St. Patrick's Roman Catholic Church, Soho Square
In 1791 'a very numerous and respectable body
of Catholics conceived the wise and Charitable
project of establishing a Catholic Chapel' in the
neighbourhood of St. Giles's, which was
'inhabited principally by the poorest and least informed of the Irish who resort to this Country'. (ref. 163)
A committee of subscribers purchased the lease of
what had hitherto been the two-storeyed assembly rooms behind Carlisle House, (ref. 164) and after the
upper floor had been removed (ref. 165) the building was
consecrated as a Roman Catholic chapel dedicated
to St. Patrick on 29 September 1792. (ref. 166) The
leader in the establishment of the chapel was the
Reverend Arthur O'Leary. (ref. 163)
In 1866 the freehold of the two houses facing
Soho Square and of the chapel behind was acquired by trustees for the church. (ref. 164) The northerly of the two houses was used as a presbytery
from 1868 until 1891, when it and the chapel
were demolished for the erection of the present
church (ref. 33) (Plate 24, fig. 13), which was first
used for worship on St. Patrick's day (17 March)
in 1893. The architect was John Kelly (who
had previously designed the Roman Catholic
church at Turnham Green) and the contractor
was W. H. Gaze. (ref. 167)
Kelly's two Roman Catholic churches are of
similar Italianate style and both are faced with
red bricks, their interiors being plastered. The
bell tower at Turnham Green, however, was
erected to a modified design in 1930 and the
interior does not compare in scale or distinction
with the church in Soho Square.
St. Patrick's has an arcaded nave of five bays,
the very shallow aisles being unlit and divided
by screen walls at each pier. The arcade is enriched with a Corinthian order of compound
pilasters, continued into the sanctuary and bowed
apse with antae and single pilasters. A small
Corinthian order embraces the clerestory, which
has a pair of round-arched windows to each bay and
five single windows in the west wall with a large
circular one above. A pair of lunettes, giving
additional light to the sanctuary, cut into the
barrel-vaulted ceiling, which is divided into bays.
There is an archway to the sanctuary, and, like
the half-dome to the apse, the ceiling has large
sunk panels or coffers.
Figure 13:
St. Patrick's Roman Catholic Church, Soho Square, plan
A lower sixth bay at the west end of the church,
which according to the architect's drawings was
originally intended to be of full height, is occupied by a gallery which projects forward from a
pair of uncomfortably spaced piers, in an altogether unsatisfactory manner. At the eastern end
of the south side of the nave is a transeptal chapel,
the inner part of which has a circular lantern
supported on pendentives.
There is a doorway into the church in the
centre of the long elevation to Sutton Row but the
principal entrance is from the square, through an
octagonal lobby beneath the tower and an antechapel beside the presbytery. The lobby contains
a Baroque Pietà in white marble, set in a niche in
the south wall; it appears to be older than the
church. The ante-chapel is undistinguished but
for a monument to the Reverend Arthur O'Leary,
O.S.F., who died in 1802 aged seventy-eight.
The monument must have been erected shortly
after his death but the sculptor is not known.
It is of white marble with a tapered grey marble
backing to a draped female figure in high relief.
She holds a cross and leans on two books on top of a
pedestal bearing the Irish harp above a weathered
profile portrait of O'Leary. Beneath is a large
corniced tablet with a shaped lower edge and two
framing pilasters.
The outside of the church (Plates 24a, 69b,
71b) closely corresponds with the interior but the
pilasters are Doric instead of Corinthian. Swept
buttresses connect the low aisles of the nave with
the clerestory, and a high attic with gabled ends
and an arcaded north side houses the vaulted
ceiling. All the cornices and mouldings are of
brick, Portland stone being used only for the
pedimented Corinthian portico at the foot of the
tower. The portico is topped by a cross and its
tympanum is carved with the Papal arms. A
larger cross surmounts the pyramidal roof of the
tower, the wide eaves being supported on large
brackets and the stages beneath being treated with
pilasters and round-arched openings. A niche immediately above the portico contains a statue of
St. Patrick.
St. Patrick's Church Presbytery, Soho Square
This house was erected in 1791–3 on the
southern part of the site of Carlisle House (see
above). It appears to have been in divided occupancy, its inhabitants including John Weippert,
harpist and music seller, 1836–48; John and
later Isabella Jones, pianoforte manufacturers,
1850–79; William Gibbs Rogers, woodcarver,
c. 1859–64 (he had previously lived at Carlisle
House, Carlisle Street); Captain Thomas
Griffiths, professor of fencing, c. 1865–88. (ref. 118)
In 1866 the freehold of this house, together
with that of the house to the north and the
adjoining Roman Catholic chapel, was purchased by trustees for the church. (ref. 164) In 1893
the house became the church presbytery. (ref. 33)
The house has four storeys, and is three windows wide (Plate 24a, fig. 5). The front is of
yellow stock brick with a stuccoed ground storey,
a plain band at first-floor level and added architraves to the upper window openings; those to
the first floor have ornamental bowed iron
guards. The entrance doorway is set in a roundheaded opening with a pair of side-lights and a
simple fanlight over. The interior is conventional
in arrangement and not elaborately finished. A
semi-circular archway at the rear of the hall
screens the stair, which is of wood with an open
well. The main rooms have small cornices with
enriched mouldings and plain joinery, the rear
rooms having a slightly bowed window wall. Two
original chimneypieces on the ground floor are of
white marble, each having enrichment to a central
tablet and a pair of end blocks. In the first-floor
front room the chimneypiece has been altered,
but that in the rear room is an elaborate design in
wood with two pairs of very thin Corinthian
columns and an enriched frieze, the tablets and
blocks being carved with figures in relief (Plate
129f).