History
The foundation stone of the Grosvenor Chapel was laid on 7 April 1730 by Sir Richard Grosvenor, 4th Baronet, owner of the surrounding property, who had leased the site for 99 years at a peppercorn rent to a syndicate of four “undertakers” led by Benjamin Timbrell, a prosperous local builder.
The new building was completed and ready to use by April 1731.
Soon after the original 99-year lease ran out in 1829 the chapel was brought within the parochial system as a chapel of ease to St George's, Hanover Square.
The chapel has been the spiritual home to a number of famous people including John Wilkes, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Garret Wesley, 1st Earl of Mornington and his wife (parents to the Duke of Wellington), Florence Nightingale, U.S. General Dwight D. Eisenhower and Bishop Charles Gore.
During the Second World War men and women of the American armed forces were welcomed to the chapel for their Sunday services, as recorded on a tablet outside the west wall, and after the war the congregation regularly included such people as the writer Rose Macaulay and Sir John Betjeman, Poet Laureate from 1972 until his death in 1984.
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“All history becomes subjective; in other words there is properly no history, only biography.”
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—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
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—Karl Marx (1818–1883)