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Our three live projects include Stage 3 of the Cloister Paintings Restoration; The Loret Organ Restoration Project and our Chapel Lighting & AV project. You can read about these and other completed projects below.
We completed a condition survey of all 130m of our cloister wall paintings and restored the nativity panel in the summer of 2023. The two double height crucifixion panels were restored in the summer of 2025 as Stage 2.
There are six stages in total and our focus for Stage 3 will be announced very soon. You can read all about this project, including photos of all the wall paintings, and a button for donations, using the link below.
When reviewing the cost of repairs needed to bring our organ back to life, we discovered its extraordinary provenance. Everyone had assumed it was original to the chapel but it turns out that it was smuggled out of Paris in 1904 and reassembled at the back of our chapel in Hammersmith in the same year. It was made by Hippolyte Loret and is one of the rarest organs in the whole of Europe. You can read more about this fascinating story and an update on the project, using the link below.
Much of the existing lighting in our chapel does not work and this hinders use of the chapel at times. While not strictly restoration, this project includes removing all the current fluorescent strip lighting and broken theatre lighting from the chapel and replacing it with a series of pendant lights copying those designed by the chapel's architect elsewhere. The chapel architect John Francis Bentley designed Westminster Cathedral and also St Mary's Cadogan Street. The lights at Cadogan Street are very similar to those in the cathedral, but just at a smaller scale. This is what is to be replicated in our chapel.
The new lighting scheme will allow the chapel to be lit in a variety of different digital settings. There is also a plan to include a new sound system and a screen which will be fixed to the rear of the main arch. This means that it will be out of sight at all times unless in use. It will lower automatically when needed at highlight settings to retain view of the stained glass window and altar.
These plans have received unanimous consent from the Historic Churches Committee. An update on the timing of this project will follow shortly.
Our cloister garden was restored in the summer of 2023. A circular prayer space with new seating was added in the centre, and the original perimeter flower bed was recreated. New planting in the centre includes lavender bushes and two olive trees.
Significant landscaping improvements at the 'front' of the school (as accessed from Bute Gardens) were completed in 2023. Much more than shown here, the new landscaping includes planting all along the western edge of the netball courts, along the entire east frontage of the Calder building, in the four corners of our front lawn and in the centre of the site with new benches nestled within planting that will grow up around them.
As a second stage to our restoration of the cloister garden, the statue of Jesus in the centre was taken away and restored in 2024. This statue has even greater significance to the school now we understand that it came from one of the Society's convents in France, in Lille. It was shipped to England to save it when they were forced to leave France in the early 1900s as the country moved to secularisation.
The crucifix originally donated to the school over 100 years ago by the old girls' Hammersmith Association was decaying and hidden behind what had become a very substantial tree.
The entire crucifix was taken out of the ground and both the original wooden cross and the metal statue were restored in 2024. Much of the original paint on the statue was lost but it was still possible to test the paint that remained, and to recreate the statue in its original colours.
A new more prominent location for the crucifix was agreed and it was reinstalled in August 2024.
