A Victorian oddity with a nice collection of Byzantine stonework acquired from Constantinople in the latter years of the 19th century by lawyers and amateur archaeologists Dr Edwin Freshfield and Sir Henry Cosmo Orne Bosnor. According to the man who let me into the church, Freshfield and Bosnor panted up to their parish church of St Andrew, presented their collection and said, “Look what we have for you”. On finding that their treasures were not wanted there, they engaged Sidney Barnsley to build them a Byzantine church to put them in. It’s a peculiar place – marbled like Aya Sofya, with an apse like a gold-mosaic Aya Irini and with column capitals dotted incongruously within. It has the most marvellous arts-and-crafts ceiling. ‘Eccentric’ is the word to use. (51.269143, -0.211640)
Column capitals from Blachernae Church, Boğdan Sarayı, the Monastery of St John of Studion and the Basilica of St John, Selçuk.
Column capital from the Church of Blachernae.
That wooden, barrel-vaulted ceiling is probably the church's most tasteful feature
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