St Luke's Church, West Norwood
| St Luke's, West Norwood | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Denomination | Church of England |
| Churchmanship | Evangelical |
| Website | http://www.stlukeswestnorwood.org |
| Architecture | |
| Architect(s) | Francis Octavius Bedford |
| Administration | |
| Deanery | Lambeth South |
| Archdeaconry | Lambeth |
| Diocese | Diocese of Southwark |
| Province | Canterbury |
| Clergy | |
| Vicar(s) | Rev'd Donald Davis |
St Luke's Church in West Norwood is an Anglican church that worships in a Grade II* listed building, It stands on a prominent triangular site at the south end of Norwood Road, where the highway forks to become Knights Hill and Norwood High Street.
When St Luke's church was first built, the area was sparsely populated and mainly comprised meadows cleared from woodland. The relatively few houses included a mixture of modest cottages and villas for the rich. The only significant public buildings at that stage were the Independent (later Congregationalist) chapel in Chapel Road, which was completed in 1821, and a House of Industry for the Infant Poor in Elder Road. An outline of the vast subsequent changes to the locality appears in the article about West Norwood.
During the nineteenth century, a number of new parishes were created that took in parts of the original parish of St Luke's. These were Holy Trinity Tulse Hill, Christ Church Gipsy Hill, Emmanuel West Dulwich, St Peter Streatham and All Saints West Dulwich.
By 1886, the population of St Luke's parish amounted to 10,377 and was served by four clergy. The total (morning and evening) attendance as a proportion of the parochial population at that time stood at 9.1%. In 1901, the population of the parish stood at 16,180 but in the following year only one clergyman was in post at St Luke's and attendance at services there represented 6.0% of the parochial population.
Based on statistics from the UK census, the Diocese of Southwark estimates the population of St Luke's parish was 15,400 in 2001 and 16,500 in 2011.
St Luke's Church was designed by Francis Octavius Bedford in 1822, as a result of the Church Building Act of 1818, which had been passed in response to the end of the Napoleonic wars and the growing urban population. It is known as a "Commissioners' church" because it received a grant from the Church Building Commission towards the cost of its construction; the church cost £12,947 to build, and the grant was £6,447. It was constructed along with St. Matthew's, Brixton, St. Mark's, Kennington and St. John's, Waterloo Road. These four "Waterloo churches", each dedicated to one of the four authors of gospels of the New Testament, were specified to have 1800-2000 sittings, vaults for burials, be constructed of brick with stone dressing and cost no more than £13,000 each.
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