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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.
Thur 24 Oct 6.30pm
Fact, fiction, faith: AI in an uncertain world – a conversation with Jocelyn Burnham, and Dr Shauna Concannon.
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. This is a place for everyone who’s wondering about life’s big questions and striving for a better world.
We host a year-round cultural programme encompassing music, visual art and spoken word, drawing on St James’s rich cultural history including artists, writers and musicians Mary Beale, Mary Delany, William Blake, Ottobah Cugoano and Leopold Stokowski.
We try to put our faith into action by educating ourselves and speaking out on issues of injustice, especially concerning refugees, asylum, earth and racial justice, and LGBTQ+ issues.
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.
It costs us £3,500 per day to enable us to keep our doors open to all who need us
Your donation will help us restore our garden in Piccadilly as part of The Wren Project, making it possible for us to welcome over 300,000 people from all faiths and walks of life seeking tranquillity and inspiration each year.
St James's Church 197 Piccadilly London W1J 9LL
Directions on Google Maps
A historic church looking to the future!
What’s the plan? To open up this beautiful historic site for our community. Led by our architect Ptolemy Dean, our Christopher Wren-designed church building will be carefully restored with a new organ built for the incomparable, but currently empty, Grinling Gibbons organ case.
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. A new arch will connect Piccadilly and Jermyn Street and public access from Church Place will transform pedestrian movement in the area.
The Jermyn Street Building and Church Hall will also be altered and extended to make them more usable. To support our financial resilience, we are proposing an exciting but modest new structure in the Green Church Yard.
The Wren Project will make it possible for St James’s to accommodate and amplify our environmental activity and social outreach work with people experiencing homelessness, refugees and asylum-seekers and those persecuted because of their sexuality or identity.
St James’s Changemakers Programme is at the heart of our plans. It’s an innovative and imaginative programme for young leaders in the fields of music, environment, civil society, business and the arts.
Where are we up to? We have full planning permission and faculty (church) permission. We have the support of local partners and the National Lottery Heritage Fund.
We’ve already formed new business partnerships in anticipation of the scheme’s completion, like profit-for-purpose coffeeshop Redemption Roasters providing a great food and drink offer.
We showed a prototype of the garden with new climate resistant planting at RHS Chelsea Flower Show, and were the first church to have a garden at the show to help us tell our story and invite new friends to get involved. Our climate-resilient planting highlighting the well-being benefits of urban greenspace, won a gold medal.
Read more about Changemakers
Read more about the garden
Download the Wren brochure
Read the June 2022 consultation materials
We are ready to go All we need is the last piece of the jigsaw; the last elements of funding to make this happen.
Will you help us make this a reality?
With £20 million to raise, we need your help!
Be part of this inspiring vision, not just for the church but for the society we serve. Every single pound counts. We know that not everyone will be able to make large donations so we encourage you to give whatever you can, however small or large.
St James’s history has been shaped by people that have imagined the world to be different and worked to make it so. If you can consider a major gift your name will be added to a specially commissioned acknowledgement when the scheme is complete, aligning your contribution to those across the centuries who have helped build who we are today.
The Gillray Gift — £10,000
The Gibbons Gift — £25,000
The Beale Gift — £50,000
The Blake Gift — £75,000
The Cugoano Gift — £100,000
The Wren Gift — £150,000 or more
For more information or to discuss a major gift, please contact Brian Willetts – Director of Development, development@sjp.org.uk or call 020 7734 4511
St James’s has received initial support from The National Lottery Heritage Fund for The Wren Project. This development funding will help us progress our plans in order to apply for a full National Lottery grant at a later date.
Read about The National Heritage Lottery Fund
The Julia Rausing Trust has generously made a gift towards rebuilding the great organ, and funding two new annual organ scholarships for the following ten years.
Read about the Julia Rausing Trust
New commissions of art, music and design are part of the Wren Project vision for St James’s Church. These include new Christmas carols for 2022, 2023, 2024 by composers Sarah MacDonald, Debbie Wiseman and Will Todd, commissioned paintings to mark the 250th anniversary of the baptism of a key figure in black British history, abolitionist Quobna Ottobah Cugoano by Che Lovelace, and the design of a show garden at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2024 by Robert Myers.
‘Imagine the World to be Different: The St James’s Quartet’ is written by Will Todd and was performed by The Sixteen and the choir’s founder and conductor Harry Christophers for the first time at St James’s Piccadilly on Monday 13 May.
Read more and watch the performance
‘St James’s – A New Beginning’ composed and conducted by David Harper and performed by The Cory Band on 1 April 2023 in support of The Wren Project.
Listen to a performance at the Belgium Brass Band Championships 2023
