Tait Chapel

The Tait Chapel in London’s Fulham Palace was built by the bishop and later archbishop of that name. Archibald Benson was photographed with a rather unfortunate mullet hairstyle in the 1870s, which did not bode well for one who wished to design and build a bishop’s chapel. The building was damaged during the war and repaired in the 1950s, so detecting which bits are Victorian and which Elizabethan is not straight forward. The artwork is a mixture of old and new, and the chapel is built ‘choir-wise’, as though every congregant was a choir member.

Although possessing a chapel in his official residence might seem natural, Tait defended his decision to build, as his critics may have pointed to the grand cathedral and hundreds of churches already within his diocese:

‘My dear wife felt, as I did, that the ministrations for worship necessarily attaching to the chapel of the principal See House of so great a diocese required some more suitable arrangement. After much deliberation we determined to erect a new Chapel’.

Family and staff had worshipped in the great hall, which was ‘unconsecrated’. Although using one space for worship and business and entertaining would surely be problematic, the idea of consecrated space is a questionable one. It is our worship that lends consecration, not a consecration which permits worship.  

Would that the individual Christian consecrated himself as readily as his bricks.