St Gabriel's, Pimlico

About this church

Ralph Allwood, choir director of St Gabriel's, has orchestrated an amazing nationwide campaign of Virtual Evensong, involving celebrities such as Stephen Fry, Alexander Armstrong, Rev Richard Coles and Simon Russell Beale, and 250 singers too. BBC Radio 4 Today and Radio 3, LBC News, Classic FM and others have already broadcast it. Now you can listen for yourself on YouTube.

In the 1840s, 50s and 60s Pimlico was a rapidly expanding residential area and in each of these decades at a least one new church was built, ours in 1852-3. The Marquis of Westminster, who then owned all the land, built our church. The church would complete Cubitt’s vision for this most majestic of city squares, dominating the skyline as it still does today.

Cundy designed this and our neighbouring churches, St Barnabas and St. Saviour’s as well as St Paul’s, Knightsbridge; all beautiful buildings but none of them matches the cathedral-like proportions of St Gabriel’s.

To finance the construction, funds were subscribed from the new residents, coming fortunately right in the middle of Victorian zeal for church building in London. The parish of St Gabriel’s was carved out of one of the wards of St George’s, Hanover Square, with whom we still have a relationship as our mother church, and the Church of St Gabriel’s, Pimlico was consecrated on May 12th 1853. The Illustrated London News recorded the events with satisfaction.

It is a middle-pointed building in decorated Gothic style with a graceful tower of 160 feet, into which in 1855 went a peal of eight bells, which we still ring occasionally today. The building is all Kentish Ragstone with Caen stone dressings – despite these materials already falling out of favour with the Victorian builders for the reasons that we can easily see now – the discolouration and decay of the stone caused by London’s corrosive atmosphere. The tower had already started to deteriorate as early as 1887 when, after a falling stone nearly killed a member of the congregation, it had to be taken down and rebuilt!

Originally the nave was a central aisle formed under the 60’ high pitched slate roof and one aisle each side, with wooden galleries over their whole length. The side galleries were removed in the 1890s reportedly to improve the ventilation and acoustics, and outer side-aisles were added to replace the lost capacity, making the exceptionally wide and open nave we have today. However it wasn’t so light – the whole nave was lit by stained glass windows.

Audio Webcasts

Listen to St Gabriel's conductor Ralph Allwood's Virtual Evensong here