The Wren Project—What’s happening?

In this first phase, work will reinstate the church’s South Door onto Jermyn Street, part of Sir Christopher Wren’s original design. This work will
reintegrate an important element of Wren’s original design back into the fabric of St James’s, and simultaneously improve 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 will provide improved step-free access, making that welcome manifest to people with reduced mobility from all over, not just the local area.

Masons are using 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 it being made of English oak by specialist carpenters in Birmingham and will later be transported to London. And, specialist ironmongers are designing and manufacturing the lantern and lantern bracket.

Another part of the work related to the South Door has been 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 will be carefully reinstalled in other parts of the church.

During this phase, work will commence 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 will commence. It will also be a journey of discovery: the organ that has not been played for 45 years will be carefully deinstalled by experts working without clear knowledge of how it was originally installed.

Pipes and other elements of the musical instrument will be 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.

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 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, approximately 30 of these memorials will be 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 to be 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 will undergo restoration. This unique document that has never been conserved before, is currently at 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 will be conserved, a delicate process that will also enable 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.