St Marylebone Parish Church, Marylebone

St Marylebone Parish Church stands on Marylebone Road in the City of Westminster. It is the third church built for the parish, replacing earlier buildings further south and then further north along Marylebone High Street. The first church near present-day Marble Arch was built around 1200 and dedicated to St John the Evangelist. The second church, closer to the village, was dedicated to the Virgin Mary and demolished in 1740. The third church opened in 1742 and was demolished in 1949, its site now a public garden. The present church was designed by Thomas Hardwick and completed in 1817. Its north front features a Corinthian portico with eight columns, modelled on the Pantheon in Rome. The interior originally had two tiers of galleries and private rooms at the east end. The steeple rises about 37 metres above ground, with a clock, a circular colonnade and a miniature temple topped by a dome. The vaulted crypt was bricked up in 1853 and now houses a healing and counselling centre. Visitors enter through three doorways beneath the portico into a vestibule with arched windows. The organ case once held a painting by Benjamin West, and the church contains monuments, memorial stones and fine fittings added during a major 1882 restoration. Charles Dickens’s son was baptised here, and Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett were married in the church in 1846. The annual Good Friday performance of Sir John Stainer’s oratorio The Crucifixion continues a tradition begun in 1887.