French Influences, Female Agency, and Structural Innovation in Edwardian Architecture: Our Lady of Grace, Charlton

The Catholic church of Our Lady of Grace is a prominent landmark in Charlton, Greenwich (Greater London) and the centre of a vibrant local community. Unusually for a London church, it was commissioned by French Catholic nuns and designed by Eugene Gervais, a renowned French architect. Completed in 1906, the building presents an inventive form with distinctively French characteristics and constitutes a rare example of High Beaux-Arts Romanesque Revival architecture in England. It is also one of the earliest churches in the country to make systematic use of reinforced concrete, at a time when this French technology was still at an experimental stage. This article offers the first scholarly study of the church. Drawing on original archival research and a new survey, it reconstructs the building’s design history, examines its innovative structural system, and situates it within the wider development of early twentieth-century church architecture in both England and France. By revealing this atypical monument, this study renews our understanding of the diversity of Edwardian ecclesiastical architecture in London and its outskirts.