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Places of religious significance. Worth a visit for the architecture, the art or the history.
An Armenian church in Portland stone off Kensington High Street, copied from a monastery bell-tower in Armenia and paid for by an oil magnate for his parents.
Christianity
Built in 1922-23 by Arthur Davis of Mewès and Davis - the firm that did the Ritz - and modelled closely on the bell-tower of the monastery of Haghpat in Armenia. It is Portland stone throughout, roof included, on a Greek cross plan, and rises in three stages to a seven-sided open belfry with a conical roof, moulded gables and a cruciform finial. The roofs are of banded ashlar, which is unusual in London and is copied straight from the prototype, as are the deep moulded squinches under the octagon.
Calouste Gulbenkian paid for it on three conditions: that it be dedicated to the memory of his parents, that it be built in a traditional Armenian style, and that a board of trustees run its affairs. The inscription across the tympanum over the door records the first of those in English, and dates it in the Armenian era, 1372. The doors below it are carved in shallow interlace.
Inside there are no pews, in the Eastern Orthodox way. The walls are finished in a scored and painted stone aggregate against grey clustered piers with Byzantine capitals; the altar and its baldacchino are alabaster and marble inset with onyx and lapis lazuli, made by the Bromsgrove Guild; and a tiered electrolier of black and gilded metal hangs on mock candles, by the French firm of Bagu's. Members of the Gulbenkian family are buried here.
No general visiting hours are published. The Sunday Divine Liturgy is open to anyone; at other times ask the parish.
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Data is compiled from public sources including OpenStreetMap, under the ODbL. Hours change often, so check before making a journey.