The English Church at Mürren (Switzerland), 1878. Photo 2008 by Ginkgo2g (Wikimedia Commons).
When King Henry VIII of England broke away from Rome in 1534 and set in train the establishment of the Church of England, one of the consequences was that wherever the English gathered abroad in any numbers they needed to organise their own churches and chapels for Anglican worship. So it was that ‘English churches’, as they were generally known, came to be built across Europe, slowly at first to meet the needs of English merchants in places like Amsterdam, Leghorn (Livorno) and Smyrna (Izmir), but more rapidly after 1815 as the British increasingly travelled, visiting European resorts for weeks or months at a time, or settling permanently in places where the climate was better for their health or the cost of living was lower.
By 1914 there were some 325 places of Anglican worship in Europe, which came under the jurisdiction of either the Bishop of London (Northern and Central Europe) or, following the establishment of that see in 1842, the Bishop of Gibraltar (principally the shores and islands of the Mediterranean). In 1970 the jurisdictions were merged and the combined see has been known since 1980 as the Diocese in Europe (https://www.europe.anglican.org/).
The definition of Europe was, for administrative reasons, somewhat flexible. It included the coast of North Africa from Essaouira to Tunis, as well as the Portuguese and Spanish islands in the Atlantic – the Azores, Madeira, and the Canaries. The territory of the Bishop of Gibraltar extended as far east as Baku, on the Caspian Sea, while the Bishop of Northern and Central Europe’s responsibilities included Archangel in the far north of Russia as well as Moscow and St Petersburg.
Some churches were in what was then British territory, and in one important case still is: Gibraltar, where the Church of the Holy Trinity, built in 1825–32, became the cathedral in 1842. Across the Mediterranean English churches were built in Malta (including what is now the Pro-Cathedral of St Paul in Valletta) and on various of the Ionian Islands (principally Corfu), mainly for the benefit of the British troops and administrators posted there. There was even an English church in Tangier, under English rule from 1661 to 1684, but in spite of intermittent British occupation between 1713 and 1802 it seems that no English church was ever built on Minorca.
St John the Evangelist, Montreux (Switzerland), by C. G. Hebson 1877-8 with additions by various British and Swiss architects between 1880 and 1950. The richly decorated interior has been gradually restored since 2003. Photo 2025 © Rémy Gindroz.
For an English congregation to build a church in a foreign country was far from straightforward. Switzerland may have been very welcoming – at least 60 churches were built there between 1841 and 1914 – but some Roman Catholic countries, notably Spain, were extremely hostile. The Bishop of Barcelona did all that he could to prevent the construction of St George’s Church in that city in 1902–5, going so far as to petition King Alfonso XIII, while the Confraternity of St Joseph prayed ‘that fire may descend from heaven to destroy this cursed work and bury it in hell from which it proceeded’. It was said that in the Austrian Tyrol the priests still had sufficient power to forbid the villagers selling ground for the erection of an English church.
Once permission to build had been received there was then the question of who would design and construct the church. Many were simple structures erected by local builders with no input from a professional architect. There were a handful of prefabricated iron churches that were sent out from England, some but not all intended as temporary churches while permanent ones were being built. The only known surviving example of an iron church was written up by Diane Conrad-Daubrah for a Feature Article in November 2023 (https://www.frh-europe.org/english-built-heritage-in-switzerland-the-iron-church-in-roveredo/).
St Alban’s Church, Copenhagen (Denmark), by A. W. Blomfield, 1885–7. Photo: 2012, Андрей Романенко (Wikimedia Commons)
In most places, however, the congregations had to decide whether to commission a design from a British architect, the execution of which would usually be overseen by a local architect, or to go straight to a local architect. Of the roughly 225 churches for whom an architect has been identified, slightly more than half (120) were designed by British architects, the rest by local ones. During the main period of English church-building in Europe, 1860–1914, most of the famous British church architects of the period were involved one way or another: A. W. Blomfield, Reginald Blomfield, G. F. Bodley, William Burges, W. D. Caröe, Ewan Christian, T. E. Collcutt, Ernest George, Temple Moore, Sir Charles Nicholson, R. P. Pullan, Sir Gilbert Scott, Richard Norman Shaw, J. P. St Aubyn, G. E Street… In fact Street designed no fewer than six churches, a number exceeded only by William Barber, an otherwise obscure architect who designed at least nine churches. His career was given a good start by his father being the English chaplain at Menton.
Local architects tended be appointed for a single job, but notable exceptions were Aaron Messiah, who worked on the English churches in Beaulieu-sur-Mer and Nice before being appointed to design St Paul’s, Monte Carlo (1923–4), and Louis Maillart of Vevey who worked on St John’s, Montreux and then built four English churches nearby, at Caux, Chandolin, Glion and Sierre, between 1887 and 1906.
With churches being built by independent congregations – then as now mainly self-supporting – and in different countries, often separated by miles from the next English community, it is not surprising that the buildings were very varied in style, but broadly they fall into four categories. First, there are the churches that were designed to be a home-from-home for British congregations. Foremost among these, perhaps, is St Alban’s, Copenhagen by Sir A. W. Blomfield, built in 1885–7 under the patronage of the Danish-born Queen Alexandra, wife of King Edward VII. Nearly all the furnishings and fittings were made in Britain, so that the church served as a showcase of all that was best in contemporary British ecclesiastical design and craftsmanship.
Then there were churches designed by British architects who made a conscious effort to acknowledge the setting of their designs. F. L. Pearson designed Spanish-looking churches at Algeciras and Madrid (the latter modified by Teodoro de Anasagasti), while his church as Cap d’Antibes was described as being ‘in the style of the earlier Christian churches of Southern France’. It was probably in Switzerland that British architects showed the greatest tendency to adapt to the local style. Street’s church at Mürren, with rough-hewn blocks forming the lower part of the walls and the upper parts shingled, and a lean-to west porch, might easily be the work of a Swiss architect.
Conversely, local architects either designed in their local style, or tried (with varying success) to build English-looking churches. Some took this very seriously. In the case of St George’s, Berlin, the Crown Princess of Prussia (eldest child of Queen Victoria, wife of the future Kaiser Friedrich III and mother of Wilhelm II) took a close interest and arranged for the architect, Julius Raschdorff, to spend two months in England where he was taken to various churches in London, Cambridge and elsewhere by Ewan Christian and other leading figures.
St John the Evangelist, Menton (France), by William Barber, 1867–8. The church was rededicated in 2021 following restoration and the remodelling of the west end. Photo 2022 © James Bettley
The Church of the Good Shepherd, Belalp (Switzerland), 1884. Built for the benefit of English guests of the Belalp Hotel, overlooking the Aletsch glacier. In Roman Catholic use since 1941. Photo 2022 © James Bettley.
St George’s, Berlin was exceptional in that during the First World War Kaiser Wilhelm II, out of respect to his late mother, ordered that the church should remain open for Anglican worship, although a policeman sat at the back to ensure that prayers were not offered for the British royal family. Otherwise all English churches in Germany, of which there were about 35, closed, as did many others across Europe because of the abrupt end to foreign travel brought by the war. Most reopened after 1918, but in many places the number of visitors did not return to what it had been before 1914, and the outbreak of war in 1939 had an even worse effect. Whereas in the First World War the damage to buildings had been slight – the only serious casualty being St Andrew’s, Compiègne, which was soon rebuilt – many churches were destroyed in the Second World War, particularly in France and Germany and in most cases, ironically, by Allied bombing, including St George’s, Berlin.
Of the 325 churches in existence in 1914 about a quarter remain in Anglican use, and a similar number have been demolished, including those destroyed in the Second World War. About 50 churches have been taken on by other denominations, mostly local Protestant congregations but a few Roman Catholic. A similar number are in public or private secular use; seven are now houses or flats, others are concert halls, exhibition spaces, or museums. Two are in ruins (Arolla and Costebelle, Hyères), although there is talk in both instances of restoration, and others face an uncertain future, such as Dinan, which was purchased by the town in 1973 for use as an exhibition hall but closed in 2009 and has been disused since.
English churches are increasingly being recognised for the contribution they have made to the architectural and social heritage of Europe, and a number now benefit from statutory protection. They encapsulate the centuries-old relationship between Great Britain and the mainland of Europe, one that endures in spite of occasional wars and intermittent political differences.
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By Dr James Bettley, a British architectural historian, whose book English Churches on the Continent: an Architectural and Social History of Anglican Churches in Europe will be published by John Hudson Publishing in 2026 (for further information please email englishchurches@btinternet.com).
James has also contributed records of nearly 300 of these churches to Sanctuary (https://sanctuary.esdm.co.uk/), an open repository of religious heritage sites in Europe that gathers several existing databases of religious buildings and burial grounds of different denominations. This user-friendly tool offers free access to national, regional and private databases to researchers, heritage professionals, policy makers and civil society as a whole, on the same map interface and to the same data standard, overcoming the current limitations of fragmented data in numerous pages.
The platform is the result of a collaborative effort led by Future for Religious Heritage (FRH) with the support and expertise of Religioscape, in particular two of its founders, Joseph Elders and Thorsten Kruse, both members of this European network with extensive experience in mapping techniques and digital infrastructure.
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