Franco-British Exchange, Female Agency, and Structural Innovation in Edwardian Church Architecture: Our Lady of Grace, Charlton

Completed in 1906, the Catholic church of Our Lady of Grace in Charlton, Greenwich, constitutes a rare and overlooked example of French-influenced ecclesiastical architecture in Edwardian England. Designed by the Bordeaux architect Eugène Gervais and associated with the establishment of French Catholic monastic communities in England, the church departs markedly from prevailing English Gothic Revival models through its eclectic reinterpretation of Romanesque, Classical, Gothic, and Moorish forms. Drawing on archival research, architectural survey, and constructional analysis, this article reconstructs the building’s design history, identifies its forgotten female patrons, and situates the church within broader French and British architectural developments in the early twentieth century. This study also demonstrates that Our Lady of Grace represents one of the earliest known uses of reinforced concrete in an English church, revealing the experimental transmission of emerging French construction technologies into Britain at a formative moment in the development of modern architecture. By recovering the architectural, technological, and cultural significance of this atypical monument, this article challenges conventional narratives of Edwardian ecclesiastical architecture and highlights the diversity of architectural experimentation beyond the dominant Gothic Revival tradition.