Grove Gardens Chapel

Canon Charles Tickell Proctor, the Vicar of Richmond in the 1870s, controversially built a wall to separate the consecrated ground and non-conformist area.

[15] Grove Gardens Chapel sits opposite John Darbourne and Geoffrey Darke’s Phase 2 of the Queens Road Estate.

The entrance arch is inscribed with a truncated quote from John 19:41 from the King James Bible, ‘In the Garden there was a new sepulchre, there laid they Jesus’.

[21] Above the reredos are three lancet windows with one surviving panel of stained glass, also by Daniel Bell, showing the Ascension of Christ.

[23][24] Grove Gardens Chapel was built in the Gothic Revival style, which had first been used by Horace Walpole at Strawberry Hill and grew to increasing prominence throughout the 19th century.

[27] This placed more emphasis on polychromatic decoration for public buildings, as encouraged by the Ecclesiological Society, with banded masonry and brickwork.

The chapel was designed by Sir Arthur Blomfield (1829-1899), born at Fulham Palace, the fourth son of the Bishop of London.

[29] Blomfield began his ecclesiastical architecture practice in 1856 and was made the architect to the Diocese of Winchester, which Richmond was part of when Grove Gardens Chapel was built.

[37] Walter Hood Fitch, a prominent botanical illustrator who worked with William Jackson Hooker at Kew Gardens, is buried to the east of the chapel.

[41] The Environment Trust of Richmond led a four-year National Lottery Fund project to restore it in the early 2000s, bringing it into use for the community.