A chapel of ease called the Quebec Chapel was founded on the present site in 1787 to commemorate the Battle of Quebec. It is thought that this chapel was built on the site of the riding school of the Portman Barracks. By the early 20th century the chapel had fallen into disrepair and it was demolished in 1911.[3]
The Annunciation Church has always been closely associated with the Anglo-Catholic movement started in the mid 19th century, and in the early part of the 20th century many of its adherents were strongly opposed to the growing Ecumenical movement. In May 1951 an interdenominational Christian rally was held in nearby Hyde Park to coincide with the launch of the Festival of Britain. A number of Anglo-Catholic clergy and lay people, led by Rev. Hugh Ross Williamson,[6] held a protest meeting at the Annunciation Church to express their opposition to Bishops of the Church of England sharing a platform with Methodists, Baptists and other Non-Conformist churches, organisations which, in their opinion, did "not accept the traditional Faith of the Church". In a signed letter, they expressed the concern that "the participation of the Church of England may give the additional impression that Roman Catholics are the only religious body which defend the full Catholic Faith." The poet John Betjeman was among the signatories; although he admitted to T. S. Eliot (a fellow Anglo-Catholic and a churchwarden of St Stephen's, Gloucester Road) that he found the tone of the protest "somewhat extreme", he nevertheless declared "I have nailed my colours to the mast and cannot let down my co-signatories."[7]Rose Macaulay, a novelist, also commented on the protest at the Annunciation, expressing dismay at opposition to the rally.[8]
Architecture
Robert Bridgeman's triumphal cross dominates the nave
The present church was designed by the English architect Sir Walter Tapper and built in 1912–1913. Tapper was a pupil of George Frederick Bodley, a leading designer of Mediæval revival architecture. It is a tall red brick church designed in the Late Gothic Revival (or Edwardian Gothic) style. It features stone dressings and buttresses and a gabled bell tower.[9] The single bell was cast in 1913 by John Warner & Sons of Spitalfields.
