Description

This list entry was subject to a Minor Amendment on 01/10/2012

TQ 2981 NW
46/19

CITY OF WESTMINSTER
MORTIMER STREET W1 (north side)
Middlesex Hospital Chapel

5.2.70

II*
Hospital. 1891 by John Loughborough Pearson, completed 1929 by his son Frank Loughborough Pearson. Italian Gothic style. Red brick in English bond; headers only to apse; Portland stone dressings and plain tile roofs. Narthex and organ gallery, apsed western transepts, nave and apsed chancel. Semi-circular chancel apse has lancet windows; Two-light windows to western bays of chancel and to nave have plate tracery and quatrefoils to heads. Similar windows to canted sides of North West transept and to south side of narthex. South West transept has shallow inner bay with hipped roof and lower semicircular apse with stone-coped parapet and lancet windows. Windows all have splayed stone sills, heads and tracery. West door has continuous keeled moulding to intrados, shafts and chamfered arch to extrados, hood mould and label stops. Chapel has blue brick plinth and stone-coped parapet.

Interior: chapel has complete scheme of polychrome marble and mosaic decoration, and vaulting. Vaults are enriched with mosaic work of stars against a gold background and bands of mosaic ornament instead of cross ribs with patterned circles at intersections. Vaults spring from tall marble shafts with stiff-leaf foliage to attached stone capitals and moulded alabaster bases which rest on a high continuous ledge running at level of bottom of window splays. Window splays are lined with alabaster with bands of mosaic at level of shaft capitals and two thinner bands to lower part of splays; patterned marble mosaic work to splays above bands at level of springing of vault. Walls below ledge are lined with green onyx with broadband of marble mosaic in zigzag pattern running below mosaic decoration of ledge. Chancel has pillar piscina with Cosmatiesque ornament to spiral moulding of pillar and to bowl. Ogee-arched aumbry presented in memory of Prince Francis of Teck, outlined by mosaic ornament with white marble roundel above carved with Pelican in her Piety. Round-headed chancel arch with plain piers lined with red marble, stiff-leaf capitals, marble abaci and mosaic work to arch with roundels depicting busts of Twelve Apostles to underside of arch; marble mosaic work between arch and vault. Similar arch between nave and western crossing with rectangular panels depicting the greater Prophets to mosaic work of underside of arches. Similar arch frames West gallery and organ loft with mosaic capitals and inscription to mosaic work of arch reading GLORIA IN EXCELSIS DEO ET IN TERRA PAX HOMINIBUS BONAE VOLUNTATIS.
If gallery is supported on three arches, that to centre wider and flanked by paired red marble shafts with stone stiff-leaf capitals, single shafts to outer arches. Arches are lined with alabaster. Gallery front is panelled with Irish bog marble divided by vertical mosaic strips. Three sunk panels of mosaic work below mosaic work to projecting ledge of gallery rail. Inner arch framing organ loft is lined with alabaster bearing mosaic crosses. North West apse has large marble roundel on North wall below vault depicting Saint Barnabas. South West apse forms baptistery and has narrow vaulted bay in front of semicircular apse. Lower walls of apse are lined with alternating panels of red, pale green and green marbles and mosaic work to apse depicting angels bearing scrolls either side of cross against blue background. Font is carved from solid block of deep green marble with symbols of Four Evangelists at each corner and inscribed with Greek palindrome copied from the font of Hagia Sophia. White marble altar with mosaic panels and marble gradine. White marble cancelli between nave and chancel incorporating lectern with winged eagle supporting reading desk.Chancel and sanctuary with pavements of opus alexandrinum; simpler tessellated floors to body of chapel. Late C19-mid C20 stained glass. All directions are liturgical; the chapel is in fact aligned on a roughly North-South axis. The Middlesex Hospital was rebuilt around the chapel following demolition of the original building in 1927.
(John Loughborough Pearson, Anthony Quiney. The Middlesex Hospital, C D Shaw and W R Winterton).

Listing NGR: TQ2926381654

External Links

• Historic England Listing
• Fitzrovia Chapel at Wikipedia
• Fitzrovia Chapel official website
• Wikidata Q17549757

External links are from the relevant listing authority and, where applicable, Wikidata. Wikidata IDs may be related buildings as well as this specific building. If you want to add or update a link, you will need to do so by editing the Wikidata entry.

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