Savoy Chapel

[JaneyCanuck]

The sister of an ancestor of mine was married in 1875 in the chapel. I have mislaid the marriage certificate, but I believe it said Chapel Royal of the Savoy.

The marriage was registered in St Giles, which is where the bride was living in 1871, on Broad Street, which I think is now High Holborn, between Drury Lane and Endell St. So she lived several blocks from the Chapel. She was a very young actress at the Adelphi Theatre in 1871, the theatre being just a couple of blocks from the chapel, both on the Strand.

The groom, also quite young, was of the idle rich class, having inherited money; he was in the military when they married, and then settled down to breed horses and lose his inheritance on them by the early 1880s, from what I can tell. He was 19, and she said she was 19, although she was actually nearly 21.

A bit of info about it:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savoy_Chapel
http://www.oldandsold.com/articles05/london15.shtml
http://www.rootschat.com/links/0st4/

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/charlesmoore/9639886/A-small-royal-saga-and-a-blow-to-spirituality.html
The Savoy Chapel is the Duchy’s only working church. But it is not a royal “peculiar”, like Westminster Abbey or St George’s, Windsor, because it is not, exactly, royal. It is all alone.

What I'm wondering whether anyone is familiar with the chapel and with how it was used around that time.
Was it available to anyone who wanted to marry there?
Might they have sought it out because of its reputation for being free and easy, since they were underage?
Would one have needed to be "connected" to marry there?
Was it maybe the sort-of parish church for theatre people?

I'm just curious why they would not have married at St Giles in the Fields, say -- in just a more regular sort of church.

My curiosity is relatively idle, but it relates to my inability to determine the social class of the bride's family. I wondered whether the place where they married might tell me anything about that. Maybe this choice wasn't at all unusual for the marriage. I'm in Canada, so I only know what I find on line, which isn't much!

Anyhow, some history there about the chapel, if anyone has an interest in that sort of thing. And if anyone is familiar with it, I'd love to hear!

[jennifer c]

Have you found her in 1861, do you want to give further deatils of her?

Jennifer

[Tittensor ONS]

Hi Janey, I don't know much about who would have used the chapel etc, but the entry in the National Index of Parish Registers reads:

Precinct of Savoy (Queen's Chapel of the Savoy) St John the Baptist later St Mary [City of Westminster: Strand Union] (transferred to London, 1889).
Original registers 1680+ with incumbent (the vicar)
Copies (extracts) CMB1680-1827 (College of Arms)

Regards,

Paul

Tittensor One-Name Studies homepage: www.tittensor.com

[EileenBlacklock]

I have been into the chapel a number of times and used to attend a carol service there for a few years with my company. From what I can remember, anyone can book it for any service. It is a really lovely intimate place with a lovely choir.

I am pretty sure this is where Mark Thatcher got married so it would seem if you wanted somewhere a  bit special for a wedding but didn't exactly qualify for Westminster Abbey or even if you just wanted a small affair, this was the place to go.

[JaneyCanuck]

Thanks guys!

That was the impression I had, Eileen, that this might have been a slightly "grander" option than the parish church, and that's why I wondered whether there was a class factor. This was 1875 of course so I think there would have been an incumbent in charge of officiating at weddings and other ceremonies.

The witnesses at the wedding didn't seem to be related to either spouse at all (the bride had older brothers, both labourers, one probably in India and the other probably in Lancashire, I figured out ages after finding this marriage, and the groom had a wealthy remarried mother but only younger siblings). They were possibly a married couple who were friends; I was never able to identify them and I forget their names now ... I have to figure out where I put all those $$$ worth of certificates before I learned how to scan things. So I did also wonder whether it might have been a bit of a Gretna Green kind of option for young elopers.

It was this marriage that was my first clue that my gr-grparent even had family, leaving me then to figure out who/what the heck they were and what their real name was, because it wasn't the one the bride used when she married.

I'm a little at sea with that info Paul - why copies would be with the College of Arms ...

Oops, Jennifer, sorry, I missed your message there. Yes, it took a long time, but I did figure out who the family were and I have them in 1851 and 1861, and this couple in 1881 ... after which they had one more child and the bride disappeared; the groom went bankrupt in 1883, travelled to Belgium with the three children in 1885 and showed up in 1891 with a faked name of his own and a spiffy new wife allegedly born in Canada (where there is no marriage that I've ever found), then the son went off to the Anglo-Boer War and I found him in the SA archives enquiring after his father's whereabouts in 1907 and found (too late) his medals being auctioned, and finally, a couple of years ago, I found a name in an online tree that proved my theories about the groom and the son correct: the bride's grx2 grandchild, born in SA, now in the US ... who had a fancified family story to tell about her grx2 grfather, the groom in this tale, but had never heard of the bride. Sigh.

The bride's father is described as a mining share dealer in censuses and in the late 1850s had a draft mining lease with a partner, in Cornwall, but I suspect the collapse of tin mining in Cornwall meant that never went ahead; he too went bankrupt in the late 1860s and then remarried while the bride's mother was still living, but then I've never found a marriage for the parents anyhow. The parents had multiple children whom they baptised somewhat randomly, the younger ones in a batch, one of the older ones a few years later, another of the older ones being baptised only in comtemplation of death after 1871. I suspect that at least the three youngest, my gr-grparent and the bride in this tale (and another who died in infancy) weren't really children of the named father ... and that's why I'm looking for anything that might prove or disprove the tale my gr-grparent told about who their "real" father was.

[dawnsh]

The original surviving registers have been deposited at the City of Westminster Archives, see page 7 here

http://www.westminster.gov.uk/workspace/assets/publications/Info-Sheet-01-Anglican-Regs-1271422893.pdf

The archives might be able to give you some background info about the chapel if you ask them.

Dawn

[JaneyCanuck]

Thank you -- true that the horse's mouth is the best source, and I should probably just query the Chapel itself. I now see:

http://www.duchyoflancaster.co.uk/duties-of-the-duchy/the-queens-chapel-of-the-savoy/

with an email address for the present chaplain.

[avm228]

One of my colleagues married there, and I occasionally tease her about its reputation for clandestine marriages (albeit in the 18th century). I think its accessibility to/from the river, as well as its "peculiar" status, made surreptition possible.

However I am sure that by 1875 it was highly respectable Let us know what you learn from the horse's mouth!