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We offer daily services and a cultural programme of talks, events and concerts. We seek to be a welcoming space for people to reflect, create and debate
Thursday 22 May 7pm
The Sixteen and the Genesis Foundation present the world premiere performances of three new works by Lucy Walker, Millicent B James and Ninfea Cruttwell-Reade.
World cuisine, served fresh – Every weekday lunchtime
From local and traditional specialities, to international delights, our market proudly showcases a distinct selection of the capital’s small businesses offering the finest street food.
St James’s hosts inclusive services and a cultural programme. We seek to be a welcoming space for people to reflect, create and debate.
St James’s is a place to explore, reflect, pray, and support all who are in need. We are a Church of England parish in the Anglican Communion.
We host a year-round creative programme encompassing music, visual art and spoken word.
We offer hospitality to people going through homelessness and speak out on issues of injustice, especially concerning refugees, asylum, racial justice, and LGBTQ+ issues.
St James’s strives to advocate for earth justice and to develop deeper connections with nature.
We aspire to be a home where everyone can belong. We’re known locally and globally for our unique history and beauty, as well as faith in action, creativity and the arts, and a commitment to social and environmental justice.
We strive to be a Eucharist-centred, diverse and inclusive Christian community promoting life in abundance, wellbeing and dignity for all.
St James’s Piccadilly has been at the heart of its community since 1684. We invite you to play your part in securing this historic place for generations to come.
The work of St James’s, it costs us £5,000 per day to enable us to keep our doors open to all who need us.
A reimagined St James’s realised. A redesigned garden, courtyard and new building capacity—all fully accessible— will provide beautiful spaces for all as well as improving our environmental performance.
Whether shooting a blockbuster TV series or creating a unique corporate event, every hire at St James’s helps our works within the community.
St James's Church 197 Piccadilly London W1J 9LL
Directions on Google Maps
The first phase of the Wren Project, carried out between January and May 2025, involved four key areas of work. Learn more about each of these below.
In this first phase, the church’s South Door onto Jermyn Street, part of Sir Christopher Wren’s original design, was reinstated. This work reintegrated an important element of Wren’s original design back into the fabric of St James’s, and simultaneously improved the church’s step-free access.
The original South Door was walled up in the 1840s when the rapidly growing congregation presented a challenge for accommodating worshipers. Thus, the door was walled up to enable the installation of additional pews within.
Sir Christopher Wren’s design for St James’s 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.
In reinstating Wren’s original design, that symbolic intent of the original design gains renewed contemporary meaning: the new iteration of the South Door provides improved step-free access, making that welcome manifest to people with reduced mobility from all over, not just the local area.
Masons used Portland stone to construct the support for the arch for the doorway, re-using as much of the original stone from the church’s structure as possible. The door itself was fashioned out of English oak by specialist carpenters in Birmingham and later be transported to London. And, specialist ironmongers designed and manufactured the lantern and lantern bracket which will house an energy-efficient light source.
Another part of the work related to the South Door was to carefully remove memorials installed in the church since the walling up of the door in the 1840s in areas affected by recreating the door. These have been reinstalled in other parts of the church.
The architecture for the project was delivered by Ptolemy Dean Architects with Ptolemy Dean himself being the Design Lead for the whole Wren Project.
During this phase, work commenced on the restoration of the historically important Renatus Harris organ, installed on the lower and upper galleries. The organ was originally commissioned for the private chapel of King James II in Whitehall Palace. His daughter, Queen Mary, gifted the organ to St James’s in 1691.
The organ case is by Grinling Gibbons, the vaunted Anglo-Dutch sculptor sometimes referred to as “the Michelangelo of Wood”. It is notable for its overtly Catholic iconography; putti, little angels blowing trumpets, the crown of Mary, Queen of Heaven and the gilded Baroque aesthetic of the Counterreformation, making it singular within Gibbons’ body of work, reflecting its original patron. It is a unique artefact in UK cultural heritage.
During this phase, the painstaking work on restoring the organ commenced. It was also be a journey of discovery: the organ that has not been played for 45 years was be carefully deinstalled by experts working without clear knowledge of how it was originally installed.
Pipes and other elements of the musical instrument were transferred to a specialist workshop where they will be restored or recreated in a process that will take about two years. And, conservation will be undertaken on the prized case as required.
The restoration of the organ is made possible by the specific support of the Julia Rausing Trust.
Voicing the pipes
Pipe Inscription from March 1941
By the late 1780s, there was no longer any burial space left in the churchyard at St James’s Piccadilly. The church acquired land from Baron Southampton for a new burial ground for the parish next to what became Euston Station. Here, more than 60,000 burials took place up until 1853 when new legislation halted burials in built-up areas of British cities.
Between 2017 and 2021, work on the HS2 construction saw archaeologists excavate the site. This was the largest project of its kind carried out in the UK. Archaeologists from MOLA (Museum of London Archaeology) and Headland Archaeology worked together to record over 11,000 burials.
As a result of this work, MOLA presented a notable exhibition ‘Stories of St James’s Burial Ground’ at the church in 2023. However, many of the memorials—such as ledger stones—have remained in safe storage. As part of this first phase of the Wren Project, a number these memorials have been installed in the curtilage of the church and incorporated into the transformed “place” of St James’s Piccadilly.
One of the guiding principles in selecting viable memorials that have been integrated is that they reflect a representative insight into who the parishioners at St James’s were in those decades; the human stories of those who lived and died as members of the church’s congregation.
During this phase of the Wren Project, the historic 1684 charter from King Charles II underwent restoration. This unique document that has never been conserved before, was transported to the Archives and Library at Canterbury Cathedral, one of the UK’s leading conservation departments for historic works on paper.
The wax seal and both layers of parchment were conserved, a delicate process that enabled learning about the different printing and drawing techniques and materials, providing a full transcription of the document’s text, and stabilising the parchment.
When this process is complete, it will return to St James’s. A bespoke case will also be created so that it will be well cared for and to enable better display of the foundational artefact in the story of St James’s so that it can be celebrated and experienced in a new way, within the living history of this sacred Christian place and its communities past, present, and future.
During the works of the first phase of The Wren Project the Revd Dr Ayla Lepine, Associate Rector of St James’s, recorded conversations with people involved in this exciting transformation project in different ways. These have been published on our YouTube channel in a special playlist.
You can also visit the main Wren Project page to learn more about the larger project that will take a number of years to complete.
