Nos. 8 and 9 Soho Square: The French Protestant Church
The French Protestant church which was
erected in 1891–3 stands upon the site formerly
occupied by the two houses numbered 8 and
9 Soho Square.
No. 8
Sir John Key was living here in 1691. He was
succeeded by Lady Holcroft, 1692–7, and
Captain Kerr, 1711–12. (ref. 33)
The most notable residents of this house were
a succession of schoolmasters who occupied No. 8
from 1725 to 1805. In November 1725 the
then tenant, William Glanville, esquire, assigned
his lease of the house to Martin Clare, a schoolmaster then occupying No. 1 Soho Square. (ref. 72)
Clare had first opened his school at No. 1 in
1717, and in a school text-book entitled Youth's
Introduction to Trade and Business, which he
published in 1720, he described himself as
'M. Clare, School-Master in Soho-Square,
London, with whom Youth may Board, and be
fitted for Business'.
Late in 1725, or early in 1726, Clare moved
his school from No. 1 to No. 8, where it became
known as the Soho Academy and continued to be,
throughout the eighteenth century, one of the
most celebrated and successful of private boarding
schools. Detailed information on the life and
working of the school is to be found in the
Rules and Orders for the Government of the
Academy in Soho Square which Martin Clare
published in the late 1740's, in association with
his partner and eventual successor, the Reverend
Cuthbert Barwis. The fee for board and tuition
was £30 per annum, plus extras. The boys
were taught mathematics, geography, French,
drawing, dancing and fencing, and there were
weekly lectures on morality, religion and natural
and experimental philosophy, 'for the Explication
of which, a large Apparatus of Machines and
Instruments [is] provided'. The pupils had the
use of a pew in St. Anne's Church and of another
in one of the nearby Huguenot chapels. (ref. 73)
Dr. Barwis assumed sole control of the Soho
Academy after Clare's death in 1751, (ref. 33) and thereafter the most notable feature of school life appears
to have been the theatrical performances of
Shakespeare's plays, which were regularly presented by the boys. This innovation proved so
successful that Dr. William Barrow, a later
master, claimed that 'several of the actors, who
have since attained considerable eminence in
our publick theatres, imbibed in the academy …
their first passion for the stage'. (ref. 74) He was no
doubt referring to Joseph Holman, John Liston
and John Bannister, all celebrated actors in their
day, and all former pupils of the Soho Academy.
Another pupil was the dramatist Thomas Morton.
William Betty, the boy actor celebrated as the
'Young Roscius', is also said to have been a pupil,
though this is unlikely. He did not come to
London until December 1804, shortly before the
closure of the school, which by this time had discontinued these dramatic performances. Instruction in drawing and painting was also given and
both Thomas Rowlandson and J. M. W. Turner
attended the school for a time. Other pupils
included Philip Hardwick, the architect, Henry
Angelo, the author of the Reminiscences, John
Horne Tooke, the politician and philologist,
and the sons of James Boswell and Edmund
Burke. (ref. 75)
Doctor Cuthbert Barwis died in 1782 leaving
the house in Soho Square, together with all the
school furniture and equipment, including the
maps, globes and prints and his 'mathematical and
philosophical instruments and apparatus' to his
nephew John Barwis, who had been associated
with him in the management of the school for
some years. (ref. 76) John Barwis retained the school
until 1785, when he was succeeded by Dr.
William Barrow until 1799 and then by the
Reverend William Whitelock until 1805. (ref. 33)
In its later years the number of pupils at the
academy declined. This may have been due to
Barrow's decision to discontinue the theatrical
performances for which the school had been celebrated. In the 1804 edition of his Essay on Education, he wrote that the plays had exposed his
pupils and school to censure and moral danger,
even though the performances had attained 'an
extraordinary degree of excellence'. (ref. 74) Nevertheless, the school was still described as late as
1801 as 'the first academy in London'. (ref. 77)
After 1805, when the academy closed or moved
to premises elsewhere, No. 8 was in commercial
occupation until 1891, when it and the adjoining
No. 9 were demolished to make way for the
present French Protestant church. (ref. 33)
No. 9
In September 1678 Richard Frith and William
Pym leased this house to Mary Perkins. The
first known occupant was Sir Richard Onslow,
later Speaker of the House of Commons and first
Baron Onslow, who took a lease of the premises
in February 1691/2. (ref. 78) He lived here until his
death in 1717, and was succeeded by his widow,
who died in 1718. Later inhabitants include
Lady Monoux, widow of Sir Philip Monoux,
third baronet, 1735–43; the Duchess of Wharton, widow of Philip, Duke of Wharton,
1752–66, and Owen Salusbury Brereton, M.P.
and Vice-President of the Society of Arts, who
had formerly lived at No. 11, 1767–98. (ref. 33)
The French Protestant
Church
This church, though now occupying a building
erected only in 1891–3, can trace its descent from
the earliest congregation of Protestant refugees
to settle in London, a tradition commemorated in
the carved tympanum over the entrance door of the
present building. In July 1550 Edward VI
licensed the foreign Protestant refugees in London
to hold their own services. In October 1550 the
French and Dutch refugees took a lease of the
chapel of St. Anthony's Hospital in Threadneedle Street, but a few weeks later the Dutch
withdrew from this arrangement, leaving the
Huguenots in sole possession. They and their
successors remained in Threadneedle Street
(except during the reign of Mary Tudor) until
1840, the original building being rebuilt after its
destruction in the Great Fire. In 1843 a new
Huguenot church was opened in St. Martin's
le Grand, (ref. 79) but in 1887 it was demolished to make
way for extensions to the adjoining General
Post Office. The congregation then moved into
temporary quarters at the Athenaeum Hall,
Tottenham Court Road, until a suitable site for
another church could be purchased and a new
building erected.
After two years of enquiry the consistory of the
church decided to purchase a plot of land in Soho
Square. This site comprised the existing Nos. 8
and 9 which, it was proposed, were to be demolished to provide a combined frontage to the
square of fifty feet and a depth of one hundred
and ten feet. The freehold was owned by a Mr.
Trotter, a descendant of John Trotter, founder
of the Soho Bazaar, who was prepared to sell the
site for £10,500.
The consistory commissioned (Sir) Aston
Webb to design a new church and in March
1889 petitioned the Attorney General, without
whose sanction they could not proceed, for permission to purchase the site in Soho Square and to
erect a new church. This was to be built at a
cost of between nine and ten thousand pounds
and to accommodate a congregation of four
hundred. In addition the building was to contain
a vestry and library, living quarters for the pastor,
and a schoolroom in the basement. The building
costs and the purchase price for the site were to be
paid out of the compensation money which the
consistory had received for the demolition of their
former church. The members were anxious to
start building as soon as possible as they were
unable to hold communion services in their
temporary quarters in Tottenham Court Road,
the Athenaeum Hall being used as a public
dance hall on weekdays.
The Attorney General did not give his consent
to the consistory's scheme until October 1890
and it was not until April 1891 that the demolition of the two old houses on the site began. In
the meantime the congregation removed from the
Athenaeum Hall to the chapel behind No. 7
Soho Square which had formerly been occupied
by a group of Baptists.
The foundation stone of the new church was
laid on 28 October 1891 and the building was
completed early in 1893. It was dedicated on
25 March 1893. The building contractors
employed were Messrs. Higgs and Hill, whose
tender was for £10,194. (ref. 80)
The church is in Aston Webb's early manner,
derived in part from the final phase of FrancoFlemish Gothic. There are, in addition, certain
late Romanesque overtones blended into a design
which is particularly successful internally. A
four-storeyed block faces the square, with living
accommodation above an entrance lobby flanked
by a library and an ante-room. The aisled church
immediately behind, has four bays running north
and south and a curved apse between a pair of
vestries (fig. 9).
The building materials externally are plumcoloured brick and light red terra-cotta, the residential block having a steeply pitched roof of
greenish slates. The front has a terra-cotta
facing to the ground storey, with five roundarched openings, the subsidiary ones being subdivided (Plate 21a). The somewhat Romanesque
character of the larger central doorway is emphasized by the archaic style of the carving in the
stone tympanum, which was inserted in 1950.
The upper part of the front, largely of brick, has
two narrow projections with hipped roofs, framing
a recessed centre. Here a small three-sided bay
window rises through an enriched corbel table at
the level of the third storey into a gable treated
with ascending shell-headed niches. The gable is
topped by a cross and on the apex of the roof is a
small timber cupola.
Figure 9:
French Protestant Church, Soho Square, plan
The interior (Plate 21b) is of buff terra-cotta
and similarly coloured brickwork. The roundarched arcades to the church are of four bays, the
piers having paired shafts at either side with
vestigial imposts. There is no triforium. A narrow
gallery runs in front of the wide, three-light
clerestory windows. The barrel roof is of wood
and a high arch with moulded imposts frames the
apse with its wooden panelled semi-dome and five
round-headed windows. A plain cross is set
between the two parts of the organ, and benching
extends round the apse below. A wide low terracotta pulpit stands to the west of the sanctuary.
The aisles have arcaded walls and rib-vaulted roofs
with a rectangular top light to each bay. In
front of the vestry door in the east aisle is a small
terra-cotta font and other, apparently original,
fittings include the hooped iron light-pendants
and the dark-stained pine pews; two royal coats
of arms of carved wood are preserved in the library and in the side entry, that in the library
being probably of the late Stuart period and the
other apparently Hanoverian.