Rectory Grove and St Paul’s Church, the Old Town’s quiet corner

Rectory Grove, SW4, is where Clapham started. St Paul’s Church is on it, a short walk from the Old Town and the Pavement, and the Sunday service is at 10am. The building dates from 1815, but the site goes back much further.

The church on the old church’s site

Be careful with the word oldest. The current St Paul’s was completed in 1815, but there has been a church on this spot since the 12th century. The original parish church was St Mary’s, later renamed Trinity Church. It was taken down under an act of Parliament in 1774, and Holy Trinity was built on Clapham Common in 1775. St Paul’s went up on the old site as a chapel of ease to Holy Trinity, according to Wikipedia.

The architect Christopher Edmonds kept the design simple and cheap: the cost was £5,000, says the Ideal Homes history from the University of Greenwich. It is classical, in stock brick with a fairly low-pitched slate roof. Look at the west end for the three-bay pediment and the plaque reading “1815 ST PAULS CHURCH”.

Sir Arthur Blomfield extended the east end in 1875 with a transept, a chancel and a lower half-octagonal apse, which makes the church cruciform. The pipe organ dates from 1886, built by Forster and Andrews. The worst wartime bomb damage came on the night of 10 May 1941.

The old village around it

The Clapham Society notes that the original village of Clapham stood around the present St Paul’s, and that in the 18th century it began to spread along Old Town towards the Common. The old Rectory, built around 1680 next to the parish school on Rectory Grove, gave the street its name. John Venn, founder of the Church Missionary Society and a member of the Clapham Sect, lived there until 1813. The house was demolished in 1886, according to the Ideal Homes archive.

Visiting

• Sunday: the main service is at 10am.
• Wednesday: Christian Meditation runs at 10am for an hour.
• Open for prayer: the church is open for public worship and private prayer, but check before you go for visiting times.
• Getting there: Wandsworth Road is the nearest Overground station and Clapham Common the nearest Tube, on the Northern line.

Details come from the church’s A Church Near You page.

A drink or a roast nearby

The Pig’s Head, 87 Rectory Grove, is the closest pub to the church. It took over the former Rectory pub and opened in November 2021, from the team behind The Pig & Butcher in Islington and The Princess of Shoreditch. It bills itself as a farm-to-fork pub, with delft-style tiles along the bar wall. CAMRA lists it as an independent with real ale, a vaulted skylight and a Monday quiz. Roast Dinners in London paid £27.50 for a roast in 2026 and called it one of the better roast dinners in Clapham; the vegetarian and vegan roasts were £23.50. Opening hours vary by listing, so check before you set off.

Trinity, 4 The Polygon, is Adam Byatt’s Michelin-starred neighbourhood restaurant. OpenTable puts the price band at £41 and over, and it takes bookings. Harden’s describes Trinity Upstairs as the cheaper, more casual way to eat there, overlooking the Common.

Sources: CAMRA, Roast Dinners in London, OpenTable.