St. Matthew’s, and again the contractor was George Myers. It would have 500 pews and 600 free seats. The foundation stone was laid on 26 May 1854 and the consecration took place on 12 June 1855, with an illustration in the Illustrated London News on 18 November 1854. As before, it was in the Middle Pointed style but, unlike St. Matthew’s, it was a hall-church without a clerestory but with small gables over each of the large aisle windows. Neither was there a tower but instead a fleche over the crossing and it also had a three-sided apse. It was clearly inspired by Scott’s continental travels and was considered to have been a very good design. In fact, John Oldrid Scott said that he knew of ‘no church of its size built by my father more striking in its internal effect’. When the great Roman Catholic cathedral was constructed between 1895 and 1903, it completely overpowered Scott’s little church and it was demolished in 1953 and replaced by an office block.

Fisher, G., Stamp, G. and Heseltine, J., (eds), The Scott Family, Catalogue of the Drawings Collection of the Royal Institute of British Architects (Avebury Publishing, Amersham, 1981), 52 (a).
Cole, D., The Work of Sir Gilbert Scott (The Architectural Press, London, 1980), p. 58.
Bumpus, T. F., London Churches: Ancient and Modern (T. Werner Laurie, London, 1908), pp. 227-9.
Pevsner, N., and Bradley, S., London 6: Westminster, Buildings of England (Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2003), p. 420.
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