All Saints, Camden Town

Infobox church
name = All Saints, Camden Town
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caption = All Saints in 2005
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denomination = Anglican, Greek Orthodox
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architect = William and Henry Inwood
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constructed_date = 1822-1824
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address = London
country = United Kingdom
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All Saints, Camden Town is a church in the Camden Town area of London, England. It was built for the Church of England, but it is now a Greek Orthodox church and is known as The Greek Orthodox Church of All Saints. It is located at the junction of Camden and Pratt Streets.

History

Prelude

Camden Town was developed from the 1790s onwards in the then largely rural parish of St Pancras, on the northern fringe of London. The parish church was one of the oldest in England, but it had been neglected since the 14th century when most of the inhabitants of the parish had moved to Kentish Town in the northern part of the parish. In 1822 a new main parish church, St Pancras New Church, on Euston Road in the southern part of the parish, was consecrated, but it was intended mainly to serve the population in its immediate vicinity. In 1818 a Church Building Act had been passed by Parliament to facilitate the construction of new churches in London's many new districts, including this one for Camden Town.

1822-4

It was built between 1822 and 1824 and was known as first as the Camden Chapel, then as St Stephen's, but the name was soon changed to All Saints. It was designed by the same architects as St Pancras New Church, the father and son team of William and Henry Inwood. It is a fairly large building faced with Portland stone, and is in a Grecian style with a semi-circular portico and a cylindrical tower surrounded by columns. The ionic order is based on fragments found by Henry Inwood in Greece and now in the British Museum. The building has generally been praised, but both contemporary writers and later architectural critics such as Sir John Summerson have argued that the tower is too thin in proportion to the body of the church. Nonetheless it is a Grade I listed building.

1824-present

In the 19th century All Saints had a large congregation, like many other Church of England churches in the Victorian era. It became a parish in its own right in 1852, and an 1854 survey of church attendance found that the number of worshippers was 1,650 on Sunday mornings, 630 on Sunday afternoons and 1,430 on Sunday evenings. In the 20th century the congregation plunged and in 1948 the church became Greek Orthodox. Camden Town acquired a large Greek speaking community in the post World War II decades, mostly Cypriots, and the church is still well used, though many of the worshippers now drive in from outer suburbs. St Michael's in Camden Road, which was consecrated in 1894, took over All Saints' parish and became the main Anglican church in Camden Town.

References

*"Camden Town and Primrose Hill Past" by John Richardson (1991) ISBN 0-948667-12-5
*"Georgian London" by John Summerson (1988 ed.) ISBN 0-7126-2095-8