Great Ormond Street Hospital for children opened in 1852, it was a progressive hospital as the only children’s hospital of its kind. Its aims were not only to provide “medical and surgical treatment” for “poor children”, but also to help further knowledge on children’s health, alongside training nurses especially for dealing with children as patients.[1] Initially, the hospital didn’t have a purpose built site, just a converted Georgian townhouse in Powis Place, which had 52 beds and an infant nursery connected to it.[2] During this time, the hospital was known as simply. ‘The Children’s Hospital’. Still, from somewhat humble beginnings, the hospital is now a world leader in treating children.
In 1875, the hospital’s remit had grown so much that a purpose built hospital building was created in the back garden space of 48-49 Great Ormond Street, which is why the hospital became known, and still is known, as Great Ormond Street. An important addition to this building was the chapel. The chapel, still in existence today, has provided solace for innumerable families over the years. It is also full of splendour and is a truly beautiful sight, but its history and survival is a remarkable tale.
The chapel, officially known as St Christopher’s, was designed by Edward Middleton Barry, a son of the architect Charles Barry, who worked on the Houses of Parliament alongside Augustus Pugin (a personal favourite of mine). Its influences come from the Byzantine style and are also closely linked to St Mark’s in Venice.[3] Despite its imposing beauty, the space was purposefully designed to look like a larger chapel than it actually is through the trickery of decoration. Its decoration is beautiful though and in the words of Oscar Wilde, this chapel is “the most delightful private chapel in London”.[4] That is quite a true statement, for the gold everywhere is pretty awe inspiring.
Despite the decoration initially looking a bit intimidating, the intended audience of child patients and their families are on displayed too. The stained glass portrays biblical scenes connected with children, such as the nativity or Christ welcoming small children.[5] There are also murals depicting children in various historical costumes.[6] Perhaps the most touching reference to the children the chapel has served is that some of the pews are child sized.[7]
The chapel had a large connection to the Barry family and not just because of E. M. Barry who was the architect. The opening service for the chapel was also conducted by Alfred Barry, brother of E. M. Barry, who would later go on to be the first Anglican Archbishop of Sydney, Australia.[8] The money to build the chapel is also largely down to the Barrys. A large £40,000 donation to build the chapel and create a stipend for the chaplain was given by William Henry Barry, a cousin to the architect of the chapel, who gave in memory of his late wife, Caroline.[9]
Did the stipend cause any issues? Thankfully on the whole, no, but as with any institution, it wasn’t always plain sailing. The stipend stipulated that the chapel should be provided with candles for light, but this created issues when wax melted over the pews and onto members of the congregation.[10] Electric lighting was brought in in the early twentieth century to stop this issue. The only other issue with the stipend was more to do with an incumbent chaplain in the 1920s than the stipend. During this time, the position was held by Lancelot Andrews. In 1926, he was declared bankrupt due to his overspending and his creditors pursued the hospital for the stipend.[11]
By the 1980s, the original hospital building was just over 100 years old and deemed to be unfit for purpose. It was necessary to build a new hospital building to meet the requirements of a modern hospital. A national appeal was started to help fund this new build, raising £54 million.[12] Unfortunately, that provided the issue of what to do with the chapel as it was classed as a listed building in its own right. It was necessary to keep the chapel, but it was impractical to incorporate it into the modern building plans, especially as the chapel had been on the first floor of the old building.
Instead, a radical plan, with the help of English Heritage, was developed to help move the chapel into its current position on the ground floor. It required the chapel to be braced and underpinned to make it safe, before then enclosing the whole chapel in a waterproof box and lowering it to the ground floor level. It was then moved on hydraulics into the current position. All the stained glass and furniture were removed to protect them, whilst also taking the chance to restore them in the meantime.[13] Once in place, the interior itself was examined and found to amazingly have only a few cracks that were repairable, meaning that only minor restoration was needed after the massive upheaval the chapel had had in its move. The only thing not original to the chapel building is the electric organ. The original organ was deemed too expensive to move, restore and maintain, but everything else still remains original.[14]
All in all, the process of moving and restoring the chapel took 6 years before it was officially reopened by Diana, Princess of Wales in 1994.[15] A month after this reopening, descendants of Charles Dickens attended a plaque unveiling to commemorate the famous author’s support of the hospital. Dickens even mentions the hospital in Our Mutual Friend: it is “a place set up on purpose for sick children; where the good doctors and nurses pass their lives with children, talk to none but children, comfort and cure none but children”.[16]
It is a testament to all those involved in the history of Great Ormond Street Hospital that the chapel is still in existence and is recognised as an important part of life at the hospital for patients, families and staff alike. Whilst the stipend has now ended, it has meant that chaplains of all faiths are available to provide spiritual comfort to those in the hospital, it doesn’t detract from the wonderful space that is the only surviving part of the original hospital building. In fact, it is an example of how faith and history are so often interwoven, even in this most progressive of children’s hospitals.
[1] Christian Visitor’s Handbook to London (London: John F. Shaw & Co, 1862), p. 28
[2] Ibid; https://www.camden.gov.uk/documents/20142/0/Great+Ormond+Street+Hospital+Chapel.pdf/60b35f27-72ae-60ce-fd30-896196a2e7d0?t=1591269825034
[3] Great Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children NHS Trust, ‘The Chapel of St. Christopher’ (2002), https://media.gosh.nhs.uk/documents/chapel_families_booklet_0.pdf
[4] Ibid
[5] Ibid
[6] Ibid
[7] Great Ormond Street Hospital, How Great Ormond Street Chaplains Give Solace to Patients and Parents of Any Faith, https://www.gosh.org/how-great-ormond-street-hospitals-chaplains-give-solace-patients-and-parents-any-faith/
[8] Ibid
[9] Nick Baldwin, ‘The Great Ormond Street Hospital Chapel’
[10] Ibid
[11] Ibid
[12] Ibid
[13] Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children NHS Trust, ‘The Chapel of St. Christopher’
[14] Ibid
[15] Ibid
[16] Historic Hospital Admission Records Project, ‘What the Dickens?’, https://hharp.org/library/gosh/general/charles-dickens.html
Voyager of History 
The chapel certainly has had an interesting history. Thanks for a very interesting post!
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