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Some of the finest churches, synagogues, mosques and temples. Architectural + decorative beauty plus historical significance.
The chapel of the medieval Bishops of Ely, built in the 1280s, and the oldest Catholic church in England still in use.
ChurchesMedievalCrypts
Ely Place is a private road with its own gates and beadle because it was once the Bishop of Ely's London estate, and this was the bishops' chapel, built around 1284 for John Kirkby, treasurer to Edward I. It is one of two buildings in London left from that king's reign. After the Reformation it served the Spanish ambassador as an embassy chapel where English Catholics could hear Mass, then passed through other hands, and in 1874 the Rosminian order bought it back for the Catholic Church, the first pre-Reformation church in England to return to it; it reopened in 1878 and has been in use since. The upper church is one high room of stone with a great east window, its postwar glass by Charles Blakeman telling the story of the English martyrs, and along the walls stand statues of eight of them, executed under Elizabeth I; the crypt below, with its bare walls and timbers, feels older than anything in it. In February the church blesses throats on St Blaise's day, a custom as old as the saint it is named for.
Open daily; Mass times are on the church's site.
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Data is compiled from public sources including OpenStreetMap, under the ODbL. Hours change often, so check before making a journey.