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THIS CHURCH MAY BE SAVED BY
WEST END EXTRA
EXCLUSIVE: Lady Sainsbury joins our campaign to save St Mark’s
AN Icelandic beauty magnate bidding to turn a historic Mayfair church into a health spa may be stopped by a religious covenant that forbids any use on the land other than worship.
Enquiries by the West End Extra have unearthed the original transfer deeds from when the Church of England obtained the land from the Grosvenor Estate in 1824 to build St Mark’s Church.
Lady Sainsbury is gathering a legal team to take on owners the London Diocese over the explicit promise that the land be “consecrated to Ecclesiastical purposes forever” – posing serious question marks over the legality of any develoment.
If planning chiefs see fit, proposals to transform the Grade I-listed church in North Audley Street into a health spa, will be given to green light next month.
Lady Sainsbury said: “We need a lawyer to look at this because it looks like the diocese is at the very least stretching the implication of the original covenant. What we really want is Grosvenor to come out and enforce it.”
While the diocese acknowledges a covenant exists, claiming it has been aware of it since ?2005, it claims it will not be broken because any money received from the development will be used for ecclesiastical purposes.
But the deeds, obtained by West End ward councillor Ian Wilder and seen by the West End Extra, could prove to be the Achilles’ heel of the Diocese and developer George Hamer, because even if planning permission is granted, any development would appear to be a direct breach.
Councillor Wilder said: “This is law. It should mean something in England and we will go all the way to the Attorney General if that is what it takes.
“If they build a beauty spa in this church they will be breaking the covenant and it is as simple as that. It shows the church in a very damning light. They are going to break a promise they made 175 years ago, but so far everyone has been very shortsighted, and wrongly believed that the church could never do anything this bad.”
A Diocese of London spokesperson said: “We have taken full legal advice and have consulted Grosvenor, the original freeholders on this matter. The proposed use of the church does not break any covenants as the rent received will be used for ecclesiastical purposes by the Diocese.”
Some campaigners have called on the Grosvenor Estate, and the Duke of Westminster personally, to enforce the covenant. But up to now, the estate has sat on the fence.
Former council planning chief, John Parmiter, who is advising the campaign, said: “This raises three important questions. Firstly, is this covenant in some way restricted? Is it enforcable and will the Grosvenor come out to defend it? Surely the church cannot be allowed to just ride roughshod over covenants.
“This is now more than a planning issue, it is a political one and a legal one.” Last month Tory peer and staunch Christian Lord Taylor of Warwick attacked the Diocese for its “shameful greed is good” mentality. He compared the Diocese, headed by the Bishop of London Richard Chartres, with Michael Douglas’s avaricious character Gordon Gekko, in the hit film Wall Street.
The congregation has been evicted and the church is now closed ahead of the crunch planning meeting scheduled for December 11. Nobody from the Grosvenor group was available to comment. |
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