The transformation of the space was led Carver Haggard as architects, alongside EC1’s specialistbuilding team, working closely with the gallery to restore and celebrate the building’s original character. 

Key historical features including rediscovered Victorian tiles, coal drops, and gas fittings will be preserved, while salvaged elements such as a 1980s mahogany staircase will be imaginatively repurposed into a floating staircase, serving as an architectural focal point on the ground floor. Throughout, original floors, reclaimed bathrooms, and bespoke commissions by artists and designers will reflect the ethos of the Arts and Crafts movement, which championed material integrity, social purpose, and the dignity of making—an enduring inspiration for the gallery’s Founder and Creative Director, Sarah Myerscough.

A richly detailed facade in red brick with gothic arches and oversized oriels faces onto Balderton Street, holding flats which were originally ‘model dwellings’ for parish workers and teachers.

Symmetrical arched openings mark the entrance to the Schoolhouse public rooms, which are set deep into the urban fabric of Mayfair and face the church across a small courtyard. This rear block originally included a soup kitchen, a church hall, premises for the parish working-men’s club, a reading-room and library, and classrooms.

Archive research revealed that the building was designed by R.J.Withers, who also built St. Mary’s, a modest church for the workers of Pimlico and the premises of the Lavers and Barraud stained glass studio on Endell Street, alongside parish churches and schools across the country and this frontispiece for ‘The Church Builder’ (see photos above).

The quality of his work has been rediscovered and championed in recent years by architectural historians Julian Orbach and Edmund Harris, author of ‘Rogue Goths’.

All research can be credited to Carver Haggard.