It was in 1924 that Vere Ponsonby, the 9th Earl of Bessborough, and in the 1930s Governor-General of Canada, bought Stansted House and immediately began the restoration of the Chapel. This had been originally built, on the ruins of the House’s late medieval hunting lodge, by a previous owner, the Revd Lewis Way. He had made it his mission in life to convert the Jewish people to Christianity, as he felt was their destiny. To that end he filled his Chapel, and particularly its Chancel, with Jewish religious symbolism, making of it a truly unique and beautiful building. Famously, the poet John Keats was at the Chapel’s Dedication Service on the Feast of the Conversion of St Paul in January 1819, as the two poems he was then working on – The Eve of St Agnes and The Eve of St Mark – bear witness.
Within two years of the 9th Earl’s arrival the Chapel had been restored by HS Goodhart-Rendell, President of the Royal Institute of British Architects, and the present organ - a Casson Positive Organ, the gift of Vere’s wife Roberte, Countess of Bessborough - was installed in the West Gallery. Since then it has done duty for services great and small, from Family weddings to Sunday evensongs. Owing to the small amount of space within the Gallery, however, the necessarily crowded nature of the pipes within the organ chamber has always made access very difficult for any necessary remedial work. Over the years, therefore, the condition of the organ has slowly deteriorated as cleaning has been impossible and notes have become unplayable. By Christmas 2024 so few of the ranks of pipes were still functioning that the organ could no longer play its full and central part in the life of the Chapel.
However, the Estate’s Trustees have taken the brave decision to set up a Restoration Fund for the organ, with the aim of having it fully cleaned and overhauled in its centenary year. The overhaul has been entrusted to the excellent local firm of South Coast Organs (quondam Griffiths and Cooper), and to that end all the pipes and moving parts are at present undergoing cleaning and restoration at their works. Three quarters of the necessary funds have already been raised, and it is expected that everything will be back in position in good time for this year’s Carol Service on the 9th December.
Historically, St Paul’s Chapel was for many years associated with the Parish of Forestside, and remains one of the eight churches of the Octagon Parish. While regular services there dwindled early in the millennium, there has more recently been a significant revival of activity, with monthly prayer meetings, weddings, carol services and Eucharists on occasions such as the Patronal Festival at the Feast of St Paul. With the active support of the Stansted Foundation, the Octagon is hoping to build on the number of regular services in the Chapel with Evensongs being a significant possibility, and is looking for a way to return the chapel more formally into the family of the Parish. All these plans and possibilities will of course be much enhanced by the Chapel having its organ in full voice once again to lead the music.
As part of a final push to complete the fund-raising for the project, a concert is planned in the Chapel at the end of the summer
Richard Barnes