Photographs by John Salmon. You may use the images without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit John Salmon and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one. Click on the images to enlarge them.
Fixtures and Fittings
The sanctuary at St Michael and All Angels, Ladbroke Grove, Kensington, by J. and J. S. Edmeston, with high altar and baroque reredos, "with a copy of the Veronese Virgin and Child" (Cherry and Pevsner 461).
Left to right: (a) Pulpit. (b) Lectern. (c) Our Lady of Walsingham statue and altar at the side. (d) St Francis with an affectionate Christ Child at the west end, near the baptistery.
Shrines and statues. Left to right: (a) The Virgin and Child near the sanctuary. (b) St Michael at the east end too, treading underfoot and about to slay a chained, humanoid devil which tugs at his robe. (c) St Francis again, holding a lily and accompanied by a dog, in his role of patron saint of nature and animals. (d) An Anglican Mother Superior or Sister with a lily, reminding us of the Anglican sisterhoods that were founded in the nineteenth century.
Among these many shrines and statues one is very much aware of what Andrew Saint describes as the effort to combine the "aura of the conventicle with that of Anglo-Catholicism," as a way of instilling a "subjective mood of devotion" in individuals who might not otherwise be drawn to communal worship (24). It is sad to learn that Historic England considers the church to be "at risk" from gradual decay, as it is obviously well loved.
Related Material
- St Michael and All Angels, Ladbroke Grove, Kensington: Part I
- Stained glass windows in St Michael and All Angels, Ladbroke Grove
Sources
Cherry, Bridget, and Nikolaus Pevsner. London 4: North. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2002.
"Church of St Michael and All Angels, Ladbroke Grove." Historic England. Web. 13 September 2015.
Saint, Andrew. "The Late Victorian Church." The Victorian Society Studies in Architecture and Design, Volume Three: Churches 1870-1914. Eds. Teresa Sladen and Andrew Saint. London 2011. 7-25.
Created 13 September 2015