There are churches in Hampstead that announce themselves with Gothic spires piercing the tree line, their silhouettes legible from the Heath in the manner of medieval parish churches across England. Christ Church is not one of them. Instead, it offers something far rarer to the streetscape of north-west London: a campanile of distinctly Italian character, rising from a composition of round-arched windows and pale brick that would look entirely at home in the Lombardy plain. Standing at the southern edge of Hampstead Square, the church was conceived in the early 1850s as both a spiritual home for a growing evangelical congregation and a deliberate architectural statement about the breadth of Christian tradition in a village that was rapidly becoming a suburb. Its story encompasses Victorian religious rivalries, the ambitions of a remarkable architect, and the slow, painstaking work of restoration that has kept this Grade II listed building alive into the twenty-first century.
The mid-nineteenth century was a period of furious church-building across London. Population growth, the Oxford Movement's influence on Anglican worship, and the competitive energy of Nonconformist denominations all contributed to a landscape in which new places of worship sprang up with remarkable frequency. Hampstead was no exception. By 1850 the old parish church of St John-at-Hampstead on Church Row was struggling to accommodate the swelling numbers of residents drawn to the area by the arrival of improved transport links and the enduring appeal of the village's elevated, healthful position. A new church was needed, and the question was not whether it should be built but what form it should take and what theological colour it should wear.
Samuel Whitfield Daukes and the Commission
The architect chosen for the project was Samuel Whitfield Daukes, a figure whose career illuminates the complex currents of Victorian ecclesiastical design. Born in 1811, Daukes had already established a substantial reputation by the time the Christ Church commission came his way. He was a protege of John Buonarotti Papworth, from whom he absorbed an appreciation for classical and continental forms that set him apart from the dominant Gothic Revivalist camp led by Augustus Welby Pugin and his followers. Daukes's most celebrated work before Christ Church was the Italianate spa buildings at Cheltenham, where he demonstrated a fluency with the round-arched Romanesque idiom that few of his contemporaries could match. He also designed a number of country houses, workhouses, and institutional buildings across the Midlands and the south of England, always favouring a clarity of plan and a restrained elegance of detail that owed more to Renaissance precedent than to the medieval models favoured by the Ecclesiologists.
The Christ Church project was initiated by a group of prominent Hampstead residents who sought a church that would serve the evangelical wing of the Church of England. This was a deliberate counterpoint to the High Church leanings that were gaining ground at St John's and elsewhere. The choice of Daukes was significant: his Italianate style carried associations with the early, pre-medieval church and thus with a form of Christianity perceived as simpler, less ritualistic, and more directly rooted in Scripture. The round-arched basilican plan evoked the churches of Ravenna and Milan rather than the pointed arches and elaborate tracery of the Gothic revival, and this was a theological as much as an aesthetic decision. The evangelicals of Hampstead wanted a preaching church, with good sightlines, clear acoustics, and a minimum of mystery.
Construction began in 1851 and proceeded rapidly. The site on Hampstead Square, then a relatively new development laid out in the 1830s, offered a prominent position at the intersection of several approach roads. Daukes oriented the church on a roughly east-west axis, with the principal entrance at the western end and the tower positioned at the south-west corner, where it would be visible from the greatest number of vantage points. The building was completed and consecrated in 1852, making it one of the quickest church-building projects of the decade, a testament to both the generosity of the subscribers and the efficiency of Daukes's office.
The Italianate Campanile and Exterior
The campanile is the element that has always drawn the eye and provoked the comment. Rising to a height of approximately one hundred feet, it is a free-standing tower of yellow stock brick with stone dressings, articulated by tiers of round-arched openings that increase in number and elaboration as the eye travels upward. The lowest stage is relatively plain, with shallow pilaster strips and a single arched opening on each face. The middle stages introduce paired openings divided by slender colonettes, while the belfry stage at the top features triple openings on each face, their arches springing from carved capitals in the Lombard manner. The whole is capped by a low-pitched pyramidal roof of slate, a characteristically restrained conclusion to a composition that builds in richness from base to summit.
The choice of the campanile form was deeply considered. In the Italian tradition, the bell tower stands apart from the body of the church, a vertical accent that punctuates the horizontal mass of the nave and aisles. Daukes followed this principle faithfully, setting the tower slightly detached from the main building so that it reads as an independent element in the composition. The effect is particularly striking from the south, where the tower can be seen rising above the trees of the square with something of the drama of a Tuscan hill town. It is a quality that has endeared the building to generations of Hampstead residents, many of whom would be hard-pressed to name its architect but who recognise the tower instantly as one of the defining landmarks of their neighbourhood.
The body of the church itself is a basilican plan of nave and aisles, separated by arcades of round arches carried on slender iron columns, an early and confident use of iron in ecclesiastical architecture. The exterior walls are of the same yellow stock brick as the tower, enlivened by bands of red brick that provide a polychromatic effect in the manner advocated by John Ruskin in The Stones of Venice, published in the same year that Christ Church was under construction. Whether Daukes was directly influenced by Ruskin's writings or was drawing independently on the same Italian sources that inspired the critic is a matter of scholarly debate, but the result is a building that sits comfortably within the broader mid-Victorian enthusiasm for constructional polychromy.
The western entrance front is composed with a careful symmetry that recalls Daukes's classical training. A large round-arched doorway is set within a slightly projecting porch, flanked by smaller arched windows and crowned by a rose window of modest dimensions. The overall effect is one of dignity without ostentation, appropriate to the evangelical character of the foundation. There is none of the exuberant sculptural decoration that marks the more elaborate Gothic Revival churches of the period; instead, the ornament is largely structural, derived from the interplay of arch forms, brick courses, and the proportional relationships between the various elements of the facade.
The Interior and Congregational Space
If the exterior of Christ Church announces its Italian pedigree with quiet confidence, the interior reveals the practical priorities that governed its design. The nave is broad and open, with the iron columns of the arcades providing minimal obstruction to sightlines. This was essential for a preaching church: every member of the congregation needed to be able to see and hear the minister without difficulty. The galleries that originally ran along both aisles and the west end further increased the seating capacity, allowing the church to accommodate a congregation of several hundred in relative comfort. The ceiling is of open timber construction, its principals and purlins visible in a manner that adds warmth and texture to the space without the expense of a stone vault.
The chancel, at the eastern end, is shallow by comparison with the deep chancels favoured by the Ecclesiological movement. This was a deliberate choice, reflecting the evangelical emphasis on the sermon over the sacraments. The communion table was placed close to the congregation rather than at a remote distance behind screens and rails, and the pulpit occupied a prominent position on the north side of the nave, raised on a platform that ensured the preacher's voice carried to every corner of the building. The font, similarly, was placed near the entrance rather than in the chancel, in accordance with the evangelical conviction that baptism was an act of the whole community rather than a quasi-private ceremony conducted at the altar.
The original furnishings were simple and robust, in keeping with the overall character of the building. The pews were of plain oak, without the carved ends and elaborate bench-backs that were becoming fashionable in more High Church settings. The floors were of encaustic tiles in geometric patterns, manufactured by Minton and laid with the precision that was the hallmark of that firm's work. Much of this original scheme has survived, though the galleries were partially removed in the twentieth century and the seating arrangements have been modified to reflect changing patterns of worship.
The acoustics of the building deserve particular mention. Daukes's combination of a broad, relatively low nave with hard wall surfaces and a timber ceiling created an acoustic environment that is remarkably favourable for speech. The preacher's voice is amplified and projected by the natural resonance of the space, without the echo and reverberation that plague many larger churches. This quality has made Christ Church a popular venue for concerts and recitals as well as for worship, and the building's acoustic reputation has contributed significantly to its continued vitality as a community asset.
The Pre-Raphaelite Stained Glass
Among the most treasured features of Christ Church is its collection of stained glass, which includes notable examples of Pre-Raphaelite and Arts and Crafts work. The original glazing scheme was relatively modest, with clear glass in most of the windows to maximise the light entering the building. However, as the decades passed and memorial gifts accumulated, several of the windows were filled with coloured glass of considerable artistic merit.
The most significant of these is the east window, which was installed in the 1860s and depicts scenes from the life of Christ in the richly coloured, naturalistic style associated with the Pre-Raphaelite movement. The figures are rendered with a sensuousness and attention to botanical detail that mark a clear departure from the stylised, hieratic conventions of earlier Victorian stained glass. The faces are individualised, the draperies fall with a convincing weight, and the landscape backgrounds are observed with a fidelity to nature that reflects the Pre-Raphaelite commitment to truth above convention. The colours are predominantly deep reds, blues, and greens, with passages of gold that catch the morning light with extraordinary brilliance.
Several of the aisle windows date from the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and show the influence of the Arts and Crafts movement in their emphasis on flat pattern, strong leading, and a palette that moves away from the saturated tones of the Pre-Raphaelite work towards more muted, silvery harmonies. These windows complement rather than compete with the east window, creating a sequence of glass that traces the evolution of the medium over half a century of artistic development. Together, they represent one of the most complete and coherent collections of Victorian and Edwardian stained glass in any Hampstead church, and they have been the subject of several scholarly studies and conservation assessments.
The conservation of stained glass is a specialised discipline, requiring expertise in both the artistic and the material aspects of the medium. Over the years, several of the Christ Church windows have been removed, cleaned, releaded, and reinstalled, with damaged pieces replaced by new glass matched as closely as possible to the original. This work has been carried out by some of the leading conservation studios in the country and has ensured that the windows continue to function both as works of art and as elements of the building's architectural composition. The cost of such work is considerable, and the Christ Church congregation has undertaken regular fundraising campaigns to meet the expense, demonstrating a commitment to the building's heritage that extends far beyond the requirements of routine maintenance.
The Congregation and Social Role
From its foundation, Christ Church served as more than a place of worship. The evangelical tradition that shaped its theology also shaped its engagement with the wider community, and the church quickly became a centre for education, charitable activity, and social organisation. A parish school was established soon after the church's consecration, providing elementary education for the children of the neighbourhood in the years before Forster's Education Act of 1870 created a national system of board schools. The school occupied premises adjacent to the church and was staffed by teachers appointed and supervised by the incumbent and the churchwardens, in accordance with the pattern established across England by the National Society for Promoting the Education of the Poor.
The church also played a significant role in the temperance movement, which had a strong following among the evangelical congregations of mid-Victorian London. Meetings were held in the church hall, pledges were taken, and alternatives to the public house were provided in the form of reading rooms, coffee evenings, and improving lectures. The minutes of the church's various committees, preserved in the Camden Local Studies and Archives Centre, provide a vivid picture of the range of activities that were organised under the church's auspices: mothers' meetings, clothing clubs, sick visiting societies, and missionary support groups all feature prominently in the records.
By the turn of the twentieth century, the character of the congregation had begun to shift. The wealthy families who had founded the church and sustained it through its early decades were giving way to a more mixed community, reflecting the social changes that were transforming Hampstead from an exclusive village into a diverse urban neighbourhood. The church adapted, broadening its programme of social activities and opening its premises to a wider range of community groups. The two world wars accelerated this process, as the church served as a centre for civil defence, refugee support, and the coordination of wartime charities. The church hall was used as a rest centre during the Blitz, providing shelter, food, and companionship to residents who had been bombed out of their homes.
In the post-war decades, Christ Church continued to evolve, embracing the liturgical reforms of the later twentieth century while maintaining a broadly evangelical identity. The introduction of new service books, the ordination of women, and the changing demographics of the parish all presented challenges that the congregation met with a mixture of pragmatism and principle. Today, the church serves a congregation that is smaller than in its Victorian heyday but no less committed to the building and the community it represents. Regular services are complemented by a programme of concerts, lectures, and community events that keep the building in active use throughout the week.
Restoration and Conservation
Like all buildings of its age, Christ Church has required continuous maintenance and periodic major repair. The yellow stock brick of the exterior, while durable, is susceptible to the effects of London's polluted atmosphere, and the stone dressings have weathered unevenly over the past century and a half. The iron columns of the interior arcades have needed attention where moisture has penetrated the paintwork and caused corrosion, and the timber roof has required both structural reinforcement and the replacement of individual members affected by rot or beetle attack.
The most significant programme of restoration was undertaken in the 1980s and 1990s, when a comprehensive survey revealed the extent of the building's deterioration and a phased programme of repair was initiated. The work included the repointing of the exterior brickwork, the repair of the stone window surrounds, the overhaul of the roof structure, and the conservation of the stained glass. The tower received particular attention, as its exposed position had made it vulnerable to water ingress and the consequent decay of the internal timber floors and the bell frame. The bells themselves were overhauled, their clappers and bearings renewed, and the ringing chamber was refurbished to provide a more comfortable environment for the ringers.
More recently, attention has turned to the interior, where a programme of redecoration and improvement has sought to restore the building's original colour scheme while providing the modern amenities, including improved heating, lighting, and accessibility, that are essential to its continued use. The removal of later accretions and the reinstatement of original features have revealed the quality of Daukes's detailing, which had been obscured by decades of well-meaning but unsympathetic alteration. The encaustic tile floors, in particular, have been cleaned and conserved, their vivid geometric patterns now visible once again in something approaching their original condition.
The funding for these works has come from a combination of sources: the congregation's own resources, grants from heritage bodies including English Heritage and the Heritage Lottery Fund, and donations from individuals and trusts with an interest in the preservation of Victorian architecture. The church's Grade II listing, while imposing constraints on the type and extent of alterations that can be made, has also opened doors to funding that would not otherwise have been available. The listing recognises Christ Church as a building of special architectural and historic interest, a designation that reflects both the quality of Daukes's design and the significance of the building within the broader history of Hampstead.
Hampstead Square and Its Setting
The character of Christ Church is inseparable from the character of the square in which it stands. Hampstead Square was laid out in the 1830s as part of the residential development of the area between Hampstead High Street and the Heath. It is a modest square by London standards, its houses of stock brick arranged around a central garden that provides a green setting for the church. The houses are of two and three storeys, their facades articulated by the restrained classical detailing, pilasters, cornices, and pedimented doorbays, that is characteristic of late Georgian and early Victorian domestic architecture in the area.
The relationship between the church and the square is one of the happiest pieces of urban design in Hampstead. The tower rises from among the trees of the garden, its silhouette visible from the approaches to the square on all sides. The church's entrance front faces the square, creating a natural focus for the composition and providing a sense of enclosure and definition that is often lacking in the more loosely planned streets of the surrounding neighbourhood. The effect is of a village within a village, an intimate precinct with its own identity and atmosphere, distinct from the bustle of the High Street and the openness of the Heath.
The square has been a conservation area since the 1960s, and its character has been carefully preserved through the application of planning controls and the vigilance of the local amenity societies. The houses have been maintained and restored with an attention to historic detail that reflects the high value placed on the area's architectural heritage by its residents. The gardens are communally managed, their planting maintained in a style that complements the architecture of the surrounding buildings. The result is one of the most cohesive and attractive small squares in north London, a place where the relationship between domestic architecture, public space, and ecclesiastical building can be appreciated in a setting that has changed remarkably little since the church was first built.
The trees of the square deserve mention in their own right. Several mature London planes and limes provide a canopy that filters the light and softens the architecture, creating in summer an atmosphere of dappled shade that is one of the square's greatest pleasures. The trees also serve to modulate the scale of the tower, which might otherwise appear disproportionately tall in relation to the modest houses around it. Seen through the branches, the campanile acquires a picturesque quality that is entirely in keeping with the Victorian sensibility that shaped both the church and its setting.
Legacy and Continuing Significance
Christ Church Hampstead occupies a distinctive place in the architectural history of London. In a city where the Gothic Revival dominated ecclesiastical building for much of the nineteenth century, Daukes's Italianate design stands out as a reminder that the Victorian church-building movement was more diverse and more adventurous than the predominance of pointed arches and flying buttresses might suggest. The building demonstrates that the round-arched styles of Italy and Germany could be adapted to English conditions with complete success, producing a church that is both functionally effective and aesthetically distinguished.
The building's significance extends beyond the purely architectural. As a document of Victorian evangelical religion, it provides evidence of the theological debates and social aspirations that shaped the Church of England in the middle decades of the nineteenth century. The simplicity of its plan, the prominence of the pulpit, the modesty of the chancel, all speak of a conception of Christian worship that placed the word above the sacrament and the sermon above the ceremony. In this respect, Christ Church is as much a theological statement as an architectural one, and its continued use as a place of worship ensures that the tradition it represents remains a living presence in the life of the community.
For the residents of Hampstead Square and the wider neighbourhood, Christ Church is a familiar and much-loved landmark, its tower a point of orientation and a source of civic pride. The church's programme of concerts, exhibitions, and community events ensures that it remains accessible to those who may never attend a service, while its role as a venue for weddings, baptisms, and funerals connects it to the most significant moments in the lives of local families. In an age when many Victorian churches face declining congregations and uncertain futures, Christ Church Hampstead continues to demonstrate the capacity of a well-designed building to adapt, evolve, and serve the community that created it.
Samuel Whitfield Daukes died in 1880, having seen his Hampstead church establish itself as one of the landmarks of the neighbourhood. He could not have foreseen the changes that would overtake both the area and the building in the century and a half since its completion, but he would surely have been gratified to know that his campanile still rises above the trees of Hampstead Square, its round-arched windows and polychrome brickwork as eloquent as ever of the mid-Victorian conviction that architecture, properly conceived, could elevate the spirit as well as shelter the body. Christ Church remains, in every sense, a building worth crossing London to see.
*Published in the Hampstead Renovations Heritage Collection — exploring the architecture, history, and stories of London's most remarkable neighbourhoods.*