THE murals in the Lady Chapel of St Jude-on-the-Hill have, on occasion, required defending. In April 1924, a “Catholic Colonel” wrote to the Church Times to complain that “among the saints pictured on the walls and ceiling is Queen Victoria”. The letter prompted a swift response from the church’s then incumbent, the Revd Basil Bourchier, who suggested that the reference was “unworthy of any soldier. She does not appear among the saints, but simply among those great women who have rendered inestimable services to the Empire.”
Fr Bourchier’s current successor, the Revd Emily Kolltveit, presided at a choral service of thanksgiving on 1 March, celebrating the award of new funding to enable the paintings’ restoration. She described on Tuesday how she felt her “heart soar” on first seeing the church’s interior, and of her hopes to draw wider attention to its treasures.
The murals in question, designed by Walter Percival Starmer, were initially funded by a local women’s committee who wanted to commemorate the part played by women in the war. They also served to underpin the campaign for women’s suffrage. In addition to depictions of women in the Bible, including Hannah, Rachel, and the Virgin Mary, the west dome is filled with portraits of Christian women through the ages, including Josephine Butler, Edith Cavell, and Joan of Arc (Features, 31 July 2015).
St Jude’s, built to a design by Edwin Lutyens, has been on the Heritage at Risk list for more than a decade, and faced financial struggles even before its consecration in 1911 (News, 5 December 2025). Described in 1913, at a service marking the blessing of the tower and spire, as “a little bare”, with “nothing extraordinary about the decoration of the church”, it is now home to Britain’s most complete cycle of early 20th-century ecclesiastical murals, fulfilling one correspondent’s expectation that it would one day be “richly glorious and full of light and colour”. In 1923, Mr Starmer was invited to decorate the rest of the church with murals celebrating the life of Christ.
The new restoration programme has been developed in partnership with the Commonwealth Heritage Forum, and supported by a £300,000 grant, through its Queen Elizabeth II Platinum Jubilee Commonwealth Heritage Skills Training Programme.
The founder and CEO of the Forum, Philip Davies, said last week that it was “a measure of the national significance of St Jude’s, and its stunning Walter Starmer murals, that this is the only project we are funding in the UK”. He described the project as “a groundbreaking example of interfaith collaboration sharing rare skills and expertise between Commonwealth countries and cultures to help save heritage that is universally valued both here and overseas”.
The training programme, which helps young people to develop “hands-on crafts skills and the sustainable strategies needed to repair heritage sites at risk”, was launched in 2022. At St Jude’s, two young women, Iqra Asim and Maryam Baig, from Pakistan, are working as conservation interns, having worked previously on the restoration of sacred iconography in Lahore. The restoration is being led by Cliveden Conservation, with teams from the Courtauld Institute, and Polly Westlake, an expert in conservative techniques.
On Tuesday of last week, Mthr Kolltveit, who took up her post in 2023, described seeing the work get under way — many years after the need was first identified — as “really thrilling”. She recalled being “absolutely blown away” on first entering the building. “It’s incredibly decorative and very impressive, and almost my heart soared in my chest. . . It doesn’t matter how many years you spend in it, you always see something new every day. It’s so intricate and so quirky, and joyous as well.”
The building had been an “incredibly well-kept secret”, she said. “Starmer’s paintings are so extraordinary, and this is a chance we have to restore them and start to celebrate and share them with the world.”
