GE Street was a prolific architect in the second half of the 19th century known mainly for his churches. He designed a church in Istanbul to commemorate the Crimean War, some in Ireland and many in England.
His most famous secular building is the Royal Courts of Justice in the Strand but even closer to home is St Mary Magdalene’s church in Paddington, known as St Mary Mags. It is adjacent to the towpath of the Paddington branch of the Grand Union Canal near Royal Oak. It has undergone extensive restoration, funded in part by the National Churches Trust, and a friend arranged for us to be shown round by the extremely knowledgable vicar, Fr. Henry Everett.
Street’s signature style is Victorian Gothic often featuring striped bands of brickwork, unkindly dubbed ‘streaky bacon’. I doubt the exterior is getting you excited but the interior certainly impressed me. The painted ceiling above the nave is eye catching and the scale of the interior breath-taking with clerestory windows above a range of stained glass windows, more like a cathedral than a parish church in what became one of the poorest slums in London in the last century.
All the stained glass was done by Henry Holiday, a pre-Raphaelite painter and stained glass designer. That is except for one small window by a former apprentice to Street: William Morris. Martha and Mary are robed in his distinctive patterns.
The church’s site was on a slope and Street solved this problem by constructing a crypt beneath the nave that supports the church. It has a biscuit coloured vaulted ceiling, exposed during the restoration. This is concrete so although Street took his inspiration from Gothic architecture he was not averse to using the most modern materials. On the south side of the crypt is the Chapel of St Sepulchre designed by Ninian Comper twenty years after the church was completed. Comper is as distinguished an architect and designer as Street and on no account miss the chapel should you visit St Mary Mags.