A dying Edinburgh preacher's church became Europe's first Coptic church

A church cost nearly double its quoted price

A minister in London had an idea. He suggested that Reverend Gavin Carlyle, a nephew of the preacher Edward Irving, travel down from Edinburgh to preach. The congregation liked what they heard enough to build him a church. Builders won the contract in July 1862 and the trustees signed a 99-year lease that December. The architect J. M. McCulloch and builders R. and A. M. Greig quoted £3,368. By the time the doors opened in May 1863, the bill had nearly doubled to £6,000.

The result disappointed people the moment they walked in. One visitor wrote that "a feeling of disappointment it is impossible to repress ensues." The outside promised something the inside didn't deliver: one long roof, heavy paneling, bare plaster walls, a pulpit too big for the room. A gallery meant for an organ sat empty, its curtains doing nothing to hide the gap.

Architects spent the next two decades trying to fix it. J. J. Stevenson was consulted about the acoustics in the late 1860s. J. Theodore Barker charged heavily for alterations between 1876 and 1882. He cut a chancel arch into the building. He added galleries that pushed the seating from 500 up to 750. A new organ arrived. The pulpit was replaced. Even the heating was redone. It was a building that never stopped being adjusted.

A pope consecrated Europe's first Coptic church

By October 1975 there was almost no one left to hold a service for. The last Presbyterian congregation held its final meeting that month and merged with another chapel further up Allen Street. St John's stood empty, a Victorian Gothic shell with nobody inside it.

The Coptic Orthodox Church bought the building that same year. It was the first Coptic Orthodox church to open anywhere in Europe. In 1979 Pope Shenouda III of Alexandria traveled to Kensington to consecrate it himself. The church became the first outside Egypt to carry Neo-Coptic iconography on its walls. It now has narrative icons. Stained glass replaced stained glass. A large icon shows the martyrdom of Saint Mark. From the street the building looks almost exactly as it did in 1863. Services are now held in both English and Arabic, six mornings a week.

A hospital on Marloes Road gave way to houses

Half a kilometer north, another Victorian institution opened to fill a need. St Mary Abbot's Hospital opened on Marloes Road in 1871. It treated Kensington's sick for over a century. It grew. It changed hands. It changed names. It kept working. By 1992 it had closed. The building came down soon after. Kensington Green stands in its place now. It is a gated estate of houses and flats. Nothing of the hospital survives above ground.

A publican remodeled a corner named for a German duke

A pub went up nearby in 1868, built for the Child family. It was named for a nobleman who never set foot in Kensington. The Prince of Teck, Earl's Court on Earls Court Road honored Francis, Duke of Teck. He was a German aristocrat who married into British royalty. Within a decade the building had a new owner. Between 1879 and 1881, developer Alfred Savigear hired architect George Edwards. Edwards remodeled it. He added balustrading, stone wyverns and carved busts. These were the flourishes of a publican who wanted his corner to look grander than it was. The name stayed. The hands holding it did not.

A tube station burned down and was rebuilt larger

The tube station a few streets south had an even rougher start. Earl's Court tube station opened on the District Railway in 1871. It burned down in a fire four years later. A larger replacement went up across the road in 1878. In 1906 a new connection linked it to what became the Piccadilly line. By 1911 it had the first escalators ever installed in a London Underground station. Each version of the building answered to a different railway company on the same stretch of ground.

A potman was beaten to death for money he was owed

A potman named Walter Lee worked at the Drayton Arms. He walked with a limp. He was found beaten to death inside an unfinished house in Glennow-gardens, South Kensington. He had been robbed of everything he carried. Lee was known for lending small sums to the building workers around him. The money he was owed seems to have cost him his life. The house he died in was never finished. It was a shell mid-construction. Much like it, another house would later stand empty on Allen Street. That one waited for its next congregation.