221005 MArys D&AStatement - Flipbook - Page 38
102 Gloucester Avenue, London NW1 8HX
020 7586 0817
Martin.L.Sheppard@gmail.com
I am pleased to confirm that the Design and Access statement above gives a useful summary of the
history and development of St Mary’s Church – the site, the building and its uses. Further detail is
supplied in my recent book, St Mary the Virgin Primrose Hill: A Church and its People 1872-2022,
which was written to mark the Church’s 150th anniversary. The following extracts draw attention to
how difficult the church’s small, cramped site has been to develop in order to meet today’s needs.
Regeneration and Planning
Supporting Communities
5 Pancras Square
London NIC 4AG
5 August 2022
Dear Sir/Madam,
Project Support Letter for Work at St Mary the Virgin Primrose Hill
As a very active member of the local community, and the leading historian of the area, I strongly
endorse the plans for improvements at the East End of St Mary the Virgin Primrose Hill. St
Mary’s is an outstanding example of a church making a major contribution to the community it is
in. Its charitable outreach to those threatened by drugs, gang violence and knife crime has been
hugely successful in providing a safety net to those who have been failed by other agencies.
The planned space will provide a very necessary space for groupwork and counselling. It
will establish Mary’s charity in its own centre in the church and allow highly sensitive meetings
with young men and women to held in a private room, rather than in the nave of the church.
Mary’s is a quite exceptional charity and deserves everyone’s support. I strongly
commend this application and give it my full support.
Best wishes,
Martin Sheppard
From Dr Christopher Kitching, CBE, FSA, FRHistS, Chairman of the Trustees [patrons] of the
Parish Church of St Mary the Virgin Primrose Hill and the parish’s Honorary Archivist.
The last half century, at St Mary’s as elsewhere, has seen a shift in attitudes towards the use of church
space. Right up to the 1970s St Mary’s was regarded as an inviolable sanctuary where nothing other
than worship and church-related business should take place, and where the staging of secular
entertainments (and to some even the provision of refreshments) was seen as irreverent or improper.
The development of an alternative vision, whereby the building’s whole space might be dedicated to
both church and community use, was severely constrained by the simple fact that Manning’s footprint
for the building … occupied very nearly the entire site donated by Eton College, with the exception of
small gardens on the east and south sides and the apparently unusable strip of land at the west end that
separated the church from the adjacent houses in Elsworthy Road. Whereas many other churches of the
period were set in grounds spacious enough to allow for extensions and adaptations, and not a few had
the space for a church hall, and car parking, that was never true of St Mary’s, where there were not
even public WC facilities let alone an office, kitchen or meeting room. (p.255)
[The 1988 extension at the west end]:
The PCC and congregation undertook a … radical re-think of the use of the building.
Attention was … focussed on the small strip of land between the west end of the church and
the boundary of the neighbouring properties. Long overrun by weeds and scrub …, it was not
an immediately promising prospect … : the site was narrow and tapering, and would only be
able to accommodate small rooms. Nor could any extension rise above the height of a single
room without offending the neighbours, who were already uneasy about even a low-rise
extension. Perhaps most challenging of all … , Manning’s original west wall [had] to be
breached … The extension provided a ‘Parish Room’ for social gatherings and small
meetings, an adjacent kitchen – the most awkward part of the plan, on account of its
constricted, tapering shape … a small room for flower-arranging, and two WCs . (p.256)
[The 2007 extension at the east end]: created (on the site of the old choir vestry, ambulatory
and part of the garden at the east end of the church) the St Mary’s Centre, designed by
Margaret Davies. Like the earlier extension at the west end, this has proved transformative for
parish life. The Centre comprises a Community Room with supporting facilities including
improved WC arrangements, and a kitchen to make the Centre self-sufficient for catering. A
small room for counselling and one-to-one meetings was also funded, through the estate of
the late Christina Barth, a former member of the congregation. The suspended ceiling of the
old vestry was taken down, revealing a fine cross-beamed roof, and a new floor was fitted.
The new room provided much improved meeting space, including a more pleasant
environment for choir practices, with dedicated storage for both music and choir robes. But
its most important use is for outreach activities such as youth work and hosting the Cold
Weather Shelter. (p. 259)
The current proposals seem to me to create much needed additional space, especially for Mary’s, and
importantly without impinging on the worship space of the church interior or compromising the
church’s famed (and listed) art work and windows in any way.
Christopher Kitching
23 August 2022
Mary’s, Primrose Hill
Dow Jones Architects