Identity area
Type of entity
Authorized form of name
Parallel form(s) of name
Standardized form(s) of name according to other rules
Other form(s) of name
Identifiers for corporate bodies
Description area
Dates of existence
History
Until 1834 Hammersmith was a hamlet within the parish of Fulham, the mother church being All Saints. In 1629 the leading inhabitants of Hammersmith, including the Earl of Mulgrave and Nicholas Crispe, successfully petitioned the Bishop of London for a chapel of ease to be built. The chapel was concentrated by Bishop Laud, later Archbishop of Canterbury, on 7 June 1631, and a perpetual curacy was established. In 1834 Hammersmith became a distinct and separate parish and the chapel of St Paul became the parish church.
In 1978 proposals were implemented for a Local Ecumenical Project in Hammersmith. On the closure of the Broadway United Reform church building St Paul's became the home of a united congregation of Anglican and United Reform Church members.
From the seventeenth century the Hammersmith "side" of the parish was administered separately from the Fulham "side"; each side appointing its own officers and levying its own rates. The Hammersmith curate kept his own registers of baptisms marriages and burials but the entries were also recorded in the registers of All Saints Fulham until 1834.
By the 1860s the chapel was too small for its congregation and a public subscription was raised to restore and enlarge the building. The West London Observer of 20 February 1864 reported the proposed alterations which were completed in the following year. In 1882 plans were drawn up for a new church on the same site. It was built in stages the first section being consecrated on 13 October 1883. Major road construction in the second half of the twentieth century resulted in the loss of part of the churchyard the church hall and St Paul's Church Schools which were relocated to Worlidge Street.