Percy Bacon & Brothers Stained Glass

Stained Glass of Percy Bacon & Brothers

Euston, St James's Church, Hampstead Road (Lost works).

Greater London; Camden

Turnpike on the Hampstead Road and St James's Chapel

The turnpike on Hampstead Road and St Jame's' Church in 1820. From Old and New London by Edward Walford, 1887.

North Aisle 4; He Shall Feed His Flock, and a young Christ teaching in the temple; 1903, dedicated 1925.

The turnpike on Hampstead Road and St Jame's Church in 1820.

Posted 04 July 2024.

St James's Church on the Hampstead Road just to the west of what is now Euston Station was originally built to a design by Thomas Hardwick,¹ circa 1791, as a chapel of ease to the mother church of St James in Piccadilly. Edward Walford in his book "Old and New London" published in 1887 describes the church and the adjacent burial ground in less than glowing terms:

It [St James's] is a large brick building and has a large, dreary, and ill-kept burial-ground attached to it. Here lie George Morland, the painter, who died in 1804; John Hoppner, the portrait-painter, who died in 1810; Admiral Lord Gardner, the hero of Port l’Orient, and the friend of Howe, Bridport and Nelson; and without a memorial, Lord George Gordon, the mad leader of the Anti-Catholic Riots in 1780, who died a prisoner in Newgate in 1793.” ²

Walford, I think, was being a little unkind judging by the surviving pictures of the church, but perhaps he was of a "Gothic Revival" mindset, and saw anything English Baroque in style as anathema! A map of 1797Map of 1797 shows the original chapel of ease and the new rectangular burial ground.

Map image reproduced with permission from National Library of Scotland under Creative Commons License CC-BY (NLS). produced before the railways came to London, shows the burial ground and the church fronting Hampstead Road, and the etching above gives an impression of the relatively open aspect to the west of the church. By 1870 the church would be completely surrounded by housing and Euston Station, and the burial ground was no longer in use. By 1914 the realignment of Cardington Street seems to have sliced off a significant portion of the graveyard. Compare the 1870 maps and 1914 maps here. Map of 1870. By this time the burial ground was completely surrounded by housing and a printing works, with Euston Station to the east.

Map image reproduced with permission from National Library of Scotland under Creative Commons License CC-BY (NLS). Map of 1914. The realignment of Cardington Street has sliced off the north east corner of the original burial grounds.

Map image reproduced with permission from National Library of Scotland under Creative Commons License CC-BY (NLS).

The area is, at the time of writing, undergoing major development to facilitate the new station for the HS2 railway. Please refer below to the links in the reference section for more information, including the archeological dig of the old burial ground which was recently undertaken. It is suggested that the ground contained the remains of over 50,000 people, including Captain Matthew Flinders, the Royal Navy explorer who undertook the first circumnavigation of Australia.

The church fell out of use sometime in the 1950s and was eventually demolished in 1964.³

Percy Bacon Works in St James's Church.

The Builder article of 03 June 1899 reports on the works carried out by Percy Bacon and Brothers:

"DECORATION AND REPAIR OF ST. JAMES’ CHURCH, HAMPSTEAD-ROAD. — This church has just been reopened after thorough internal decoration and repair. The Sanctuary floor has been raised and laid with wooden blocks; - the walls have been panelled with carved oak, a baldachino erected over the altar, with paintings of two censing angels above. Outside the church a wrought-iron structure of artistic design has been erected. The whole of the works has been carried out by Messrs. Percy Bacon and Bros. of London".

The image below, taken following these works, gives an idea of the final result inside the church, the baldachino and painted angels above.

Interior of St James's Church, Hampstead Road, London

Interior of St Jame's Church, early 20th century.

References: Use your browser's Back button to return to text.

Designs for St James's Chapel, Hampstead Road, London, with sexton's house and vicarage: elevation. RIBA acrchive.
Old and New London Vol 5, The Western and Northern Suburbs, by Edward Walford, Cassell & Co. 1887, p308.
A London Inheritance website. https://alondoninheritance.com/london-parks-and-gardens/st-james-gardens-a-casualty-of-hs2/
HS2 website describing the dig of St Jame's Gardens: https://www.hs2.org.uk/building-hs2/archaeology/st-james-gardens-burial-ground/
A London Inheritance website: https://alondoninheritance.com/tag/st-james-gardens/