Church of the Immaculate Conception, Farm Street

The Church of the Immaculate Conception stands in Mayfair, a quiet corner of central London reached from Farm Street or Mount Street Gardens. Built in the 1840s for the Jesuits, it replaced a small mews chapel and was designed by Joseph John Scoles in decorated Gothic style. The front echoes Beauvais Cathedral, while the high altar came from Augustus Pugin, its panels showing the Annunciation and the Coronation of the Virgin. Inside, every inch of wall carries carvings or colour, from the Stations of the Cross in the right aisle to confessionals hidden within the piers. The church has shaped London’s Catholic life for nearly two centuries. Fr Randal Lythgoe planned seating for nine hundred, but costs were cut to four hundred and seventy-five places, paid for by private donors. In 1912 the choir window, blackened by London smoke, was replaced by a new design from Hardman of Birmingham and the old glass now shines in Quebec. After war damage in 1951 Adrian Gilbert Scott remodelled the interior, and in 1966 it became Mayfair’s parish church. Visitors enter through the Farm Street door and find a single long space rich with colour and detail. Above the west gallery hangs Evie Hone’s 1953 glass, its deep reds and blues recalling Burne-Jones. Along the left aisle side chapels offer quiet spaces, while the right aisle carries the large painted panels of the Way of the Cross. The organ case frames the gallery, and the choir still sings sixteenth-century polyphony alongside modern works.