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Souls, Langham Place
Location: All Souls, Langham Place, City of Westminster, London, United Kingdom (51.5180°N 0.1432°W)
All Souls, Langham Place:
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| All Souls Church |
All Souls Church is an Anglican Evangelical church in central London, situated in Marylebone at the north end of Regent Street on Langham Place. As it is very near BBC Broadcasting House, the BBC often broadcasts from the church. As well as the core church membership, many hundreds of visitors come to All Souls, bringing the average number of those coming through the doors for services on Sundays to around 2,500 every week. All Souls has an international congregation, with all ages represented.
History of All Souls, Langham Place:
The church was designed by John Nash, favourite architect of King George IV, to provide an eye-catching monument where the newly laid-out Regent Street, linking Piccadilly with the new Regent's Park, takes an awkward abrupt bend to align with the pre-existing Portland Place, providing a visible hinge where the street plan swings abruptly west. Its circular peripteral portico, capped with a smaller peripteral tower, in turn capped with an anomalous slender cone, giving the appearance of a 20th-century three-stage space rocket suggesting he may have envisaged the structure as a futurist vehicle for transporting all souls to heaven, is of an enriched Ionic order that substitutes winged cherub's heads for the usual rosettes on the abacus, possibly symbolically representing divine offspring of the Olympian god, Hermes / Roman god, Mercury, as the means of propulsion; the prominent portico is attached to the reticent main church by the width of a single intercolumniation. Broadcasting House (1932) reflects Nash's portico with its quadrant-curved corner. The church was consecrated in 1824 by the Bishop of London.
The church is built of Bath stone and the unique spire is made of seventeen concave sides encircled by a peripteros of Corinthian columns, making two separate sections. The capitals are Ionic in design and made from Coade stone. All Souls is noted for being the last surviving church by John Nash. The building was completed in December 1823 at a final cost of £18,323-10s-5d.
All Souls is a Commissioners' church, a grant of £12,819 (£960,000 as of 2013) being given by the Church Building Commission towards the cost of its construction.
