page_title: Savoy Chapel
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Savoy Chapel / History
caption_attribution_description: Savoy Hospital, off the Strand: ruins of the walls. Etching. Iconographic Collections Keywords: George Vertue
context_page_description: The Queen's Chapel of St John the Baptist in the Precinct of the Savoy, also known as the Queen's Chapel of the Savoy, is a church in the City of Westminster, central London, dedicated to St John the Baptist. It is located just south of the Strand, next to the Savoy Hotel.
  It sits on the site of the Savoy Palace, once owned by John of Gaunt, that was destroyed in the Peasants' Revolt of 1381. Work was begun on the building in 1502 by King Henry VII and it received its first charter to operate as a hospital foundation in 1512 to look after 100 poor and needy men of London. The hospital had fallen into ruin by the late 18th century; only the chapel survived the consequent demolition, which enabled the construction of an approach road at the north of first Waterloo Bridge.
  The chapel is owned by the Duchy of Lancaster and as such is a Royal Peculiar, not being under the jurisdiction of a bishop, but under that of the reigning monarch.
  The church is the chapel of the Royal Victorian Order, although since the number of the members of the Order exceeded the width of the chapel their gathering takes place at St George's Chapel, at Windsor Castle.
context_section_description: The chapel was founded as part of Peter of Savoy's palace which was destroyed during the Peasants' Revolt of 1381. The present chapel building commenced in the 1490s (being completed in 1512) by Henry VII as a side chapel off the Savoy Hospital's 200-foot (61 m) long nave (the nave was secular rather than sacred, held 100 beds and was demolished in the 19th century).
  The Savoy Chapel has hosted various other congregations, most notably that of St Mary-le-Strand whilst it had no church building of its own (1549–1714). Also the German Lutheran congregation of Westminster (now at Sandwich Street and Thanet Street, near St Pancras) was granted royal permission to worship in the chapel when it separated from Holy Trinity (the City of London Lutheran congregation now at St Mary-at-Hill). The new congregation's first pastor, Irenaeus Crusius (previously an associate at Holy Trinity), dedicated the chapel on the 19th Sunday after Trinity 1694 as the Marienkirche or the German Church of St Mary-le-Savoy. Archibald Cameron of Lochiel, the last Jacobite leader to be executed for treason, was buried there in 1753.
  An Anglican place of worship, the chapel was noted in the 18th and 19th centuries as a place where marriages without banns might occur outside of the usual parameters of ecclesiastical law of that time. The Rev. Henry White was the chaplain of Savoy Chapel from 1860 to 1890 and might have set a record for officiating at the marriages of actors and actresses. It was referred to in Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited as "the place where divorced couples got married in those days—a poky little place". In 1755 Joseph Vernon married Jane Poitier here and the curate and vicar were transported for fourteen years for carrying out an unlicensed wedding.
  In 1908 it was the scene of a suffragette wedding between Victor and Una Duval. The wedding was attended by leading suffragettes and the wedding caused much debate because the bride refused to say "and obey", despite the intervention of the Archbishop of Canterbury.
  In 1939, it was announced by the office of the Duchy of Lancaster that the Savoy Chapel would be known as The King's Chapel of the Savoy.
  Many of the chapel's stained glass windows were destroyed in the London Blitz during the Second World War. However, a triptych stained glass memorial window survives which depicts a procession of angelic musicians. It is dedicated to the memory of Richard D'Oyly Carte (who was married at the chapel in 1888) and was unveiled by Sir Henry Irving in 1902; after their deaths, the names of Rupert D'Oyly Carte and Dame Bridget D'Oyly Carte were added.
caption: Part of the old Savoy Hospital (top) and the 'Church of St Mary Savoy' (bottom) in 1753.
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