Standing at the north end of Regent Street on Langham Place, All Souls Church is the only surviving church in London designed by Regency architect John Nash. Completed in 1824, the church was designed as part of the plan created by the Prince Regent (future King George IV) to create a formal ceremonial route from his palace in St. James’s up to Regent’s Park. All Souls is built of Bath stone, and it is entered through a rotunda surrounded by a portico with Ionic columns, and its unique Gothic spire consists of 17 concave sides encircled by Corinthian columns. When it was first built, Nash’s design was not well received and its slender spire was ridiculed. The House of Commons referred to the design as ‘a mass of deformity…resembling an extinguisher on a flat candlestick’, while the satirical cartoonist, George Cruikshank, drew Nash impaled on his own spire. As the area of Marylebone became fashionable, however, the church’s 1500 seats became easily filled. Today, All Souls is a listed historic landmark and remains an active Anglican Evangelical church welcoming over 2500 people from over 65 different nationalities every Sunday.
- All Souls Church
- Langham Place, London W1
- www.allsouls.org
- Underground: Oxford Circus