At the entrance to Brentford Dock is St Lawrence Church, with its Great West Tower of soft worn Kentish ragstone. It embodies the spirit of hundreds of years of Brentford’s past, but sadly now, its fabric is being left to rot. Just look at these photos taken today:
These fences were erected without informing Brentford Dock estate who have complained but to no avail:
You wouldn’t believe that this view is from the same spot as for the following previous engraving. You can only just see the church:
The church has been empty since the 1960s and is now derelict and crumbling, so much so that it is on the English Heritage At Risk register.
In May this year, a fence was erected by the owners, a land development company, Ballymore UK, they say it is to protect against potential squatters. Or were they expecting the Royalists of 1642 again!
This is depressing, so let’s recover by remembering some better days associated with this beautiful church. See below engraving of St Lawrence Church from the South in 1809.
It is a beautiful building and I have been learning more about its architecture, artworks and connections with many special people.
The poet Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) attended services at St Lawrence Church with fellow pupils from the Syon House Academy School, where he studied in 1802 for two years. This was just down the road from St Lawrence Church and is now the site of the Royal Mail sorting office.
Eleven years after leaving Brentford, Shelley wrote a poem, A Summer Evening Churchyard, in 1815, which is quite fitting here. It was inspired by a church of the same name as ours, also built in the 15th century, and is also next to the River Thames. The church is St Lawrence, Lechlade on the River Thames, 20 miles west of Oxford. I would like to think he had our St Lawrence in his mind as well.
A Summer Evening Churchyard
by P.B. Shelley
THE wind has swept from the wide atmosphere Each vapour that obscured the sunset's ray,
And pallid Evening twines its beaming hair, In duskier braids around the languid eyes of Day:
Silence and Twilight, unbeloved of men, Creep hand in hand from yon obscurest glen.
They breathe their spells towards the departing day, Encompassing the earth, air, stars, and sea; Light, sound, and motion, own the potent sway, Responding to the charm with its own mystery. The winds are still, or the dry church-tower grass Knows not their gentle motions as they pass.
Thou too, aerial pile, whose pinnacles Point from one shrine like pyramids of fire, Obey'st I in silence their sweet solemn spells, Clothing in hues of heaven thy dim and distant spire, Around whose lessening and invisible height Gather among the stars the clouds of night.
The dead are sleeping in their sepulchres: And, mouldering as they sleep, a thrilling sound, Half sense half thought, among the darkness stirs, Breathed from their wormy beds all living things around, And, mingling with the still night and mute sky, Its awful hush is felt inaudibly.
Thus solemnized and softened, death is mild And terrorless as this serenest night. Here could I hope, like some enquiring child Sporting on graves, that death did hide from human sight Sweet secrets, or beside its breathless sleep That loveliest dreams perpetual watch did keep.
St Lawrence was founded in the 1170s, its tower has stood there since the 15th century and the body of the church was rebuilt in 1764 by the Brentford architect, Thomas Hardwick senior. There is a superb article in the Brentford & Chiswick Local History Journal, describing this fine church and some of the famous names and artifacts associated with it.
Matthew Saunders wrote this article in 1981 and rightly enthused about St Lawrence Church,
“The people of Brentford have every right to be proud of this building. Architecturally it contains the hallmarks of all the great ages of Church design, the medieval (the tower), the Georgian (the nave) and the Victorian (the unique arcading). In its five centuries it has had many associations with the great – Redman, the Hardwicks, Shelley, Rennie, Tooke and Turner. It contains the ashes of several. It contained, and will contain again, a sculpture by John Flaxman which any American collector would give his right arm for. We must preserve this building but also bring it back to life again, to make it in every sense "living history."
An example of some of the artworks once in the church are, three memorial brasses, made in 1528, and for the funerary monument for Henry Redman, a master mason to Henry VIII and Brentford resident. They are now in the Museum of London, loaned by the St Lawrence, Brentford Trust.
We cannot speak of St Lawrence Church without mentioning Thomas Hardwick senior who rebuilt the the body of St Lawrence Church in 1764 and he and his son Thomas Hardwick junior are both buried there.
We had in Brentford one of the finest family of architects, the Hardwicks:
The Victorian Web website has a good description of them.
“The Hardwick architectural dynasty had spanned over 120 years non-stop. It seems quite unacceptable given their great contribution to London that almost nothing is seen as to remember them by. There are no plaques, no busts or statues.”
J.M.W. Turner, the great painter, was sent to live for about a year with his maternal uncle, in Brentford in 1785, at his house on the site of the current pub, The Weir (ex White Horse). He attended Brentford Free School and was also a pupil of Thomas Hardwick junior, who advised Turner to pursue painting and not architecture.
The Brentford High Street Project website has a section on where the Hardwicks lived when in Brentford.
Some other notable people with connections to St Lawrence Church include:
I do hope St Lawrence Church can survive this latest 50 years of neglect.
I wonder if Prince Charles or maybe an organisation like The Churches Conservation Trust would be interested in preserving the church architecture and help find a suitable, sympathetic use for St Lawrence Church building?
See the 'A Future Life for St Lawrence Church' article for an idea for an exciting new use for the church building.
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I was wondering what exciting new uses there could be for the St Lawrence Church building, that would help to reinforce and energise Brentford’s unique character. It would be interesting to see if we could think of some creative possibilities which have some distinctive quality.
Excellent piece about St. Lawrence Church. I noticed the brasses at the Museum of London are on loan from the St. Lawrence Brentford Trust. Does this trust still exist?
The brasses to the Redman family are still safely in the Museum of London, however the St Lawrence Brentford Trust no longer exists - it was removed from the Register of Charities in 1998. It was a charitable trust set up in 1979 with the main aim of preserving the church and converting it into a performance space for drama, music etc.. The Vicar who loaned the brasses to the Museum in 1974 (before the trust was set up) also sold several other church artefacts to the Museum at the same time. Several other monuments that were still in the church at that time have since disappeared.
Some of the memorials are illustrated in Fred Turner's 'History and Antiquities of Brentford' of 1922, copies at local libraries.
Last year I was suggesting that St Lawrence Church could be opened to the public as part of the Open House London, which takes place in late summer. Maybe this could be a goal for 2011, if we can negotiate with the owners.
Do you know if the bells are still in the church, or have they been removed?
I also got in touch with the Churches Conservation Trust, but have not heard back and also English Heritage, who sent mea booklet called Caring for Places of Worship, but that really relates to a church with a congregation.
I suspect the stone used to build the tower might have come from Syon Abbey, as it's the same Kentish ragstone, and the abbey was demolished not long before the church was built, plus there's the connection with Henry VIII's architect, Henry Redman, so they may have been keen to reuse stone from the Catholic abbey.
I do hope the six bells are still there, maybe that would be worth a visit up the bell tower? One is cast by by William Culverden c. 1510, who was the master founder of Whitechapel Bell Foundry in 1506-1522, see also Wikipedia.
Apparently on his bells he stamped his rebus or mark, showing the culver or pigeon with the letters 'den'.
There is one of his bells in the Parish Church of The Holy Cross Church in Greenford, it is 5 cwt 1 qr weight cast in 1510 same date as the one in St Lawrence.
There is some information on Henry Redman, King Henry VIII's master mason who lived in Brentford and was buried in St Lawrence Church. I can't find any link to him and the building of the tower. His father was also a master mason, mabe he was involved with the Brentford Tower.
