Information

Patron: Dulwich Estate

Population (2001 census): 6,094
Urban Priority Area: Yes

Deanery: Dulwich

Archdeaconry: Southwark

Episcopal Area: Woolwich

Diocesan Record Office: London Metropolitan Archives

Details of Church

Built: 1867 - 75, consecrated: 1868
Architect: Banks & Barry
Listing: grade 2

In 1868, only a handful of people lived in the leafy part of Surrey now known as Dulwich, on a few dairy farms and in modern gracious villas.

St Stephen's, in the woods on College Road, a beautiful neo-gothic church, was commissioned from the famous Victorian architect, Sir Charles Barry, to seat a congregation of seven hundred. The church was built by private subscription without endowments, and with the extra gift of a fresco by Sir Edward Poynter.

Despite enormous damage sustained during the blitz, St Stephen's church managed to survive, and in the early 1990s was reordered and refurbished to provide a worship space more suited for the times, but in keeping with the architecture of the building.

In 1999 a new church hall was built to replace that built as a "temporary" structure in 1947. St Stephen's now has a church and hall well suited as a base for its outreach and other activities along with a new resource for the local community.