Recreating the South Door

Exhibition and online resources – free, no booking necessary

Mon 2 June – Mon 30 Jun 2025

Mon, 10am – 4.30pm

Tues– Fri, 10am – 6pm

Sat – 10am – 4.30pm

Sun – 12:30pm – 5.30pm

Visit the South Door and the newly incorporated memorials any time during church opening hours. Please note that on Wednesdays and Fridays, when free Lunchtime Recitals are in progress, access will not be possible from 1 – 2pm.

Sir Christopher Wren’s design for St James’s Piccadilly encapsulates the vision he had for the masterplan for rebuilding of the City of London following the Great Fire of 1666, but which ultimately came closest to realisation in areas—such as St James’s—not destroyed by the fire.

Wren envisaged a reborn London in which every street, square or circus would have a view of a church, something he achieved in the relationship between St James’s Church and St James’s Square. But it was more than just that. The visual meaning of sightlines that linked a place where people lived and the church’s original South Door was amplified, symbolising the access and welcome of the church to its parish.

Recreating the South Door was one of four projects within phase one of the Wren Project. Visitors will also be able to see the work in progress on the restoration of the historic Renatus-Harris organ with its organ case by Grinling Gibbons and the memorial ledger stones that were originally at St James’s Burial Ground that have been incorporated into the step-free access to the new South Door with its new lantern and bracket. When the churchyard at St James’s could no longer accommodate any more burials in the late 18th century, land was acquired near what is today Euston Station as a burial ground for members of the congregation. Memorial ledger stones removed when the site was excavated as part of HS2 have been in storage ever since. A selection of these have been integrated into the design of phase one of the Wren Project.

The voices of the Wren transformation

Created with the LFA 2025 theme of ‘Voices’ in mind, throughout the delivery of this project, the Revd Dr Ayla Lepine, Associate Rector at St James’s, and herself an art and architectural historian in addition to being a member of the clergy, has recorded conversations with people involved in or engaging with the project in very different ways. From architects (Ptolemy Dean, Elsie Owusu, Biba Dow) to artists (Ann Desmet, Conrad Shawcross), musicians (Jess Dandy, Helen Smee) to theologians, specialist masons or construction managers, these conversations with diverse voices and different perspectives create a three-dimensional image of delivering the project, the most significant architectural evolutions in the church’s architectural history since its rebuilding after WWII bombing.

Conversations range from the fiercely logistical and artisanal to the decidedly esoteric, covering topics as diverse as moving memorials in a Grade 1 listed building to contested heritage and sacred space, the special nature of historic organs or the stories of those who were part of St James’s congregation down through the centuries. As a collection, these recorded conversations reveal just how complex a project of restoration and transformation can be and form a valuable archive for future generations.

This curated collection of conversations have been released as a podcast-like playlist on our YouTube channel that you can access here.

The re-creation of the South Door was one of four key works undertaken as the first phase of the larger multi-phase Wren Project.  You can learn more about this via the buttons below.

‘Voices’

Fri 20 June 2025, 1:10pm

Free, but donations welcome

St James’s Church, Picadilly. Find us here.

Talia Lieberman—soprano

Michael Haslam—piano

The concert was programmed with Michael Haslam, Director of Music at St James’s, working together with Harrison Knights. Both Talia and Harrison are current Music Scholars at St James’s.

Talia and Michael will perform a programme of songs spanning the years from the consecration of St James’s Church in 1684 to the present including words and music by Henry Purcell, George Frideric Handel, William Blake, Jean Anouilh, Francis Poulenc, Richard Rogers, Oscar Hammerstein II, Jerry Bock, Sheldon Harnick, Robert Schumann, Stephen Schwartz, Richard Wilbur and Leonard Bernstein, that will shine a light on the relationship between architecture, music and poetry.

In some cases, the connection between the music and the architecture of St James’s is clear. For example, the works of Purcell and Handel was contemporaneous to the emergence of Wren’s style of architecture with it’s light, open spaces and different acoustics to what had existed before and, indeed, Handel played the historic organ at St James’s. Or, on the words side, there is William Blake, who was baptised in the church. The song by Poulenc, evokes the wartime experience of the church and its congregation when the St James’s was badly bombed during the Blitz. But, in all these works, from music that was fashionable in the 17th century when the church first opened its doors (including the original South Door) right through to works by 20th-century composers who became well known for their hit Broadway and West End musicals, the interface between music, poetry and architecture runs through the programme as a red thread.

Book your free ticket via the link below.