Walking tour of Kew churches

The tour will start at 10am at Kew Gardens London Underground/Overground station and will finish about 1pm. It will be led by expert guide, Paul Velluet.

10.00am: Depart from Kew Gardens Station and walk to The Barn Church (St Philip and All Saints), Atwood Avenue. The Barn Church was reconstructed from the timbers of a seventeenth-century Surrey barn.

10.50am: Depart from The Barn Church and walk to St Anne’s Church, Kew Green (pictured). St Anne’s was built as a chapel in the early eighteenth century and later extended. The east end is surmounted by an octagonal cupola and Venetian-style traceried windows, all designed by Henry Stock. Also at the east end is a stained glass window by Charles Kempe and an interesting mausoleum. The Royal Gallery was built in 1805 at the western end of the church for the extensive family and household of King George III and Queen Charlotte when they lived nearby at the Dutch House (Kew Palace). The churchyard contains some significant burials and tombs, including the painters Thomas Gainsborough, Johann Zoffany and George Engelheart.

11.50am: Depart from St Anne’s Church and walk to the church of Our Lady of Loreto and St Winefride, Leybourne Park. Our Lady of Loreto and St Winefride is a Roman Catholic church built in a Romanesque style with an Italianate front. It was originally the mission church of the Society of Mary.

12.40pm: Depart from St Winefride’s Church and walk to Station Parade/Station Approach, close to Kew Gardens Station, for lunch in one of several cafés or restaurants, arriving by 12.55pm, or for lunch at The Kew Gardens Hotel in Sandycombe Road, arriving by 1.00pm. Members are welcome to visit the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (access via the Victoria Gate, in Kew Road), ten minutes’ walk from Station Parade/Station Approach. 

Paul Velluet is a chartered architect and architectural historian, a Vice-President of The Ecclesiological Society, and President of the Richmond Local History Society.