St Paul's Church, Deptford

St Paul's Church in Deptford, London, is an English Baroque church designed by Thomas Archer between 1712 and 1730 that stands out as England's finest example of Italian-influenced Baroque architecture. Commissioned to counter religious dissent among the area's growing dockyard population, the church features sweeping semicircular porticos and a slender spire. Its construction followed Tsar Peter the Great's 1698 visit to Deptford, and in the 1970s, its crypt hosted a reggae club.

London Β· from the walk β€œThe Tsar's Deptford” Β· Generated

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St Paul's Church, Deptford High Street, SE8

Who designed St Paul's Church in Deptford, and when was it built?

Look at this church. Just Look at it. That sweeping semicircular portico... those giant columns... that slender spire rising from a circular tower. This does not look like it belongs in England. And that is Exactly the point.

John Betjeman once called Saint Paul's Deptford "a pearl at the heart of Deptford." And the great architectural historian Pevsner went further β€” he said it comes "closer to Borromini and the Roman Baroque than any other English church of this date."

It was designed by gentleman architect Thomas Archer and built between seventeen twelve and seventeen thirty. Now, Archer was unlike any English architect of his era. After Oxford University, he spent four years studying classical architecture firsthand in Italy and throughout the continent. He fell deeply under the spell of the Italian Baroque masters Borromini and Bernini. And he brought that Roman fire Home with him.

But why build such a grand church... Here? In Deptford? With rising urban growth in Deptford, mainly made up of literate, skilled workers tending to dissent from the established church, the Commission for Building Fifty New Churches decided to counter this by building a major new Church of England church in the area. Northern Deptford had grown into an industrial town, home to a populous community of workers from the shipyard and its related industries β€” rows of wooden cottages for shipwrights, sailors and craftsmen, and larger brick houses for foremen, sea captains and officials.

And here is where the Russian thread weaves in. This Same maritime boom β€” this explosion of skilled workers and naval ambition β€” is precisely what drew Tsar Pyotr the Great to Deptford just fifteen years before construction began. In sixteen ninety-eight, Peter stayed at a house in Deptford belonging to the writer and diarist John Evelyn. The house suited Peter because it was close to the dockyards, where he could easily visit ships being built. The dockyard that the Tsar came to study... created the Population that demanded this church.

And there is a delicious irony here. Thomas Archer was the Only English Baroque architect whose buildings show evidence of study of contemporary continental Italian architecture. He made his Grand Tour of Europe at roughly the same time as Pyotr was making His Grand Embassy across the continent. Two men... from two very different worlds... both travelling westward to absorb knowledge, to bring the best of European ideas home. Archer brought back Borromini's curves. Pyotr brought back the science of shipbuilding.

And both left their mark right here, on this small patch of south-east London. The historian John Summerson said Archer's churches "represent the most advanced Baroque style ever attempted in England." Meanwhile, when Peter the Great returned to Russia, a large shipbuilding programme was established β€” and by the end of his reign, twenty-eight thousand men were serving in a Baltic fleet of forty-nine ships and eight hundred smaller vessels. A navy born in Deptford.

One final detail. In the nineteen seventies, the crypt beneath this magnificent Baroque church was transformed into... a reggae club. By the mid-eighties, it was hosting all-night psychedelic rock concerts. Can you imagine? Borromini's ghost meeting a bass line at three in the morning? Deptford has always known how to surprise.

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