In these busy times, there is great value in giving ourselves permission to be still and look around us, to reflect and to engage only in the wealth of colour, soft light and sense of history that the chapel brings. Increasingly, research tells us that practices such as mindfulness and meditation help ease anxiety, depression and social isolation. We offer the chapel to you as just such a space. Somewhere you can step out of the concerns of city life and feel you are in another world. A place to stop and wonder, but most definitely to stop.
There is no charge for our open days and you do not need to book. Please come as often as you would like. We value our community and love greeting familiar faces as well as new visitors. The chapel is wheelchair accessible.
As well as looking after the day-to-day care of this treasured space, the Fitzrovia Chapel team greets visitors, recounts its stories, cherishes its history, passes on the wonder. Whether you are seeking peace and calm on our open days, enquiring about getting married, studying our unique architecture or holding a fashion show or shoot, we can help guide you to the right place. And if you’d like to volunteer, let us know your skills and how you’d like to share them with the chapel.
Madeleine comes to the chapel with a professional history of high-level communications and customer experience roles across the commercial, not-for-profit and government sectors. Working with the board and our team of volunteers and staff, she's responsible for making sure the chapel remains a place of inspiration for everyone in the local community and beyond.
Contact: Madeleine at madeleine@fitzroviachapel.org
John is an independent management consultant who has called Fitzrovia home for more than 20 years. He first visited the chapel in 2005 while recuperating at the hospital shortly before it closed, and so was delighted to accept the invitation to become Treasurer of the beautifully restored chapel as it reopened to the public in March 2016, allowing him to help shape the chapel’s growing role in the community and the arts. In addition to overseeing the development of the chapel’s finance function and reporting, and his wider board responsibilities, John chaired the finance committee which meets quarterly in preparation for the board meetings. John now splits his time between Fitzrovia and El Gòtic in Barcelona, loving both dearly. He has now stepped down from the board and is the finance lead for the chapel.
As Culture and Community Manager, Freya is responsible for programming projects, partnerships and events honouring the chapel’s history as a place of solace, nurturing and reflection for everyone in the Middlesex Hospital. She remembers her first visit to the chapel in 2016 and enjoys watching the astonished faces of others encountering its beauty for the first time. Freya joined the team full time in January 2023. Prior to her current role, she managed wedding and event bookings and curated two exhibitions: The Terry Higgins Memorial Quilt and In Uniform: Stories of Nurses and their Clothing.
Since 2019, Martha has worked in several different roles in the chapel, never tiring of its astounding beauty and rich history. As the Wedding and Commercial Manager, she enjoys giving everyone who walks through the door the best possible experience at the chapel. Her favourite part of the job is meeting all the wonderful Fitzrovia Chapel wedding couples and making sure they have a unique, beautiful and carefully considered wedding ceremony.
Alongside her work at the chapel, she is also a freelance florist and gardener who grows seasonal flowers in her back garden in East London.
Natalie is the Weddings and Events Duty Manager at The Fitzrovia Chapel, where she delights in showcasing the venue’s unique charm. With broad experience in event planning for fashion, hospitality, the arts, and cultural spaces as well as hundreds of weddings and private celebrations, she brings a calm, detail-focused approach to every occasion. Inspired by the chapel’s beauty and history, and the foundation’s dedication to the arts and local community, Natalie ensures each event is thoughtfully delivered.
Carla is a charity lawyer based in south London. Before she entered the world of law, Carla studied music and English literature in Glasgow and worked for a time in arts fundraising. Carla is particularly attracted to the chapel’s history as a space for contemplation and reflection, and she feels privileged to be able to contribute to the continuance of this much-loved treasure.
Jenny Pistella is a Heritage Learning specialist, working in public engagement and teaching museums, libraries and archives studies at Further and Higher Education. She is passionate about making museums, galleries and heritage sites relevant to people today. She has always loved the area around Fitzrovia and the chapel and it’s unique heritage and how it reflects the social history of the area. Jenny has over 15 years’ experience working in cultural organisations such as Historic Royal Palaces, the V&A, the UCL Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology among others. She is currently the Course Leader for Apprenticeships at Westminster Adult Education Service.
Samar F. Zia is a visual artist and art writer, originally from Pakistan. Through her art practice, she endeavours to activate the imagination of her audience, provoke thought and bring communities closer together. Representation for marginalised people is a great concern for her and the reason for being a member of the Alumni Of Colour Association (AoCA) of the University of the Arts London (UAL). She also freelances as an independent curator and art tutor.
As a former resident of Fitzrovia, the chapel is meaningful to her in more ways than one. Besides finding the interior architecture of the chapel absolutely awe-inspiring, she feels privileged to have held her first solo exhibition in London at the Fitzrovia Chapel in 2017.
David Woodhouse is a writer and local resident interested in the history of the chapel and the surrounding area. His publishes literary criticism on Lord Byron (who was born on Holles Street and baptised at St Marylebone) and William Hazlitt (who died on Frith Street and is buried in St Anne’s Churchyard). With John Leigh, David was co-author of Football Lexicon and the Mark My Words column in the Independent on Sunday. His latest monograph, Who Only Cricket Know, was launched at an event in the chapel and has won the four major Cricket Book of the Year awards. David is Treasurer of the Byron Society. His previous not-for-profit roles included a four-year term on the Audit Committee of UK Anti-Doping.
Nicholas Cambridge is a retired general practitioner and medical historian. He qualified from The Middlesex Hospital and is enthusiastic about the history of the Fitzrovia Chapel, The Middlesex Hospital and the Fitzrovia neighbourhood. Following his retirement in 2009 he launched the Samuel Johnson Tercentenary by dressing up as David Garrick and walked 167 miles from Lichfield to London with his friend Professor Peter Martin, dressed as Samuel Johnson. In 2019 he chaired a committee which organised a successful symposium, gala dinner and tours of Fitzrovia for past Middlesex staff. Nicholas is extremely interested in Charles Dickens and published a book entitled ‘Bleak Health: The medical history of Charles Dickens and his family’ in 2022.
Steve McKechnie is a director at multidisciplinary design firm Arup, responsible for a team of over 200 structural engineers. He has a particular fondness for existing buildings and masonry design. His team is designing the prestressed stone masonry structures that are needed to complete the Basilica of La Sagrada Familia in Barcelona. Steve has worked in the Fitzrovia area for over 40 years and is keen to contribute to the maintenance and preservation of the Fitzrovia Chapel because it is an astonishing, glittering, spiritual example of the way that building work can speak to, and even heal, the souls of the countless people who have visited over the years.
