Esoteric London

St. Marylebone Parish Church, Marylebone Road, London, NW1. Photo © Roger Dean 2012

Curiosities of London Exhibiting the Most Rare and Remarkable Objects of Interest in the Metropolis; with Nearly Sixty Years’ Personal Recollections - John Timbs, 1867:

CHURCHES AND CHAPELS.

ST. MARY-LE-BONE

In a Map published in 1742, the diminutive church of St. Mary-le-bone is shown detached from London, with two zigzag ways leading to it, one near Vere-street, then the western extremity of the new buildings, and the second from Tottenham-Court-road. Rows of houses, with their backs to the fields, extended from St. Giles’s Pound to Oxford-market; but Tottenham-Court-road had only one cluster on the west side, and the spring-water house. The zigzag way above mentioned, near Vere-street, still retaining its original name of Mary-le-bone-lane, was the communication between the high road and the village. A friend born in 1780, remembers his father and mother relating how they walked out through the fields, to be married at Marybone [sic] Church.

ST. MARYLEBONE (New Church), New-road, opposite York Gate, Regent’s-park, designed by T. Hardwick, father of P. Hardwick, R.A., was originally built “on speculation” as a chapel; and was purchased by the parish, and converted into a handsome church, at the cost of 60,000l. It has a lofty stone clock-tower and portico; the interior was at first objected to as too theatrical in arrangement [...].

[During World War II bomb damage blew out all of the windows in St. Marylebone Parish Church, the "New Church" in the text above. It wasn't until 1949 that the repairs were completed but when they were the reglazed stained glass windows incorporated fragments from the originals into the new design. R.D.]