Church History
In 1892, Canon Cornelius Keens, known as “the church builder”, obtained permission from the Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster, Herbert Vaughan, to found a new parish in the central, older part of Chelsea, in territory taken from St. Mary’s Cadogan Street, the “Mother Church”.
The church, dedicated to Our Most Holy Redeemer, was built between June 1894, when Cardinal Vaughan laid the foundation stone, and October 1895, when he opened it, on the site of William de Morgan’s pottery. It was consecrated 10 years later, on 21st June 1905, by Archbishop, later Cardinal Bourne.
The More Connection
Uniquely, amongst all parishes having St. Thomas More as patron (his name was added to the dedication following his canonisation in 1935, the quadricentenary of his martyrdom), this one is located a stone’s throw from the house where he lived from 1524 until he was taken to the Tower and subsequently executed on 6th July 1535.
The house, renamed Beaufort House by the Cecil family who acquired it after St. Thomas’s execution, stood astride what is now Beaufort Street, and the diocesan seminary, Allen Hall, is located in a part of its grounds. St. Thomas worshipped and served mass in Chelsea Old Church, where he built a chapel and the tomb where his first wife, Jane, who died in childbirth, was buried.
The Building
Designed by Edward Goldie (who also designed St. James’s Spanish Place and the chapel at Ushaw College) in what has variously been described as the Wren style, Italian baroque and Renaissance classical, the church was built, under Goldie’s supervision, by Messrs. Goddard of Farnham and Dorking. The floor was laid by Messrs. Duffy in wood blocks of what is believed to be Oregon pine.
The church fortunately escaped extensive damage when it sustained a direct hit during the war, but the organ was completely destroyed, and the west window and the floor needed repair.
Further general restoration was carried out under the instructions of the then parish priest, Canon Alfonso de Zulueta, advised by Messrs. Bartlett and Purnell of the Art and Book Company, in 1962. It was at this stage that Goldie’s side chapels, except for the Lady Altar and St. Thomas More’s Altar were removed.
Messrs. Bartlett and Purnell also supervised the reordering carried out between 1970 and 1972, following the Second Vatican Council. This involved altering the levels of the sanctuary floor, moving the altar forward to the centre and the tabernacle to the side. A new ambo, or pulpit, was also erected in Siena marble and verde antico, to match the plinths supporting the altar table and the tabernacle shrine. Following Canon de Zulueta’s death in 1980, the parish’s memorial to him took the form of a new baptismal font at the sanctuary end of the church, executed in the same marble.
The two small stained glass windows, one depicting St. Thomas More and the other St. Francis of Assisi, in the roundels on either side of the west door, together with the large one above it, depicting the risen Lord, were commissioned by Father Patrick Nolan in 1990. The Stations of the Cross, by Ken Thompson, were commissioned by Father (now Bishop) Alan Hopes as the parish’s commemoration of the Jubilee of the Birth of our Lord in 2000.
