CHAPTER IV - The London Oratory of St. Philip Neri and the Church of the Immaculate Heart of Mary
At the opening of the great church in 1884 The Tablet
commented that it would ‘bring home vividly to many that
thought can find expression in other forms than words’, (ref. 1)
and it is easy to feel that the building does indeed assert
the ultramontane trend of thought in Victorian Roman
Catholicism—especially, perhaps, that of Catholics not
born into the Church. In its demonstration of the Romanizing tendency of converts the late-Victorian Congregation
of the London Oratory conformed to its origins, when in
1848 the community established by Newman at Maryvale
near Birmingham was joined by another society of recent
converts under Frederick Faber. The following year Faber
led a Congregation of Oratorians to London, where they
established a house and church in King William Street,
Strand. A year later, with the Catholic Hierarchy newly
restored in Britain, the Oratorians aspired to ‘a good, large
and stately church’, of Italianate style, in a better position.
A committee of rich Catholic laymen under Lord Arundel
(later the fourteenth Duke of Norfolk) looked for a site. By
1852 the aim had declined from St. James's to Pimlico or
Argyll House east of Regent Street. (ref. 2) Then in the late
summer the Fathers of the Oratory suddenly settled on a
site at Brompton, although its comparative remoteness
rather went against the tradition of urban evangelism of the
Congregations of St. Philip Neri. (ref. 3) Newman, who had
advocated a grand and central metropolitan position, was
not impressed by Faber's apologia for Brompton as ‘the
Madeira of London’, and thought the site ‘essentially in a
suburb… a neighbourhood of second-rate gentry and
second-rate shops’. (ref. 4) One of the Fathers wrote jestingly (to
his mother) that they would be ‘far enough from Chelsea
chapel [St. Mary's, then on the site of the present No.
105 Cadogan Gardens] to seem not to interfere with it,
and just near enough to draw away the rich part of its
congregation’, but the avoidance of proximity to other
Catholic chapels was in fact a motive for going to the
suburbs. (ref. 5)
The site of three and a half acres had, as copyhold of the
manor of Earl's Court, been sold in 1768 by the Reverend
John Erskine and his wife Mary (see page 40). The
purchaser was David Barclay, an insurance broker, on
whose death two years later the land passed to a nephew,
Alexander Barclay, wax-chandler. It accommodated a house
and wax-bleacher's establishment when the Barclays
sold it in 1819 for £4,000 to Robert Pollard, who set
up a boys’ boarding school there, known as Blemell
House. (ref. 6) He promptly extended the buildings greatly, (ref. 7) as
can be discerned on Plate 11c. Enfranchised in 1830, (ref. 6) the
site was sold by Pollard to the Congregation of the Oratory
in November 1852 for £16,000. (fn. a) This was through the
agency of George Godwin, architect and editor of The
Builder, who later said the price was calculated to give the
same return in interest as the site's anticipated yield as
building land, and thought it a notable instance of
Brompton's rising land values at that time. The recipients
in trust for the Congregation were Mrs. Bowden, a widow
and benefactress, and the architect J. J. Scoles, a Catholic
by birth. (ref. 9)
The southernmost part of the site was soon being sold
for £2,000 to the Commissioners for the Exhibition of
1851. (The sale was concluded in January 1854.) They had
great plans for their own land immediately to the west, and
threw the ground into Brompton Lane (now Thurloe
Place) to widen the approach to the projected Cromwell
Road. (ref. 10)
An attempt early in 1853 by the Vicar of Holy Trinity,
Brompton, to prevent the establishment of a Catholic
community so close to his church was unsuccessful, (ref. 11) and
during that year an Oratory House with its own chapel and
library was built for the Congregation, together with a
temporary public church that nevertheless survived in use
until 1880 (Plate 33a, 33b). (ref. 12)
Possibly influenced by the hostility felt from Holy Trinity, Brompton, on the east, the first intention was to place
the public church on the west side of the Oratory House,
with the private chapel of the Congregation on the east.
Then, by April 1853, it was decided to transfer the latter to
the west wing of the house and make it serve also as a
public church, pending the erection of a larger place of
worship on the eastern part of the site. (ref. 13) By July or August,
however, this idea was in turn modified to allow the
building of a temporary public church on the eastern part,
within the future site of the nave of the great church. (ref. 14)
The designer of the Oratory House, as of the temporary
church, was J. J. Scoles. Like the Oratorians’ residence at
Birmingham and the London Congregation's country villa
at Sydenham, the Oratory House is in a very restrained
Italianate (a ‘giant haystack petrified’, according to one
contemporary versifier (ref. 15) ). The pedimented south face of
the western range was meant to be finished with statues of
saints that were never added, and neither were the papal
arms in the tympanum, where the stone still awaits carving. (ref. 16) Preparations for ashlaring the east front are also
apparent. This range (paid for by the fourteenth Duke of
Norfolk (ref. 17) ) contains the Congregation's chapel, known as
the Little Oratory, and above it the library—both of them
(especially the chapel) elaborated subsequently. Within the
residential part of the house the well-proportioned refectory is notable, and so are the long high corridors, which
were, as a periodical said, ‘well adapted for exercise in wet
weather’. (ref. 18)
(fn. b)
The contractor was William Jackson of Pimlico, a native
of Ireland and a Catholic. He had speculative interests
nearby as a house-builder, and was said in the Illustrated
London News to have himself provided half the
purchase-money given to the Fathers for the land to widen
Brompton Lane and afford improved access to the new
developments by him and others westward. (ref. 19) One of the
Fathers wrote (to Lady Arundel) that the house was ‘not to
be run up by contract [evidently meaning, rather, competitive tendering] in the usual way of houses that are to
stand only 99 years while the lease lasts’ but at Jackson's
‘fair estimate of what it will cost to build it really well and
substantially’. (ref. 20) Nevertheless the contract seems to have
been let by Jackson to another builder, Charles Delay, and
the plastering, for example, further subcontracted. (ref. 21) And
however well the work was done, it was not completed
without alarms at Jackson's own finances. These fluctuated during a chequered career, so that early in 1854 they
brought him, ‘highly excited and very much out of temper’,
near to bankruptcy. (ref. 22) (Jackson's trouble was probably
caused by the delay of the Commissioners for the Exhibition of 1851 in concluding their purchase of his leasehold
interest in Lord Harrington's estate west of the Oratorians' land. (ref. 23) ) The contract for the house had, it seems,
been made at about £18,020. (ref. 24) Eventually the total cost,
including furnishings and fittings, was £29,316. (ref. 25)
The Oratory House would in any event have absorbed
most of the money available for building, agreeable to
Newman's advice that it would subsequently be easier to
collect money for a church than a residence. (ref. 26) Jackson's
contract for the church was evidently made at only
£3,500, (ref. 27) the final cost, with furnishings and fittings,
being £5,549. (ref. 28) Long, low, and narrow, of the plainest
brick externally, the church was given an acceptable interior by Scoles, with a thirty-foot-deep sanctuary and an
open wooden roof of dull red or chocolate and dark blue. It
held 1,200 worshippers. (ref. 29)
In 1858 the roof had to be lifted off and replaced on
heightened walls to accommodate a large Bishop organ
presented by the Dowager Duchess of Argyll: at the same
time Scoles introduced a flat, many-panelled ceiling over
clerestory windows, additional chapels were made, and the
sanctuary deepened to some forty-seven feet (Plate 33c, 33d).
Much of the cost of this was met by the Duchess, who also
gave the stalls and sanctuary pavement of variegated woods
put in place by Messrs. Holland in 1863–4 and later
adapted by the same firm for use in the present church. (ref. 30)
Still very plain externally, the church had internally, The
Building News thought, ‘the proportion and somewhat the
appearance of an ancient Roman Basilica.’ The chapels,
decorated by an Oxford Street tradesman, Charles
Nosotti, deserved study by students of polychromy. (ref. 31) By
the 1860's the added chapels made the original church
almost unrecognizable on plan (fig. 10). (ref. 32)
(fn. c) A later
comment, that the effect of the interior was made by the
simulated marbling of the walls and pilasters, suggests that
the Fathers already aimed in paint at something of the
all-over colouring achieved in the present church by a
wonderful variety of stones. (ref. 33)
Within the Oratory House Scoles added an organ
gallery in the Little Oratory in c. 1858. (ref. 34) In 1871–2 the
organ was transferred to a new case and gallery at the
north end as part of the elaborate scheme which includes
the new altar, apsidal sanctuary, longitudinal stalls, and
ceiling decoration (Plate 34a). The designer was J.
Hungerford Pollen, then connected with the Science and
Art Department next door at the South Kensington
Museum. (ref. 35) The south or entrance end of the chapel
retains Scoles's organ gallery on its arcaded screen and
now communicates with the southward extension of this
range made about the same time by the building in
1872–3 of St. Wilfrid's and St. Joseph's Halls. Who the
responsible architect was here is not known, but the plans
were approved by J. A. Hansom as ‘consulting architect’. (ref. 36)
St. Wilfrid's Hall, on the first floor, is a dignified room,
generally in the sober style of the Oratory House but with
decoration on the doorcase (and formerly also on the
now-lightened wall-pilasters) rather of the Italian-Renaissance type favoured at that time in the Science and
Art Department.
In May 1874 the Congregation, conscious that the
exterior of the temporary church was ‘almost contemptible’, issued an appeal for funds for a permanent church, to
which the fifteenth Duke of Norfolk subscribed
£20,000. (ref. 37) (Newman's advice was being justified by
munificent donations which recurrently augmented the
building funds; but it may be remarked that various works
of construction and adornment have also been paid for by
individual Fathers.)
In May 1875 the Fathers accepted ‘as the ground work
of a plan for the new Church’ a ‘Fergusson-Moody’
design. (ref. 38) This signifies that they had again turned to
figures in the art-world associated with the Science and
Art Department next door, where a style deriving from the
Italian Renaissance was being cultivated in a convinced it
idiosyncratic manner. The names referred to are those of
an instructor in decorative art there, F. W. Moody, in
conjunction with James Fergusson, architect as well as
theorist and historian of architecture. Fergusson had
recently been a Professional Examiner in Art to the
Department, (ref. 39) and had made illustrated suggestions for a
non-Gothic domical cathedral in the 1873 edition of his
History of the Modern Styles of Architecture. (ref. 40) In October a
larger plan by Moody was under consideration. (ref. 41) Already
a dome is referred to, and a chapel and sacristy of similar
lengths flanking the sanctuary, as in the church that was
built. (ref. 42) Hut it was later recalled that many of the Fathers
now developed ‘a fever for architecture’, so that ‘there
were almost as many plans as Fathers’, and the
‘Fergusson-Moody’ scheme was finally rejected in
December 1875. (ref. 43) Moody was paid £155 for his designs,
of which he exhibited an interior view, admired by the
British Architect, at the Royal Academy in 1877. (ref. 44)
(fn. d)
The future architect of the church had, however, appeared in public by March 1876. In that month The
Building News published a design for the church ‘about to
be erected’, in the Renaissance style ‘for which the congregation have a strong predilection’, and basically similar to
what was ultimately built (Plate 35a). A week later it
printed a disclaimer from the architect, that the design was
‘merely a suggestion of what he thought suitable’. (ref. 45) The
author of the design in question was Herbert Gribble
(1847–94), a twenty-nine-year-old Devonian living
nearby in Chelsea. He had himself been a pupil at the
National Art Training School of the Science and Art
Department in the neighbouring Museum, and then from
about 1867 a pupil of J. A. Hansom. Despite this last hint
of a Catholic background he is said to have been a recent
convert of the Fathers. (ref. 46) He had certainly been in touch
with them in a matter of design so early as April 1874,
when he had been sketching a ‘banner’ in the room of
Father Keogh (the Father Superior at the time the church
was begun). (ref. 47) One of the Fathers later said Gribble had
prepared the design published in The Building News ‘at the
private instigation of one or more of the Fathers’ but had
made it public without authority. (ref. 48) Gribble's connexion
with the Fathers may well have owed something to his
work for Hansom on the church of St. Philip Neri at
Arundel in about 1868–73. This is likely already to have
brought him in contact with the Oratorian-educated fifteenth Duke of Norfolk and to have predisposed the
Fathers to an architect associated with their great friend
and patron.
Late in 1877, however, it was decided to hold a competition for the design, announced in January 1878. (ref. 49) It
was not limited to Catholics, and offered prizes of £200
and £75. The chief requirements were two. The style was
to be ‘that of the Italian Renaissance’, and the sanctuary, at
least sixty feet deep, was to be ‘the most important part of
the Church… Especially the altar and tabernacle should
stand out as visibly the great object of the whole
Church.’ (ref. 50) The nave was to be of a minimum width (50
feet) and maximum length (175 feet). The subsidiary
chapels were to be ‘distinct chambers’, not mere side
altars. Choice of material was unrestricted and although
estimates of cost were required no limit in that respect was
stated—an omission criticized by architectural journalists
and disgruntled competitors, whose designs called for
expenditure ranging from £35,000 to £200,000.
Apart from Gribble himself, the thirty pseudonymous
competitors included Henry Clutton, H. B. Garling, E. W.
Godwin, George Goldie, Temple Moore (aged twentytwo), G. G. Scott junior, and J. D. Sedding. (fn. e)
In May 1878 it was decided to employ Alfred Waterhouse at a fee of £105 to report on the designs but not to
determine the Fathers' choice. (ref. 51) The following month
Waterhouse submitted his report. (ref. 52) One general comment of his was that many entries were so much in the
prescribed style as to be under-fenestrated for a northerly
latitude. Of the thirty, he identified twelve as worth particular consideration: the designs of Garling, Godwin (Plate
35c), Temple Moore and Sedding were among those
excluded. The chosen twelve were by A. J. Adams, Adams
and Kelly, Edward Clarke, H. Clutton, G. Goldie, Gordon
and Flockhart, G. E. Grayson, H. Gribble, G. G. Scott
junior, Bernard Smith, Tasker and Bonella, and Vicars
and O'Neill. From these Waterhouse himself calculated
the cost of executing four ‘as being most likely to repay the
trouble’. They were by Adams and Kelly (£97,702 by
Waterhouse's reckoning), Gordon and Flockhart
(£169,865), Gribble (£91,775) and G. G. Scott junior
(£64,660). For an unknown reason and perhaps simply in
error Waterhouse took Gribble's own estimate to have
been close to his, at £91,000, whereas Gribble had in fact
claimed his design would cost only £35–40,000 unashlared
or £65–70,000 ashlared. The impression conveyed by
Waterhouse's comments on the individual designs is of
greatest liking for those of Gordon and Flockhart (‘ … the
work of a Master [sic]. The interior seems to me to be
very nearly perfect…') and G. G. Scott junior (a design
‘of no ordinary merit… I feel that it is impossible to
speak too highly of its beauty, its quiet dignity, its absence
of all vulgarity and its concentration of effect around the
high altar …’). Adams and Kelly had produced ‘a pleasing and refined design’ with acoustical hazards. Gribble's
design showed notable merits and defects. Chiefly it was
his planning—very close to his 1876 scheme—that
Waterhouse admired. ‘The design appears to me a very
sensible one, well thought out and well proportioned.
Indeed in all its arrangements it shews exceptional excellence, as e.g. the position of the Confessionals; the openings into and the accessibility of the side chapels; the
admirably contrived passage round the church for proces
sions and for gaining access to the different parts of the
Church when the Nave might be crowded …’ Judging
from Waterhouse's general comments on the designs he
was also doubtless pleased by Gribble's avoidance of harsh
lighting and of the placing of windows behind the altars. (ref. 53)
The pulpit was under the dome—‘a position I should be
rather afraid of’—and there were one or two remediable
‘weaknesses of construction’. It was Gribble's elevations,
however, that displeased Waterhouse. ‘They lack dignity
and breadth and are embellished with so much extraneous
ornamentation as to be almost vulgar and commonplace.’
Figure 13:
The Oratory, plan
Nevertheless it was Gribble's design that was chosen by
the Fathers for their first prize and for execution. (ref. 54) Their
second prize they gave to a competitor not among Water
house's select four, Henry Clutton (Plate 35b). This latter
choice was not altogether unreasonable, however, in the
light of Waterhouse's own comments on this ‘good design’,
which found nothing badly amiss and merit in the ‘some
what severe’ exterior. (ref. 52) It seems, from the rejection of
Scott's design, that the likely cost of execution as estimated
by Waterhouse was not the factor telling for Gribble: but
perhaps the Fathers put their faith in Gribble's own lowest
estimate for completion without ashlaring. Gribble was a
skilful draughtsman and his interior perspectives may also
have helped him, although Waterhouse had said their
colouring was ‘to me most unpleasing’. (ref. 52)
The Fathers' decision drew criticism in the architectural
press. (ref. 55) The similarity of Gribble's design to his earlier
offering suggested the competition had been an expensive
nullity, and there was disquiet among architects when it
became known that the Fathers had not followed Water
house's preferences. There seems no foundation for the
suspicion that the Fathers had departed from any under
taking in that respect. Some of the objections were
certainly groundless. Nevertheless a statement from
Waterhouse's office designed to make clear his limited role
coupled this with a plea that future public competitions
should be definitively judged by a professional referee.
Furthermore, Clutton, as second prizeman, soon
announced he had ‘since had reason to decline that
honour’. (ref. 56) Evidently, therefore, unhappiness at the
outcome was felt in respected quarters.
The two designs that were liked by all three of The
Builder, The Building News and the British Architect were by
Gordon and Flockhart and G. E. Grayson—the latter a
competitor who had, as it happens, been only mildly
praised by Waterhouse (‘a sensible design’). (ref. 57)
(fn. f) Generally
the periodicals regretted a lack of originality, so that
‘souvenirs of tit-bits have been transported from nearly all
the famous Italian churches’. (ref. 58) The absence of centralizing plans, theoretically permitted by the specified dimensions, was noticed, but the longitudinal space available
almost enforced the usual oblong plan.
The Fathers decided that in carrying out his design
Gribble should be associated with another architect, and
after considering C. A. Buckler (evidently a non
competitor, unless he was the sole unidentified entrant),
Clutton, Goldie and the obscure J. T. Walford decided on
the last, whose design was one of the five that had gone
unnoticed even in The Builder's lengthy review of the
competition. (Temple Moore's was another.) (ref. 59)
Adjustments were made to Gribble's design in 1878–9,
when many quite small changes were submitted for the
Fathers' approval. A little ornamentation was removed from
the exterior. The intended realization of the church in brick
was changed to Portland-stone ashlaring. (ref. 60) An important
change was to the dome. The competition design would have
provided for a single, shallow concrete shell, but this was
replaced by a design for a higher dome of double, inner and
outer, construction, that would nevertheless still have been of
low silhouette compared with that of the dome actually built
after Gribble's death (Plate 36a, 36c). (ref. 61)
Gribble's original competition design was not published,
but his modified design was published, as being his
‘selected design’, in May 1879. (ref. 62)
Although the interior and general effect of the church
very fully met the Fathers' Italianate requirements (Front
ispiece), it may be observed that Gribble gave the lower part
of the exterior and particularly of the façade a smooth,
neat, rectangularized treatment that seems to show
Wrennish and French influences rather than Italian.
In September 1879, after competitive tendering, a
contract was concluded with the builder George Shaw of
Westminster for the carcase less the outer dome and
façade. (ref. 63) (The architect's clerk of works was Joseph Seed
and the builder's foreman Tinckam. (ref. 64) ) At the same time a
temporary iron church, to be built in front of the Oratory
House to Gribble's design, was contracted for with
Messrs. Croggan: at 113 by 76 feet it was thought one of
the largest of iron churches. (ref. 65) The total cost arising from
its construction was £2,679. (ref. 66)
(fn. g) In March 1880 the
foundations of the permanent church were begun. (ref. 68)
Gribble decided not to carry them down thirty feet to the
gravel, but to build on dry, compacted sand. (ref. 69) The found
ation stone was laid in June—the ceremony being,
according to The Builder, ‘a perfect muddle’. (ref. 70) The
church, still lacking its outer dome and façade, was
consecrated and opened in April 1884. (ref. 71)
A notable constructional feature was Gribble's use of
concrete vaulting, by the example, he says, of the ‘temple’
of Minerva Medica at Rome. In the nave it was seven to
fourteen inches thick and in the inner dome it was (or was
intended to be (ref. 72) ) one to two feet thick. An account of the
building of the church published by Gribble in 1885
reveals with candour the element of personal experimenta
tion and tentative, anxious pragmatism in a Victorian
architect's approach to his constructional problems. Of the
wrought-iron trusses in the roof, for example, he wrote,
‘whether this scheme will turn out satisfactory or not, time
will show… ‘The cost was sleepless nights for Gribble,
and, at first, tie-rods across the nave itself. (ref. 73) Gribble used
Devonshire ‘marbles’ extensively inside, from near his
native Plymouth. (ref. 74) These were supplied, ready for fixing,
by J. and E. Goad of that city, where Gribble designed
their premises. (ref. 75)
(fn. h) The building stone was specified as best
brown Portland, the roof-slates North Wales Duchess, the
timber Baltic, and the wrought iron best Swedish or its
equivalent. (ref. 76) It was announced that the caps and or
namental parts of the interior would be in carton pierre
and fibrous plaster. (ref. 77) The Oratorians’ neighbour, the
Science and Art Department, evidently regarded Gribble
as an expert on building materials, and employed him in
1886 to improve its ‘construction collection’. (ref. 78)
The cost of the work rose eventually, by the end of
1885, to vindicate Waterhouse's judgment at a total of
some £93,302. This was made up of £69,682 to the
contractor, £10,352 to the marble merchant, £4,777 to
the architects, £1,098 to their clerk of works and £7,393
for fittings and sundries. (ref. 65)
The Builder had, however,
prophesied that it would be a ‘costly’ design, (ref. 79) and Gribble
was pleased to have held the expense to less than 7d. a
cubic foot. (ref. 80)
By the end of 1881 his association with Walford had
become disharmonious, and in February 1882 the Fathers
had shown their confidence in him by his appointment as
sole architect: Walford was evidently aggrieved. (ref. 81) In 1885
the Fathers gave Gribble an honorarium of £100. (ref. 82) In the
same year, however, an alternative scheme for the sanctuary
by J. H. Pollen was evidently being considered, (ref. 83) and in
1888 its decoration was given to J. Cosgreave, who removed
pediments from Gribble's doors and designed the present
wall-treatment (for foreign, not Devonshire, marbles). (ref. 84)
In 1890 it was decided to add the façade at the south
end. Of thirteen Fathers five voted against Gribble's
employment as architect, and his design was only adopted
after a split vote. (ref. 85) It was an amended version of his
competition design, a little closer in its pedimented finish
to the Oratorians’ Chiesa Nuova at Rome, and crowned by
a statue of the Virgin, not, as in the competition design, St.
John the Baptist. (ref. 53) A tender was accepted from D. Charteris in 1891–2, but some breach, probably caused by a
misunderstanding about the estimates, opened between
Gribble and the Fathers. (ref. 86) This was patched up: in 1893,
however, when Gribble was probably already afflicted with
a fatal sickness, his services were dispensed with and the
upper part of the facade, less the superstructure of the
flanking towers, was completed to his design under the
supervision of the clerk of works, Peter Shaw (Plate
37b). (ref. 87) Who carried out the excellent ornamental stone
carving on the exterior is not known: one sculptor employed
by Gribble at the Oratory in 1891 on unidentified work
connected with ‘tablets’ was Alfred Toft of Trafalgar
Studios, Manresa Road, Chelsea. (ref. 88) In the years 1890–5
some £14,302 was spent on the building. (ref. 89) Shaw in 1896
designed the pleasant, cylindrically chimneyed lodge, built in
the following year, and also the paving in front of the portico,
curtailed for road-widening in 1971–2. (ref. 90) (In 1897 he called
himself ‘architect’ and lived at Bedford Park. (ref. 91) )
Gribble, who died in 1894 aged forty-seven, had greatly
regretted the failure to construct his outer dome. (ref. 92) The
want was, in a manner, supplied when ‘a Client of Saint
Philip’ (Mrs. Daglish-Bellasis (ref. 93) ) offered to pay for it on
the saint's tercentenary in 1895. The design was to be
provided by the architect George Sherrin, who in 1894
had suggested an alternative domical finish to the flanking
towers, (ref. 94) but the lantern was designed by his young assis
tant, E. A. Rickards (Plate 37a). (ref. 95) The steel-framed dome
was built in 1895–6 to the silhouette, higher and steeper
than Gribble had proposed, which shows so effectively
from some of the quiet streets north of the Brompton
Road. (ref. 93) The influence of Pietro da Cortona is evident.
(Stanley Adshead thought Sherrin had impaired Rick
ards's design by elevating the lantern in relation to the
dome—‘let us push it up a foot or so’. (ref. 95) )
At the same time Cardinal Newman's memorial was
erected by a committee under the fifteenth Duke of Norfolk
in front of St. Joseph's Hall (Plate 41c). It was designed by
Bodley and Garner and made by Farmer and Brindley,
whose artist, L. J. Chavalliaud, modelled Newman's
statue. (ref. 96)
The last external work of consequence was the facing of
St. Wilfrid's and St. Joseph's Halls with stone to a design
by Leonard Stokes in 1911 intended to rise one storey
higher. (ref. 97)
Within the Oratory House the delightful library (Plate
34b) has been fitted up and decorated, particularly above
gallery level, at various dates since 1859 (for example, in
1910 (ref. 98) ). The beautiful private chapel of the Little Oratory
still chiefly shows Pollen's work of 1871–2, augmented in
1954 by grisaille and trompel'oeil paintings by Edgar Ritchard
to the architectural design of Adrian Brookholding-Jones
(Plate 34a). (ref. 99)
In planning his great church Gribble's generally Italian
effect had been perfectly deliberate, ‘so that’ (he said)
‘those who had no opportunity of going to Italy to see an
Italian church had only to come here to see the model of
one‘. (ref. 100) His original coloured interior perspective of the
competition design for the nave (ref. 101) shows a perhaps rather
light-weight decorative scheme employing arabesque
motifs and grotteschi. By 1885 his proposals for the sanctuary, at least, were strongly coloured in red marbles. (ref. 101)
With internal walls in Keene's cement, however, the
church in its early days lacked its full intended richness, (ref. 100)
although at the opening the Lady Chapel and St. Wilfrid's
Chapel already displayed their fine old altars from northern Italy and Flanders (see below and Plates 40b, c, 41a).
In 1895 the twelve marble apostles carved by Giuseppe
Mazzuoli c. 1679–95 for Siena Cathedral and ejected
thence by Gothic zeal in 1880 were acquired to adorn the
nave (Plate 41c, 41d). (ref. 102) In many of the subsidiary chapels
as well as in the sanctuary much of the early decoration
and painting was by J. Cosgreave and the Spanish artist V.
Codina-Langlin respectively. (ref. 103)
The present interior (Plates 38, 39) takes much of its
character from decoration in 1927–32 by Commendatore
C. T. G. Formilli, an Italian architect long resident in
Kensington, who was on occasions employed by the Italian
and British governments. (ref. 104) He was here both the designer
and contractor, at an estimated price of no less than
£31,000, which was, furthermore, to be considerably
exceeded. His versatility extended to designing the
suspended scaffolding for his workmen. He provided the
high-relief figures in the spandrels and over the keystones
of the arches in the nave, the Stations of the Cross between
the pilasters in the nave, and other panels in relief (all in
stucco, and some or all of it executed in Milan); the yellow
Siena marbling between the pilasters in the nave and at the
crossing (which was adopted when Formilli failed to find a
marble of the bright green colour he would have preferred)-, the Venetian-made mosaics under the dome, flanking
the windows, and in the ceiling; much of the gilding
throughout; some painting in the ceiling; the coloured
motifs in the windows; and (extra to the main contract) the
great mahogany pulpit (Plate 40a). Formilli's declared aim
was by his colouring to make the interior ‘still more in
keeping with the traditions of the Catholic Church’, and it
seems that his proposed designs were pleasing to Pope
Pius XI. (ref. 105) The effect is more billowy and abounding than
in Gribble's proposals. The Father Superior of the time
said, ‘We ought I suppose to have advertised a competition, employed British architects and British labour, and
had a thoroughly British scheme of decoration. But we did
none of these things, and I for one do not regret it. I can
imagine the sort of thing we should have got … ‘Formilli
was not, however, allowed to substitute polychrome marble
for the old wood-block floor bedded in concrete. (The
Fathers had preferred this to a boarded floor, which
Gribble had originally recommended as ‘most essential for
comfort, when sitting, or during the devotion of the “Way
of the Cross”. (ref. 106) )
Some features of the church, viewed clockwise and
excluding copies of works elsewhere, are the following: (ref. 107)
Figure 14:
The Oratory, confessional box from former church
Chapel of the Sacred Heart. Decorated by Geoffrey Webb
c. 1935: (ref. 108) altar and reredos by Gribble.
Chapel of St. Joseph. Decorated by Andrew Carden of
Carden, Godfrey and Macfadyen 1964: altar by Scoles
(1861) from the old church: (ref. 109) statue of St Joseph, Belgian, erected 1884: (ref. 110) marble doorcases survive from
scheme by George Aitchison, c. 1897–8. (ref. 111)
Chapel of the Seven Dolours. Altar and reredos by Gribble
given by Flora, Duchess of Norfolk: altarpiece painted at
Rome for Fr. Faber in 1859 or earlier by Ferenc Szoldatits
(1820–1916), a Hungarian follower of the Nazarenes
domiciled there: the Fathers thought of him as a
German. (ref. 112)
Chapel of St. Philip. Altar and baldacchino by Gribble,
made by Farmer and Brindley, given by 15th Duke of
Norfolk (Plate 41b): (ref. 113) alto-relievo in Italian cement in
tympanum of baldacchino by Girolamo Moneta of Milan, (estimated price £90): (ref. 114) wall-reliefs on either side of
baldacchino by Laurence Bradshaw, c. 1927: (ref. 115) apse of
Blessed Sebastian Valfré by Thomas Garner, 1901–3: (ref. 116)
paintings on either side of baldacchino attributed to Guercino. (ref. 117)
Sacristy. Altar and reredos from the Chapel of the
Sacred Heart in the old church. (ref. 118)
Sanctuary. Altar rails and wooden stalls and floor from
old church: wall treatment designed by J. Cosgreave,
1888–90: (ref. 119) altarpiece and paintings at sides by B. Pozzi,
1924–7: (ref. 120) seven-branch candle-holders designed by
William Burges, presented by third Marquess of Bute,
1879. (ref. 121)
Chapel of St. Wilfrid. The altar and baldacchino of the
saint (Plate 40b, 40c), installed before the opening in 1884,
originally formed the High Altar of the monastic church of
St. Remy at Rochefort in Belgium, but had been bought,
through the dealer Cools and the firm of Duveen, from the
church of St. Servaas at Maastricht in Holland, which had
itself bought the altar in 1811, after the suppression of St.
Remy. It lacks two angels that knelt on brackets at each
side of the baldacchino, and the door of the tabernacle has
been changed within its oval opening. (De Feller visited St.
Remy in 1771 and said the High Altar, ‘un vrai chef
d'oeuvre’, was the work of the architect Étienne Fayn
(1712–90), which, if true, gives a later date for it than the
style suggests.) (ref. 122) Statue of saint by V. Codina
Langlin: (ref. 123) apse decorated by J. Cosgreave: (ref. 124) altars of
St. Teresa of Lisieux and of the English Martyrs by David
Stokes, 1936–8: (ref. 125) bas-relief on former by Arthur Pollen:
triptych over latter by Rex Whistler.
Lady Chapel. The altar, with its reredos (Plate 41a), is
from the Chapel of the Rosary in the church of San
Domenico at Brescia. It was made in 1693 by the Florentine Francesco Corbarelli and his sons Domenico and
Antonio and, as would appear from the term ‘Arch.’ in the
contemporary inscription, was also designed by them. It
was bought for £1,550, received in instalments from February to May 1881, and restored over a period of two
years. (ref. 126) The central recess was altered to receive the
figure of Our Lady from the old Oratory church and
originally in King William Street. (ref. 127) The statues of St.
Rose of Lima and St. Pius V to left and right of the altar
are by Orazio Marinali, c. 1690–2 (the latter signed with
his initials). (ref. 128) The rest of the figure sculpture, including
the St. Dominic and St. Catherine of Siena now moved
from the altar to niches in the side walls of the chapel, is by
the Tyrolean, Thomas Ruer (d. 1696). (ref. 129) Two other
statues, of angels, have been removed from either side of
the altar to the organ gallery, where they overlook the
Chapel of St. Mary Magdalene: of these, the one on the
right as seen from that chapel is by Santo Calegari
(1662–1719) and signed by him and was formerly on the
Gospel side of the Lady Altar. (ref. 130)
(fn. i)
Organ gallery. The organ by J. W. Walker and Sons,
1954, to specifications by Ralph Downes: two angels, see
Lady Chapel above.
Chapel of St. Mary Magdalene. Decorated by J. Cosgreave: altar and reredos by Gribble: mosaic panels on
either side of altar by A. Capello of Chelsea, 1883–4. (ref. 132)
Chapel of St. Patrick. Altar from Naples: reredos by
Gribble: altarpiece and lateral paintings by Pietro Pezzati:
paintings on wooden panels at each side of altar perhaps by
Frans Floris: (ref. 133) war memorial, 1918–21, designed by L.
Berra, executed by Daniells and Fricker of Kilburn, with
Pietà of Italian carving. (ref. 134)
The plain confessionals in four of the chapels are from
the old church (fig. 14). (ref. 135)
(fn. j)