Talk:St Luke's Church, Chelsea

Acknowledgement

Part of this article is based on the discussion of St Luke's in James Savage (architect). - PKM (talk) 02:22, 29 October 2012 (UTC)

Vault and tower

I have separated two ideas again, instead of running all the similarities together.

"Sir John Summerson notes similarities to Bath Abbey, King's College Chapel, Cambridge, all masterpieces of the Perpendicular style, although some of the detailing refers to earlier Gothic styles. He also sees a similarity of the tower to that at Magdalen College, Oxford."

The reason for this is the way that the similarities that Summerson notes sit between the other sentences. If Summerson likened St Luke's to Bath Abbey and King's College Cambridge, then it was almost certainly the interiors about which he was drawing comparison. In the case of Magdalen, it was specifically the tower.

You can't liken the vaulted interior to the Magdalen tower. And you can't liken St Luke's tower to Bath Abbey or King's College Chapel. That is the reason that the sentence had been split.

1. It was, according to Charles Locke Eastlake "probably the only church of its time in which the main roof was groined throughout in stone".[5] Sir John Summerson notes similarities to Bath Abbey, King's College Chapel, Cambridge, all masterpieces of the Perpendicular style, although some of the detailing refers to earlier Gothic styles.
2. He also sees a similarity of the tower to that at Magdalen College, Oxford. Savage originally intended the tower to have an open spire, like that of Wren's St Dunstan-in-the-East, but this was forbidden by the Board of Trade.[4]

Amandajm (talk) 01:21, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

• Actually the four towers, and the various pinnacles can all be compared, & I think Summerson did mean the towers, and the exterior generally. You can't tell from what he says. The vaulted interior is certainly nothing like Bath or King's spectacular fan-vaulting, & from other sources & the photos is not really thorough Perpendicular at all. Bath has similar flying buttresses, and King's is another rectangular plan with no transepts. I'm afraid you are "almost certainly" wrong here! Johnbod (talk) 01:29, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

You're right. It doesn't have the fan vaulting.

What this interior has that resembles those churches are the very tall clustered piers (obviously because they wanted galleries between them) and the very large perpendicular windows. The general effect is more reminiscent of Bath and King's College than, say, Salisbury Cathedral.

Check this photo against the horizontal interior views at the foot of the page for proportion, piers, height of arcade, and type of window. [1]

Amandajm (talk) 01:53, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

Perhaps, but we can't tell if these are the points Summerson had specifically in mind, & shouldn't go beyond what he says, which is to list the 3 other buildings together as I did. He just says the 3 "have evidently been carefully studied (no doubt in Britton's engravings)" just before the "competence and consequence" bit quoted. Johnbod (talk) 13:16, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

Pre-1819 St Luke's Church, Chelsea

This article appears to say that St Luke's was built to provide extra capacity beyond Chelsea Old Church, which is the name for All Saints Church Chelsea according to Wikipedia. However, I have been studying baptisms, marriages and burials in this area in the 18th century, and the parish records I am consulting are labelled for St Luke's Church, Chelsea. This indicates that the Church Wikipedia labels All Saints, otherwise Chelsea Old Church was actually known as St Luke's from the 17th century onwards, the name All Saints being revived when the "new" St Luke's was built in 1819. There is a full explanation on the British History Online. At present the articles on St Luke's and All Saints need revising in order to make it clear that the apparently existing "St Luke's" for which there are baptisms, marriages and burials, is actually All Saints Church, and that therefore there was an existing church known as St Luke's before the building of this St Luke's. It is otherwise rather confusing.

References