The church's website [visit link] tells us,
using a Google translation, that:
"The French Protestant Church of London was founded in
1550 by Royal Charter of Edward VI granting freedom of worship to the Walloon
and French Protestant refugees.
The church, in Soho Square, was built in
1893."
The church is Grade II listed and the entry at the English
Heritage website [visit
link] tells us:
"Church fronted by Library and Presbytery block.
1889-1893 by (Sir) Aston Webb. Plain coloured hard brick and light red
terracotta, green slate roof. Late Flemish-Gothic style with slightly Romanesque
details in Aston Webb's early manner. 4 storeys and basement. 5 main bays wide,
subdivided into 9 window bays on upper floors. The terracotta faced ground floor
has central shafted Romanesque arched doorway,and flanking bays have coupled
shafted 2-light Romanesque arched windows with small pane iron casements, the
right hand opening a secondary entrance. Upper floors have ranges of abutting
flat and segmental arched small paned casements broken by 2 shallow tower-like
projections with pyramidal roofs and central through storey oriel rising into
terracotta banded gable with cross finial. A timber cupola crowns the centre of
the ridge which is flanked by lofty banded chimney stacks surmounting the
stepped gable ends. The church lies behind this fore building and has an
interior of buff terracotta and brick in free late Gothic with 4 bay nave
arcade, apse, vaulted side aisles and main barrel roof of timber. Two C17 and
C18 Royal Coats of Arms are kept in the building."
The British History On-Line website [visit link]
also tells us:
"This church, though now occupying a building erected
only in 1891–3, can trace its descent from the earliest congregation of
Protestant refugees to settle in London, a tradition commemorated in the carved
tympanum over the entrance door of the present building. In July 1550 Edward VI
licensed the foreign Protestant refugees in London to hold their own services.
In October 1550 the French and Dutch refugees took a lease of the chapel of St.
Anthony's Hospital in Threadneedle Street, but a few weeks later the Dutch
withdrew from this arrangement, leaving the Huguenots in sole possession. They
and their successors remained in Threadneedle Street (except during the reign of
Mary Tudor) until 1840, the original building being rebuilt after its
destruction in the Great Fire. In 1843 a new Huguenot church was opened in St.
Martin's le Grand, but in 1887 it was demolished to make way for
extensions to the adjoining General Post Office. The congregation then moved
into temporary quarters at the Athenaeum Hall, Tottenham Court Road, until a
suitable site for another church could be purchased and a new building
erected.
After two years of enquiry the consistory of the church
decided to purchase a plot of land in Soho Square. This site comprised the
existing Nos. 8 and 9 which, it was proposed, were to be demolished to provide a
combined frontage to the square of fifty feet and a depth of one hundred and ten
feet. The freehold was owned by a Mr. Trotter, a descendant of John Trotter,
founder of the Soho Bazaar, who was prepared to sell the site for
£10,500.
The consistory commissioned (Sir) Aston Webb to design a
new church and in March 1889 petitioned the Attorney General, without whose
sanction they could not proceed, for permission to purchase the site in Soho
Square and to erect a new church. This was to be built at a cost of between nine
and ten thousand pounds and to accommodate a congregation of four hundred. In
addition the building was to contain a vestry and library, living quarters for
the pastor, and a schoolroom in the basement. The building costs and the
purchase price for the site were to be paid out of the compensation money which
the consistory had received for the demolition of their former church. The
members were anxious to start building as soon as possible as they were unable
to hold communion services in their temporary quarters in Tottenham Court Road,
the Athenaeum Hall being used as a public dance hall on
weekdays.
The Attorney General did not give his consent to the
consistory's scheme until October 1890 and it was not until April 1891 that the
demolition of the two old houses on the site began. In the meantime the
congregation removed from the Athenaeum Hall to the chapel behind No. 7 Soho
Square which had formerly been occupied by a group of Baptists.
The foundation stone of the new church was laid on 28
October 1891 and the building was completed early in 1893. It was dedicated on
25 March 1893. The building contractors employed were Messrs. Higgs and Hill,
whose tender was for £10,194.
The church is in Aston Webb's early manner, derived in
part from the final phase of FrancoFlemish Gothic. There are, in addition,
certain late Romanesque overtones blended into a design which is particularly
successful internally. A four-storeyed block faces the square, with living
accommodation above an entrance lobby flanked by a library and an ante-room. The
aisled church immediately behind, has four bays running north and south and a
curved apse between a pair of vestries.
The building materials externally are plumcoloured brick
and light red terra-cotta, the residential block having a steeply pitched roof
of greenish slates. The front has a terra-cotta facing to the ground storey,
with five roundarched openings, the subsidiary ones being subdivided. The
somewhat Romanesque character of the larger central doorway is emphasized by the
archaic style of the carving in the stone tympanum, which was inserted in 1950.
The upper part of the front, largely of brick, has two narrow projections with
hipped roofs, framing a recessed centre. Here a small three-sided bay window
rises through an enriched corbel table at the level of the third storey into a
gable treated with ascending shell-headed niches. The gable is topped by a cross
and on the apex of the roof is a small timber cupola.
The interior is of buff terra-cotta and similarly
coloured brickwork. The roundarched arcades to the church are of four bays, the
piers having paired shafts at either side with vestigial imposts. There is no
triforium. A narrow gallery runs in front of the wide, three-light clerestory
windows. The barrel roof is of wood and a high arch with moulded imposts frames
the apse with its wooden panelled semi-dome and five round-headed windows. A
plain cross is set between the two parts of the organ, and benching extends
round the apse below. A wide low terracotta pulpit stands to the west of the
sanctuary. The aisles have arcaded walls and rib-vaulted roofs with a
rectangular top light to each bay. In front of the vestry door in the east aisle
is a small terra-cotta font and other, apparently original, fittings include the
hooped iron light-pendants and the dark-stained pine pews; two royal coats of
arms of carved wood are preserved in the library and in the side entry, that in
the library being probably of the late Stuart period and the other apparently
Hanoverian."
The church holds a service on Sundays at
10.30am.