St George's, Hanover Square

St George's Church, Hanover Square

View from St George Street
Country United Kingdom
Denomination Church of England
Architecture
Architect(s) John James

St George's, Hanover Square, is an Anglican church in central London, built in the early 18th century. The church was designed by John James and was constructed under a project to build fifty new churches around London (the Queen Anne Churches). It is situated on Hanover Square, near Oxford Circus, in what is now the City of Westminster. Due to its Mayfair location, it has been a frequent venue of high society weddings.

Contents

Ecclesiastical parish

A civil parish of St George Hanover Square, and an ecclesiastical parish, were created in 1724 from part of the ancient parish of St Martin in the Fields.[1] The boundaries of the ecclesiastical parish were adjusted in 1830, 1835 and 1865 when other parishes were calved out of it. The ecclesiastical parish still exists today and forms part of the Deanery of Westminster St Margaret in the Diocese of London.

Weddings

The church was a fashionable place of worship to have weddings. It was here that Theodore Roosevelt, the future US President, aged 28, married Edith Carow, aged 25, on 2 December 1886. Henry Holland (architect) married Capability Brown's daughter Bridget on the 11th February 1773 in the church[2]. John Nash (architect) married Mary Ann Bradley on the 17th December 1798 in the church[3].One famous London marriage involved the architect John Shaw Senior (1776–1832) to Elizabeth Hester Whitfield in 1799. Other notable people married there include the Eccentric Missionary, Joseph Wolff, in 1827. 2 February 1858 saw the marriage of Ann Jeffrey and Samuel Parkes who won the Victoria Cross in the Charge of the Light Brigade for saving the life of Trumpeter Hugh Crawford. In October 1899, Alfreda Ernestina Albertina Bowen, daughter of Sir George Ferguson Bowen and Contessa Diamantina di Roma, married Robert Lydston Newman[4][5].

In popular culture

In the musical My Fair Lady, Eliza's father (played by Stanley Holloway), having just been provided with an inheritance and having to move into "middle-class morality", invites her (Audrey Hepburn) to his wedding at this church. Following the invitation, he and his fellows sing "Get Me To The Church On Time".

Music

George Frederick Handel was a regular worshipper at St George's, which is now home to the annual Handel Festival. St. George's has a full time professional choir and a strong choral tradition and is an outstanding venue for classical music concerts. A Restoration Fund Appeal was launched on Trinity Sunday 2006 to raise a total of five million pounds, with a target of one and a half million pounds needed for the first phase of essential restoration work to the fabric of the church. A recent concert series in support of the Restoration Fund was supported by the William Smith International Performance Programme and featured solo piano performances by students from the Royal College of Music, including Ren Yuan, Ina Charuashvili, Meng Yan Pan and the London debut of Maria Nemtsova of Russia.

References

  1. ^ Youngs, Frederic (1979). Guide to the Local Administrative Units of England. I: Southern England. London: Royal Historical Society. ISBN 0901050679. 
  2. ^ page 36, Dorothy Stroud, Henry Holland His Life and Architecture, 1966, Country Life
  3. ^ page 30, the Life and Work of John Nash Architect, John Summerson, 1980, George Allen & Unwin
  4. ^ Anglo-Colonial Notes, Evening Post (Wellington, New Zealand), 24 November 1899, page 5
  5. ^ www.freebmd.org

External links