St George's, Hanover Square

:"For the constituency, see Westminster St George's (UK Parliament constituency)."Infobox church
name = St George's Church, Hanover Square
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caption = View from St George Street towards Hanover Square, with the church on the right
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denomination = Church of England
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architect = John James
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address = City of Westminster, London
country = United Kingdom
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St George's, Hanover Square, is an Anglican church in what is now the City of Westminster, built in the early 18th century. The church was designed by John James and was constructed under a project to build fifty new churches around London (the Queen Anne Churches). It is situated on Hanover Square, near Oxford Circus. Due to its Mayfair location, it has been a frequent venue of high-society weddings.

"St George's" was also the name of its parish, which covered Mayfair, Belgravia, and Pimlico. The parish was formed in 1724 from part of the ancient parish of St Martin in the Fields. In the ancient county of Middlesex but within the Liberty of Westminster, the parish was included in the area of the Metropolitan Board of Works in 1855 and the County of London in 1889. The vestry administered local government in the area until the civil parish of St George Hanover Square became part of the Metropolitan Borough of Westminster in 1899. Its burial ground was located off between Connaught Street and Bayswater Road.

The parish formed the parliamentary borough of St George Hanover Square from 1885 to 1918.

The ecclesiastical parish still exists today and forms part of the Deanery of Westminster St. Margaret in the Diocese of London.

The church was a fashionable place of worship to have weddings for the wealthy classes in London. One famous London marriage involved the architect John Shaw Senior (1776–1832) to his wife Elizabeth Hester Whitfield in 1799.

In the movie "My Fair Lady", Eliza's father (Stanley Holloway) having just been provided with an inheritance and having to move into "middle-class morality" invites her (Audrey Hepburn) to his wedding at St. George in Hanover Square. Following the invitation, he and his fellows sing "Get Me To The Church On Time."

Music

George Frederick Handel was a regular worshipper at St George's which is now home to the annual Handel Festival. St. George's has a full time professional choir and a strong choral tradition and is an outstanding venue for classical music concerts. A Restoration Fund Appeal was launched on Trinity Sunday 2006 to raise a total of five million pounds, with a target of one and a half million pounds needed for the first phase of essential restoration work to the fabric of the church. A recent concert series in support of the Restoration Fund was supported by the William Smith International Performance Programme and featured exceptional solo piano performances by students from the Royal College of Music including Ren Yuan, Ina Charuashvili, Meng Yan Pan and the London debut of Maria Nemtsova of Russia.

References

* [http://www.visionofbritain.org.uk/unit_page.jsp?u_id=10164503 Parish data] (Vision of Britain)

External links

*http://www.stgeorgeshanoversquare.org/
* [http://www.shipoffools.com/Mystery/mws_05/reports/1050.html Mystery Worshipper Report] at the Ship of Fools website