All Souls Church Building, Langham Place London, John Nash Architecture, Architect, Design
All Souls Church, London
Langham Place Building, England, UK – design by John Nash, architect
26 Jun 2012
All Souls Church London
Address: 2 All Souls’ Place, London W1B 3DA
Phone: 020 7580 3522
Date built: 1823
Design: John Nash architect
Location: Langham Place, off Regent Street, just south of Broadcasting House, north of Oxford Street
photos © Adrian Welch
Very unusual circular church with sharp needle-like steeple.
photo © Nick Weall
All Souls Church is the only building that survives in Regent Street that was designed by John Nash
photo © Nick Weall ; photos © Adrian Welch
All Souls Church is an Anglican Evangelical church in central London, located at the north end of Regent Street on Langham Place.
The building forms a hinge on Regent Street as it kinks; the circular form helps form this elbow and ‘rotates’ the flow of the route onwards.
The church was designed by John Nash, favourite architect of King George IV, to provide an eye-catching monument where the newly laid-out Regent Street, linking Piccadilly with the new Regent’s Park, takes an awkward abrupt bend to align with the pre-existing Portland Place, providing a visible hinge where the street plan swings abruptly west.
Its circular peripteral portico, capped with a smaller peripteral tower, in turn capped with an anomalous slender cone, giving the appearance of a 20th-century three-stage space rocket suggesting he may have envisaged the structure as a futurist vehicle for transporting all souls to heaven, is of an enriched Ionic order that substitutes winged cherub’s heads for the usual rosettes on the abacus, possibly symbolically representing divine offspring of the Olympian god, Hermes / Roman god, Mercury, as the means of propulsion; the prominent portico is attached to the reticent main church by the width of a single intercolumniation. Broadcasting House (1932) reflects Nash’s portico with its quadrant-curved corner. The church was consecrated in 1824 by the Bishop of London.
The church is built of Bath stone and the unique spire is made of seventeen concave sides encircled by a peripteros of Corinthian columns, making two separate sections. The capitals are Ionic in design and made from Coade stone. All Souls is noted for being the last surviving church by John Nash. The building was completed in December 1823.
All Souls is a Commissioners’ church.
Souce: wikipedia
Opposite Broadcasting House is the Langham Hotel, Regent Street:
photos © Adrian Welch
BBC Broadcasting House, London – new photos
Design: Val Myer ; MacCormac Jamieson Prichard Architects / Sheppard Robson Architects
photo © Adrian Welch
Elegant building from 1932 with strongly articulated building wrapped around it. The new building, set over 13 floors with a combined area of 50,000m², houses all of the BBC’s radio, news and World Service programmes. The project was delivered within budget and has provided the BBC with a building which is a suitable home for the world’s most famous broadcasting corporation.
Location: 2 All Souls’ Place, London W1B 3DA, UK
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Website: www.allsouls.org