The Church of the Immaculate Conception, Farm Street, also known as Farm Street Church, is a Catholic parish church run by the Society of Jesus in Mayfair, Central London, England.
Its main entrance is in Farm Street, though it can also be accessed from the adjacent Mount Street Gardens. Sir Simon Jenkins, in his book England's Thousand Best Churches, describes the church as "Gothic Revival at its most sumptuous".
History
Foundation
In the 1840s, when the Jesuits first began looking for a location for their London church, they found the site in the mews of a back street. The name 'Farm Street' derives from 'Hay Hill Farm' which, in the eighteenth century, extended from Hill Street eastward beyond Berkeley Square. In 1843, Pope Gregory XVI received a petition from English Catholics for permission to erect a Jesuit Church in London and plans were accepted.
Construction
The original intention of the Superior of the English Jesuits, Fr Randal Lythgoe, was for the church to have a capacity for 900 people. When this was found too expensive the church was built for a capacity of 475. The cost was £5,800 which came from multiple private benefactors.
In 1844 the foundation stone was laid by Fr Lythgoe. Because of the limited size of the plot, the church was orientated north-south. The architect was Joseph John Scoles, who also designed the Church of St Francis Xavier in Liverpool, St Ignatius Church in Preston, and was father of Ignatius Scoles SJ, another architect, who designed St Wilfrid's Church also in Preston. Five years later on 31 July 1849, the feast of the Jesuit founder St Ignatius, the church was officially opened.
The style is decorated gothic and the front of the church, towards Farm Street, is inspired by that of Beauvais Cathedral. The high altar was designed by Augustus Pugin. Above Pugin's high altar are two mosaic panels depicting the Annunciation and the Coronation of the Virgin by Salviati.
In 1912, the original stained glass window of the choir, which was the tarnished by pollution, was replaced a new one from the John Hardman Trading Company of Birmingham. Tho old window was cleaned, repaired and then sold to St Agnes Church in Lac-Mégantic, in Quebec, Canada.
The church was remodelled in 1951 by Adrian Gilbert Scott, following damage sustained by the building during the Second World War. In 1966, it became the parish church of Mayfair.
In his 1999 book England's Thousand Best Churches, Sir Simon Jenkins awards the church two stars but says "Not an inch of wall surface is without decoration, and this in the austere 1840s, not the colourful late-Victorian era. The right aisle carries large panels portraying the Stations of the Cross. The left aisle has side chapels and confessionals, ingeniously carved within the piers. In the west window above the gallery is excellent modern glass by Evie Hone of 1953, with the richness of colour of a Burne-Jones."
Developments
In March 2013 the church opened its doors to LGBT Catholics as such, upon the so-called "Soho Masses" at the nearby Church of Our Lady of the Assumption and St Gregory coming to an end after six years. Archbishop Vincent Nichols attended their first mass there in 2013. The church had refused a request for a six-month retreat from writer Oscar Wilde almost 116 years previously.
The building next to the church hosts parish events, the local Christian Life Community association, and is a home to the offices of the British Province of Jesuits, the online prayer application Pray As You Go, Thinking Faith, the Heythrop Library, and the London Jesuit Centre.
Choir
In the nineteenth century, the choir consisted only of men and boys drawn from the local Roman Catholic schools.
Between 1881 and 1916, the organist was John Francis Brewer, son of the architectural illustrator Henry William Brewer, who was just 18 when appointed. Brewer was also a novelist and journalist, best known today for his 1888 thriller, 'The Curse Upon Mitre Square', inspired by the Whitechapel Murders.
After the First World War, the choir came under the direction of Fr John Driscoll SJ, who was later succeeded by Fernand Laloux, and the organist was Guy Weitz, a Belgian who had been a pupil of Charles-Marie Widor and Alexandre Guilmant. One of Weitz's most notable students was Nicholas Danby (1935–1997) who succeeded him as the church organist in 1967. Danby was also a tutor and taught John Keys, Paul Hale, and Robert Costin. His main achievement at Farm Street was re-establishing the choir in the early 1970s, following a period of change in the late 1960s, as a fully professional ensemble.