About St George’s Bloomsbury
- A short history
- Staff at St George’s Bloomsbury
- A tour of St George’s Bloomsbury
   - Interior: alterations to Hawksmoor’s
     original design
   - Nave
   - Galleries and organ
   - East apse and furnishings
   - Undercroft
   - South front and steeple
   - North front
   - Further reading
- Restoration
- Family history research

St George’s Bloomsbury was designed by Hawksmoor as an
‘auditory’ church, following guidelines written by Christopher
Wren. The space was designed specifically for the liturgy of
the Book of Common Prayer; it was of paramount importance
that the service be heard (even if it wasn’t clearly seen) by all
members of the congregation. Following the Commissioners’
stipulation (above), the altar was to be sited in the traditional
position in the east. Hawksmoor’s original designs for the siteshow a church built in the shape of an oval, however these were rejected by the Commissioners. Others, including
James Gibbs (also responsible for designing St Martin in the
Fields) and Sir John Vanbrugh submitted unsuccessful
designs before Hawksmoor was persuaded to revisit the
project with the results you see today.

As soon as the church opened in 1730, however, the parish
Vestrymen were up in arms at what they perceived as a lack
of accommodation: 447 seats compared with the 2,000 who
could be accommodated inside Wren’s St James Piccadilly.
Disputes and a lack of certainty over whether the vestry had
the authority to make decisions on temporal as well as
ecclesiastical issues to do with the church meant that nothing
was done until 1781, when the addition of 337 new seats
required a complete re-orientation of the church interior with
the altar and reredos being moved to the north. This was just
the beginning of the alterations that would be made to
Hawksmoor’s original design during the late-18th and 19th
centuries; further work included the erection of galleries on
the west and east walls, making St George’s perhaps the
only church in London which has had galleries on all four
sides during its history. In 1870, under the eye of G.E. Street,
the east and west galleries were taken down leaving the
church in the state it would remain until 2003.

To continue the tour, click here