People from all around the world know of Westminster Abbey, the location of many royal weddings and famous burial places including William Shakespeare. Some might also recognize the tall tower of Westminster Cathedral. (My father took me to the latter as a small child to show me the inside of a Catholic church, so very different from the small free church I grew up in.) However a stroll down Buckingham Gate from the Palace will reveal Westminster Chapel, this dark brick building completed in 1865. Well known in evangelical circles for Dr Martin Llloyd Jones famous preaching, less is known about its founder Samuel Martin. He set up Sunday schools in the area known back then by Dickens as the Devil’s Acre, a place of squalour, depravity, open sewers and disease, a far cry from the modern Victoria Street today.
I decided to do a print of this stately building so that it’s quiet beauty and simple lines could be appreciated mainly by me, but also by those who work and worship there. Despite its sombre apperance it is a place of warmth and welcome, many folk coming for the Foodbank, CAP centre or to join a joyful pre-Covid Sunday service.
It is a building I have come to love. Peep inside and it is stunning with its oval auditorium, three tired seating and huge pipe organ. It reminds you of historical greatness when hundreds filled its wooden pews. Back in lockdown all is still, but if you listen carefully it whispers to you “A new day is coming, there is future promise, strong, life-changing faith, come again.”
H JJ Miller Designs 