Search...
We offer daily services and a creative programme of talks, events and concerts. We seek to be a welcoming space for people to reflect, create and debate.
We are delighted to announce that from 6 Jan until early Apr 2025, work will take place to reinstate the church’s South Door onto Jermyn Street, part of Sir Christopher Wren’s original design.
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.
New walkways, a restored courtyard and re-landscaped gardens will provide fully accessible, beautiful spaces for everyone to enjoy as well as improving our environmental performance.
St James's Church 197 Piccadilly London W1J 9LL
Directions on Google Maps
The Revd Lucy Winkett marks the fact that 2025 sees the beginning of work on the transformative Wren Project, emphasising its dual purpose of restoring St James’s Piccadilly’s historic buildings while fostering an inclusive, just society through initiatives like the Changemaker Programme and practical apprenticeships, all rooted in faith and community.
Next time you are in the courtyard in front of St James’s church on Piccadilly, come and see the Latin inscription above the rectory front door that opens out onto the courtyard. It’s over the door but can be seen from the ground level.
The translation is ‘To the glory of God, the salvation of the people: after the fires of war, this building was re built 1956. Unless the Lord builds ….’
This last part-quotation is a reference to psalm 127, which declares ‘unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labour in vain’. If there were a motto for St James’s ‘Wren Project’, this would be it. Because it speaks to the ‘why’, not just the ‘how’. And since the bombing of the church and rectory in 1940 and subsequent re building, the buildings at St James’s have stayed as they are.
Eighty five years later, 2025 will see the first works of the restoration and rejuvenation project which a former church warden and treasurer, Mercedes Pavlicevic, named, in 2014, ‘The Wren Project’. Sunday services will continue as normal, but as you’ll see in the newsletter, from Monday 6th January, work will begin on the restoration of the South Door, and in February 2025, scaffolding will go up inside the building to remove the redundant organ pipes from the 17th century organ case. The organ builders Goetze and Gwynn have been commissioned to build the new pipe organ, which will be made in their workshop in Sherwood Forest. One of their early projects (the firm was founded by Martin Goetze and Dominic Gwynn in 1980) was to restore the organ at the Santa Clara monastery in Santiago de Compostela. With such a strong ‘Camino’ St James link, it’s wonderful that they are working on the historic organ here.
There is an immense amount of detail involved in every aspect of the Wren Project. As soon as any stone or pipe or door is addressed in a place with such rich history, a wealth of stories emerge, attached both to the past and the present day. Stories that surround the ledger stones, rescued from the HS2 dig at Euston that will be laid along the south wall of the church, the English oak that will be used to make the door itself, the selection of the Portland stone, crammed full of fossils, for the coping.
It will be easy, is easy, to get lost in the detail. But in truth, of course, close attention to every aspect of the detail will be needed for such a project to succeed.
But for us as the current custodians of this place, it is our role to keep focussed on why we are doing this. Of course there are strong practical reasons; to increase the step free access to every part of the site, build many more toilets, introduce flexible seating, provide new access between Piccadilly and Jermyn Street through a new archway and open up the courtyard to the east. Strong practical reasons including the transformation of the Rectory building into a café on Piccadilly and making the rooms, offices meeting spaces fit for purpose for all the varied ministries of this active, outward-looking and inclusive church. The reality is that our staff and volunteers work now with very limited facilities and achieve a huge amount in cramped and unsuitable spaces.
These practical considerations fuel enthusiasm for those who are already part of the church, because they know how dire the current facilities are. But the vision that drives the Wren Project is that this place is for people in this generation who don’t know St James’s yet, don’t know that church could be for them. The vision that drives us is that it is both our duty and joy to ensure that future generations, who don’t yet know how to pray or what it could mean to be part of such a community, might learn here how to live in such a way, for the good of all society, and the planet, not just the church.
It’s never obvious to know how to re-build or restore, as the restorers of Notre Dame know only too well. Inspired by the values of ancient Christian tradition but not limited by it, the Wren Project at St James’s is a practical project that puts two ideas together around a common theme: that Building Matters.
Building- restoring- a beautiful place of prayer, dedicated to peace and justice, narrating history honestly, and investing in skills and craftsmanship accessible to everyone.
And building a just, inclusive society rooted in shared values and common purpose.
The physical building work which starts in 2025 embeds within it practical apprenticeships for stone masons, carpenters, thatchers, engineers and architects.
And central to the project is the commitment to build inclusive society: the Changemaker Programme at the heart of the project provides an 18 month programme for young people in 5 areas of leadership: Civil Society, Arts, Music, Business and Environment. This Changemaker programme is designed to build foundations inspired by inclusive Christian values but not limited by Christian institutional life. Young leaders who will lead in ways that are inclusive, reciprocal, compassionate and courageous, helping to form leaders in society who know the cost of making change for justice and peace. We have been absolutely thrilled in 2024 to receive seed funding to run a pilot of this project, and so this aspect of the work can begin too. The Heritage Fund is evaluating the pilot ‘Conversations Under Trees’ events of autumn 2024, and a programme will be developed for 2025-26 in the first months of this new year.
2025 will bring new challenges, dilemmas, frustrations and, because we can’t see around corners, a whole heap of problems that at this moment, we can’t yet imagine. But every conversation at Feast, every prayer scratched on a prayer card, every cup of tea shared after the Sunday service, every tap on the donation machine, every petition signed, every letter to the Home Office supporting a member of the International Group, every responsorial psalm sung, every tearful conversation in the Caravan, every coffee shared in Redemption Roasters, every hedgerow that is planted with St Ethelburgas, every egg cooked on the church stove, every branch that is pruned in the garden: all of it belongs to God. As do we and all Creation. And unless God builds the house, our house, then those who build it, labour in vain.
A very Happy New Year and a peaceful one.
