CHAPTER I

THE CHURCH

By a statute of the year 1819, being "An Act for building a new Church in the Parish of Saint Luke Chelsea in the County of Middlesex and for other purposes relating thereto" (59 Geo. III. cap. 35), it is enacted, amongst other things, that "from and after the said new Church shall be completed and consecrated as aforesaid the present Parish Church shall from thenceforth and for ever thereafter be called and known by the name of, and to all intents and purposes be, the Parish Chapel of the Parish of Saint Luke Chelsea'

(Sec. 32.) This enactment notwithstanding, the Church is now called and known by no other name than that of "The Old Church;" merely, it is probable, to distinguish it from the new one; but, as it happens, more suitably than was supposed.

Although little, if any, of the present building dates from before the fourteenth century, there are records of it at the close of the thirteenth, and a strong presumption that it was founded before the middle of the twelfth; for the Abbey of Westminster, who claimed the manor of Chelsea by virtue of a charter from Edward the Confessor, and granted it at a fee farm rent to Dameta in the time of Stephen, were still possessed of the advowson as late as 1536, when they sold it to the King. (Dart, Vol. 1, p. 20, and chap. iv., infra.)

The first actual mention of the Church occurs in a Papal letter of the year 1290, in which relaxation is granted to penitents who should visit the Church of "Thelchurche" in the diocese of London on the feast of All Saints, to whom it was dedicated; and in the taxation of Pope Nicholas IV., which was completed at about the

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same date, this Church is assessed at £8 13s. 4d. Another Papal letter, in 1299, mentions Master Reginald de St. Albans as enjoying the Church of "Chelchuthe," in the diocese of London, amongst others.

That the Church was originally dedicated to All Saints, as above mentioned, there seems to be no doubt, as appears from several early documents. In the will of Margery Lynde, dated 1484, it is called the Church of All Hallows, and it is referred to as All Saints in a certificate* by the Bishop of London in 1531. During the eighteenth century, however, and until the above-mentioned Act was passed, the Church was called "St. Luke's," a title retained by the parish to the present day.

It might be conjectured that the Church was re-dedicated to St. Luke in 1670, when the western portion of it was rebuilt; for on this occasion Dr. Baldwin Hamey, besides contributing very liberally to the general expenses, gave the tenor bell of a new peal, which was inscribed as being given by Hamey to St. Luke, while a wooden image of the Evangelist was placed upon the canopy of the new pulpit. But, remarkable as it may seem, there is reason.to believe that no such dedication was ever made; for I find in a manuscript life of Hamey, written by Ralph Palmer, his grand-nephew, which is preserved at the College of Physicians, that Dr. Littleton (who was then Rector of Chelsea), "either with a pious kind of fraud, suggested to Dr. Hamey that this Church was dedicated to St. Luke (which it was most probable was a thing utterly unknown), or at least he never discovered upon that occasion where his authority was for

This certificate is of peculiar interest in view of Sir Thomas More's connection with Chelsea. It is thus noted in the Calendar of State Papers (Dom. 1531, No. 424), "Certificate by John Bishop of London of the production on the 12th September, 1531, in the choir of the Parish Church of All Saints Chelsea, by John Olyver, LL.D., (1) of the King's Commission to him to act as his proctor, and (2) of the unanimous opinion of the Faculty of Law at Paris dated 19th August, 1531, on the two questions: Ist, Whether the King of England was bound to appear at Rome when cited; and 2ndly, whether a subject of the King at Rome not having a mandate should be admitted on the day of citation to plead excusable exception. Both of which they answer in the King's favour."

it, which he should have done if he had any real authority from antiquity."

In the will of Margery Lynde we have an interesting glimpse of the Church before the Reformation. She bequeaths "to the high Auter 3 and 3d. Also to every Auter in the same Church 4d also to the Rodelyght 12d.; Also to the same Church 2 torches " ... "Also I will to have for my husband for me for Anne our daughter and for our friends soules doom in the said Church yearly an obite during 20 yeares at which obites to have 3 priestes to syng by note both dirige and masse and then to be given and spent 65 every yere during the yeres above said. Also I will that the Light afore our Lady the pyte [pity] 3 during the yeres above said Also to the lamp lyght yerely 8d."

No visible part of the present building can be ascribed to so early a date as the twelfth or thirteenth century. The whole of the western portion of the Church was demolished in the year 1670, and replaced by the present rectangular nave, or, strictly speaking, body of the Church, and western tower, of red brick; the chancel, and the north and south chapel on either side of it, being the only relics of the older building.

On the south side of the chancel, opening into the More Chapel, is an equilateral pointed drop arch of two large chamfered members, resting on semi-octagonal responds. It is built of hard clunch, and is evidently of fourteenth-century workmanship. The capitals of the responds, described at length in the sequel, were recarved in 1528, apparently when the chapel was rebuilt. A recess in the easternmost part of the south wall of the chancel, facing the altar, contains the remains of a piscina below, and a groove for a shelf above, to serve for a credence. Another, in the east wall, on the north of the altar, appears to have been used as an aumbrey. Both have simple arched and chamfered openings, with four-centred heads, and their character leads to the conjecture that the chancel was restored during the latter part of the fifteenth century. This is further borne out by what remains of the east window, the present head and mullions of which are modern, but the splays original, extending some eighteen inches

or more above the spring of the present head, their termination being hidden by the plaster ceiling. Now the proportions of these splays are such that even if we suppose this window to have been a late four-centred perpendicular window, the chancel roof must have been at least a couple of feet higher than the existing roof. A fourteenthcentury window of this same width would point to a far loftier chancel than the present building. It would seem then that the walls of the chancel were lowered and covered with the present roof and plaster ceiling in 1670, in order to avoid the awkward junction of the old chancel roof with that of the new body of the Church.

The level of the altar-pace and the two steps leading to it probably preserve the arrangement of the mediaval pavement. The squareheaded Tudor window of two lights, and the doorway, in the south wall of the upper chancel, are shown in a drawing in the collection of Mr. Edmund Gardner which seems to date from about 1835.

The chapel on the north side of the chancel, called the Lawrence Chapel, appears from its architecture to have been built in the earlier part of the fourteenth century. On the north side are three pointed windows, divided from one another by buttresses, which, becoming much decayed, have been encased with slabs of York stone. The labels of the windows, terminating in grotesque corbel heads, have been entirely renewed in cement, probably during the early part of the nineteenth century.

The tracery of the easternmost of the three windows, which in the seventeenth century was blocked up to furnish a place for the monument of Thomas Lawrence, has also been restored in cement; this tracery is much earlier in character than the other details of this part of the building, and probably is not a reproduction of the original. The cill and tracery of the second, or middle, window have been entirely removed to give place to a small circular-headed brick doorway, which is mentioned as early as 1621. The third, or westernmost, of the three windows remains more or less in its original condition, and together with a niche recently discovered in the eastern wall of the chapel, affords the most important clue to the date of this part of the Church. During the restoration of 1857 some fragments