History, Vision and Values: All Souls, Langham Place, London

Three issues.

First, a brief  history of All Souls Anglican Church, Langham Place, in downtown London.  It is taken from their website at: http://www.allsouls.org/Groups/132679/All_Souls_site/Discovering/Our_History/Our_History.aspx. 

Second, we post their statement of “Vision and Values” of All Souls at: http://www.allsouls.org/Groups/132678/All_Souls_site/Discovering/Vision_and_Values/Vision_and_Values.aspx. 

Third, as a concluding aside, we doubt that All Souls has used the 1662 Book of Common Prayer for quite some time.  We are not sure why.  But, assuredly, it’s a modern innovation.

Now, for the “History.”

Welcome to All Souls, the only surviving church built by the renowned regency architect, John Nash. It is one of the “Waterloo Churches” built to express the nation’s thanksgiving to God for victory over Napoleon in 1815, and was erected in 1822-24.

John Nash & All Souls

In the early 19th century, new churches were needed to serve the rapidly growing population of St. Marylebone. John Nash was working on his Regent Street scheme (leading from Piccadilly Circus to Regents Park), and the site for All Souls fitted in splendidly, iving scope for a landmark building to close the vista from Oxford Circus and swing his new road round to join the existing Portland Place. All Souls is built of Bath stone and is simply an ornate, but ordinary, galleried hall, or a wide nave with no transepts. It is entered through a rotunda surrounded by a portico with Ionic columns, whose capitals are made of artificial Coade stone. The winged cherubs’ heads are unusual and based on a design by Michelangelo. The unique spire consists of 17 concave sides encircled by Corinthian columns. Originally, a stone balustrade ran all round the roof, but after part fell onto the pavement early in the 20th century, most was removed and only the part on the rotunda remains today. There is no east window; instead, the interior is dominated by the painting ‘Ecce Homo’ (‘Behold the Man’), which depicts Jesus Christ during his trial before Pontius Pilate (as related in John 18:28-40). It was painted by Richard Westall (later drawing master to the young Princess Victoria) and probably presented to All Souls by King George IV. Nash was responsible for the church’s interior, though most of his designs were lost, apart from the mahogany case housing the central body of the gallery organ. Over the years, the instrument has been replaced and re-modeled and the case extended, fitted with new gilded front pipes. Nash’s design was greeted in some quarters with derision. The combination of Gothic spire and classical rotunda was criticized, and the distinctive tower and spire was castigated in the House of Commons as “a mass of deformity”, “resembling an extinguisher on a flat candlestick”. The infamous cartoonist George Cruikshank, even depicted Nash impaled on his spire (see the above).

All Souls was completed in 1824 and consecrated on 25 November. It seated 1500 people in high boxed pews and there was just one service each Sunday. No doubt in part because of the up and coming nature of Marylebone, the church rapidly became fashionable, and full.

Crown Connections

All Souls has always had strong connections to the Crown and these remain today. The Prince Regent (as he then was) first bought the land on which the church was built, selected his favourite architect to build West Side of Langham Place by Thomas Shepherd (1828)

Second, here are the “Vision and Values” of All Souls, Langham Place, London. 

Vision and Values

Our vision
Growing an international community to reach a multicultural society for

Christ.

Our aims

·                     Come together to learn to live Christ across our scattered networks

·                     Send out to serve and speak Christ along our different networks

·                     Send on to witness and work for Christ in new networks

All Souls Church is:

·                     a  Church of England Church and we hold orthodox Anglican beliefs subscribing to the historical creeds which speak of our belief in God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit as well as the 39 Articles with their reminders of the great Reformation principles of 'Christ Alone, Scripture Alone, Faith Alone.'

(You can find links to the texts of the Apostles' Creed, the Nicene Creed and the 39 Articles at www.anglicansonline.org/basics/what_believe.html)

·                     a member of the Evangelical Alliance and we subscribe to their Basis of Faith (www.eauk.org/about/basis-of-faith.cfm).