Church of St Peter

St Peter’s Church stands in Mount Park Road, North Ealing, a Grade II* listed building that blends Arts & Crafts and late-Victorian Gothic styles. Designed by John Dando Sedding and completed under Henry Wilson after Sedding’s death, it replaced an iron mission church built in 1882. Princess Helena laid the foundation stone in 1893, and the church was consecrated the same year by Frederick Temple, then Bishop of London. Sir John Betjeman praised it as a Victorian church ‘of which we can be proud’, while Sir Roy Strong called its Gothic style ‘highly original’. The west front features a large recessed window with fine tracery and small flanking turrets, and the long nave roof is connected by shallow chains of arches. The church’s interior remains unusually light and spacious, with a four-bay nave and clear-glazed windows. Wilson’s Art Nouveau metalwork adorns the inner west doors, and brass panels inside the main doors were also his work. The Lady Chapel, added in 1913, became a war memorial between 1921 and 1928, decorated with paintings by Henry Charles Brewer and a reredos by Cecil Greenwood Hare. A painting by Edward Arthur Fellowes Prynne, ‘Christ before Pilate’, hangs in the south aisle, donated by the artist’s widow in 1921. Services are held regularly, and the church supports a walking group, winter night shelter, and organ recitals. Local schools use it for concerts and carol services, while community groups meet in the adjacent hall. The font was designed by Leonard Shuffrey, who also decorated the alabaster high altar and designed the town war memorial. The Lady Chapel was conserved and restored in 2022, preserving its painted angels and memorials to the fallen.