page_title: St Cuthbert's, Earls Court
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: St Cuthbert's, Earls Court / History
caption_attribution_description: English: St Cuthberts Kensit Misericord
context_page_description: St Cuthbert's, Philbeach Gardens is a Grade I listed Anglican church at 50 Philbeach Gardens, Earls Court, London SW5.
  The Church was built 1884–87, designed by the architect Hugh Roumieu Gough, son of Alexander Dick Gough. The interior furnishings designed by William Bainbridge Reynolds who was a member of the congregation. It has been hailed as Jewel of the Arts and Crafts movement of the late 19th and early 20th Centuries.
  The church is situated on the north west of Philbeach Gardens in Earls Court near the West Cromwell Road. Adjoining the church is the clergy house, and to that the Philbeach Hall.
  St Cuthberts is noted for its interior decoration and its style of worship.
context_section_description: St. Cuthbert's is the grandest church to have been built in western Kensington. It was built 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 Lindisfarne, was laid by Earl Beauchamp on 2 July 1884. Not long afterwards work had to be stopped while Westall appealed for a further £4,000. Tenders for the second contract were not submitted until May 1886, when Belhams resumed their work for a price of £7,836. In July 1887 the structure was being roofed in. The consecration by Bishop Temple finally took place on 18 November 1887 but the Lady Chapel was apparently not finished until the following year. As completed, the church seated about 950; the cost of its construction was estimated roundly at £11,000.
  Under Westall, St. Cuthbert's grew rapidly in influence, until it was soon the most flourishing High-Church foundation in Kensington. On Good Friday, 15 April 1898, John Kensit a well known agitator,  with some of his followers attended the service, and waiting until his turn came to kneel down and kiss the cross. Instead, he 'seized the crucifix, and, holding it aloft, said in a clear and distinct voice, "I denounce this idolatry in the Church of England; may God help me".' A scrummage ensued, and Kensit and his supporters were with difficulty ejected from the church, Kensit was charged, convicted and fined £3 (about £350 today), but acquitted on appeal at the Clerkenwell Quarter Sessions, though without costs. The incident did St. Cuthbert's no harm, and Westall's calm deportment throughout the proceedings enhanced his reputation. It became Kensit's fate to be depicted on the misericord in the Vicars Stall in the Sanctuary with protruding asses' ears, Kensit's likeness forever residing beneath the Vicar's derrière!
  Of later building works at St. Cuthbert's, the most considerable was the Philbeach Hall, erected north of the clergy house to Gough's designs in 1894–96. This building (No. 51 Philbeach Gardens) housed a library, a hall, a gymnasium and six sets of bachelor chambers for curates. Extra land was leased for this purpose from Lord Kensington, and the total cost of the project came to some £6,570 The northern end of the building was largely destroyed by a bomb in 1940 and more simply rebuilt in 1956–57 to designs by J. Harold Gibbons working in partnership with D. R. Humphrys and R. W. Hurst. Another project, prepared in 1908 by J. Harold Gibbons, would have added a mortuary chapel and cloister on the south side of the church. For this purpose the lease of the adjacent garden was acquired, but Lord Iveagh (from 1902 the freeholder of Philbeach Gardens) objected and the idea was dropped.
  There was damage to the church in the Second World War, on 2 August 1944, by the blast of a V-1 flying bomb opposite the East end of the church which killed three people and caused 77–83 Philbeach Gardens to be demolished and rebuilt. In 1946–8 the church was deprived of its damaged western bellcote and entirely re-roofed in copper under the supervision of J. Harold Gibbons.
  The funeral service of Charles Tilston Bright took place at St Cuthbert's in 1888.
caption: Kensit Misericord
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