All Saints, Camden Town

All Saints Cathedral stands at the corner where Camden Street and Pratt Street meet in the heart of Camden Town. Built between 1822 and 1824 as a Church of England chapel, it became All Saints Church in 1920. Designed by William and Henry Inwood, the building mixes yellow stock brick with Portland stone and features a tower modelled on the Choragic Monument of Lysicrates in Athens. The interior has a flat ceiling and galleries supported by Ionic columns, with fragments from Greece now in the British Museum. Sir John Summerson once criticised the tower as too thin for the church’s body, yet the building remains Grade I listed. The church’s congregation once reached 1,650 on Sunday mornings in 1854, typical of Victorian Anglican churches. By the 20th century numbers fell, and in 1948 it became a Greek Orthodox cathedral while keeping its dedication. A growing Greek-speaking community, many from Cyprus after World War II, kept the building in use. In 1991 it gained cathedral status within the Greek Orthodox Church. Recent renovations since 2009 were supervised by English Heritage with support from the National Lottery and local donations. Visitors find a rectangular church with an eastern apse and a semi-circular portico at the west end. Behind the portico rises a stone tower surrounded by columns, echoing Athens’ ancient monument. Inside, the flat ceiling and three-sided galleries rest on Ionic columns, while the stonework reflects classical fragments brought back by Henry Inwood. The building sits where Camden Town’s development began in the 1790s, linking its history to the wider growth of northern London.