Savoy Chapel - History

History

The original chapel was within Peter of Savoy's palace and was destroyed with it in the Peasants' Revolt in 1381. The present chapel building was constructed in the 1490s (and finished in 1512) by Henry VII as a side chapel off his hospital's 200-foot (61 m) long nave (the nave was secular rather than sacred, held 100 beds and was demolished in the 19th century).

The Savoy Chapel has hosted various other congregations, most notably that of St Mary-le-Strand whilst it had no church building of its own (1549–1714). Also the German Lutheran congregation of Westminster (now at Sandwich Street and Thanet Street, near St Pancras) was granted Royal permission to worship at the chapel when it split from Holy Trinity (the City of London Lutheran congregation, now at St Anne and St Agnes). The new congregation's first pastor, Irenaeus Crusius (previously an associate at Holy Trinity), dedicated the chapel on the 19th Sunday after Trinity 1694 as the Marienkirche or the German Church of St Mary-Le-Savoy.

An Anglican church, the chapel was noted in the 18th century as a place where marriages without banns might occur outside of the usual parameters of ecclesiastical law at that time, and was referred to in Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited as "the place where divorced couples got married in those days—a poky little place". Most of the chapel's stained glass windows were destroyed in the London Blitz during World War II. However, a triptych stained glass memorial window survives which depicts a procession of angelic musicians. It is dedicated to the memory of Richard D'Oyly Carte (who was married at the chapel in 1888) and was unveiled by Sir Henry Irving in 1902. After their respective deaths, the names of Rupert D'Oyly Carte and Dame Bridget D'Oyly Carte were added.