In 1862, the Shoreditch and Haggerston Church Extension Fund was started.[6] The district of St Chad was created in 1863,[8] with a committee formed for the erection of the church for the new parish holding its first meeting in January 1864.[9] Construction was begun in 1867,[10] and St Chad's was consecrated on April 4, 1869. At its design and completion, St Chad's was situated on the north-east corner of Nichols Square, a poor residential area consisting principally of terraced housing. Brooks also designed and built the adjacent vicarage, circa 1870, which is Grade II* listed.
The east end and chancel of St Chad's
James Brooks is the name which one associates above all with the creation of a new type of urban church especially intended to act as a focus in poor and deprived areas. His great brick basilicas with their austere E. E. details, lit by tall clerestories rising triumphantly above their once squalid settings, are to be found chiefly in the East End, at Hoxton and Shoreditch.
Nichols Square was demolished in 1963 to create the Fellows Court Estate. In 1970, the church of St Augustine's, Yorkton Street (also built as part of the Haggerston Church Scheme), closed and its parish, which had sustained bombing in the war and subsequent demolition, was incorporated into the parish of St Chad's.
Architecture
Interior
Brooks designed the furniture and liturgical furnishings of several of his landmark East London churches.[13] At St Chad's, he designed the reredos, which was carved by Thomas Earp, and the pulpit, and may have been responsible for further details including the rood screen.[14] The clerestory and rose windows are plainly glazed, but there are several stained glass windows by eminent English designers and manufacturers Clayton and Bell, who were responsible for the three large-scale single figures in the apse[15] – depicting a Christ in Majesty, flanked by windows with Mary as the Blessed Virgin, and St Chad, the church's patron saint.[16]
Bumpus, Thomas Francis (1908). "St Columba's and St Chad's". London Churches Ancient & Modern: Classical & modern. United Kingdom: T. Werner Laurie.
Betjeman, John; Kerr, Nigel (editor). "Shoreditch: St Chad". Sir John Betjeman's Guide to English Parish Churches (1993), p. 370. From the Collins Guide to English Parish Churches (1968). United Kingdom: Harper Collins.
^ abLeonard, John (2011). "The Victorian era: Gothic triumphant". London's Parish Churches. Oxford: Spire Books. pp. 252, 254–257, 274. ISBN978-1-904965-33-6.
^Walford, Edward (1878). "The northern suburbs: Haggerston and Hackney". Old and New London: Volume 5. London: Cassell, Petter & Galpin. pp. 505–524. {{cite book}}: |work= ignored (help)
^"Church of St Chad". Historic England. English Heritage. 4 February 1975. Retrieved 11 February 2022.
^Pevsner, Nikolaus; Cherry, Bridget (1988). "Shoreditch: Religious Buildings". London 4: North. The Buildings of England. New Haven & London: Yale University Press (published 2002). pp. 60, 516, 519. ISBN0-300-09653-4.
^Bumpus, Thomas Francis (1908). "London Churches: Shoreditch and Haggerston; St Columba's and St Chad's". London Churches: Ancient and Modern(PDF). Classical & Modern. Vol. 2. Clifford's Inn, London: T. Werner Laurie. pp. 132, 280–282, 286–293.
