St Cuthbert's, Earls Court

St Cuthbert's is the grandest church to have been built in western Kensington. It was constructed from 1884 to 1887 and was greatly enriched and beautified over the succeeding thirty years. A clergy house attached to the north-west corner of the church was incorporated into Gough's scheme and was the first element to be built. It was undertaken in the latter half of 1883 for a contract price of £1,622 by S. Belham and Company of Buckingham Palace Road, who were to be the builders for the church as well. The church itself followed on from the spring of 1884, slowly at first due to lack of funds. Belhams took up the first contract for £2,937 and the foundation stone, a block quarried at…

Gough designed an austere, lofty structure of Transitional style and Cistercian type, with proportions modelled upon Tintern Abbey. It was unified by a single main roof and lit from a tall clerestory running the whole length of the church. There are lean-to aisles uninterrupted except in the south-east corner, where an apsidal Lady Chapel was built. Below the church was a crypt for vestries, a public meeting-room, and a mortuary chapel, it had been intended to use this crypt as a temporary church, but the Bishop had vetoed the suggestion on the grounds that people would not 'go into the ground to say their prayers'. No tower was intended, its function being supplied by a slender flèche upon…