★★★★★ 5.0
Discover
Holy Trinity Brompton
The year is 1852, and church leaders are selling land to Catholic neighbors, creating this mysterious long driveway! Holy Trinity cost £10,407 in 1829 - enough to buy 500 horses back then. You're standing in London's very last churchyard built next to a city center church. Inside Thomas Leverton Donaldson's Gothic Revival creation, there's a bookshop hiding in the crypt beneath your feet, and those traditional wooden pews were swapped for moveable chairs in the 1980s!
Did You Know?
- Founded in 1829 as a response to London’s rapid population growth, Holy Trinity Brompton (HTB) is a Grade II listed building designed by architect Thomas Leverton Donaldson as a ‘Commissioners’ church’—part of a 19th-century government-funded effort to build new Anglican churches for expanding urban populations, with the Church Building Commission covering over 70% of its original £10,407 construction cost.
- HTB is internationally famous for creating the Alpha Course, a global Christian evangelism program that has reached over 24 million people in more than 100 countries, making it one of the most influential churches in modern Christianity.
- The church’s grounds once stretched further, but in 1852, a portion was sold to the Roman Catholic Church to build the Brompton Oratory, creating the distinctive long driveway from Brompton Road to HTB—a tranquil path that contrasts with the busy city outside, adding a hidden architectural and historical layer to the site.