St George's Hanover Square Church

St George's, Hanover Square, is an Anglican church in central London, built in the early 18th century. The land on which the church stands was donated by General William Steuart, who laid the first stone in 1721. The church was designed by John James and was constructed under a project to build fifty new churches around London (the Queen Anne Churches). It is situated on Hanover Square, near Oxford Circus, in what is now the City of Westminster. Due to its Mayfair location, it has been a frequent venue of high society weddings.

Ecclesiastical parish
A civil parish of St George Hanover Square, and an ecclesiastical parish, were created in 1724 from part of the ancient parish of St Martin in the Fields. The boundaries of the ecclesiastical parish were adjusted in 1830, 1835 and 1865 when other parishes were calved out of it. The ecclesiastical parish still exists today and forms part of the Deanery of Westminster St Margaret in the Diocese of London.

Architecture
The church was constructed in 1721-25, funded by the Commission for Building Fifty New Churches, and designed by John James, who had been one of the two surveyors to the commission since 1716. Its portico, supported by six Corinthian columns, projects across the pavement. There is a tower just behind the portico, rising from the roof above the west end of the nave.

The interior is divided into nave and aisles by piers, square up to the height of the galleries, then rising to the ceiling in the form of Corinthian columns. The nave has a barrel vault, and the aisles transverse barrel vaults.

Weddings
The church was a fashionable place of worship to have weddings. It was here that Theodore Roosevelt, the future US President, aged 28, married Edith Carow, aged 25, on 2 December 1886. Henry Holland (architect) married Capability Brown's daughter Bridget on the 11th February 1773 in the church. John Nash (architect) married Mary Ann Bradley on the 17th December 1798 in the church. One famous London marriage involved the architect John Shaw Senior (1776–1832) to Elizabeth Hester Whitfield in 1799. Other notable people married there include the Eccentric Missionary, Joseph Wolff, in 1827. 2 February 1858 saw the marriage of Ann Jeffrey and Samuel Parkes who won the Victoria Cross in the Charge of the Light Brigade for saving the life of Trumpeter Hugh Crawford. In October 1899, Alfreda Ernestina Albertina Bowen, daughter of Sir George Ferguson Bowen and Contessa Diamantina di Roma, married Robert Lydston Newman.

In popular culture
In the musical My Fair Lady, Alfred Doolittle (Stanley Holloway), having just been provided with an inheritance and having to move into "middle-class morality", invites his daughter Eliza Doolittle (Audrey Hepburn) to his wedding at this church. Following the invitation, he and his fellows sing "Get Me to the Church on Time".



Music
George Frederick Handel was a regular worshipper at St George's, which is now home to the annual Handel Festival. St. George's has a full time professional choir and a strong choral tradition and is an outstanding venue for classical music concerts. A Restoration Fund Appeal was launched on Trinity Sunday 2006 to raise a total of five million pounds, with a target of one and a half million pounds needed for the first phase of essential restoration work to the fabric of the church. A recent concert series in support of the Restoration Fund was supported by the William Smith International Performance Programme and featured solo piano performances by students from the Royal College of Music, including Ren Yuan, Ina Charuashvili, Meng Yan Pan and the London debut of Maria Nemtsova of Russia.