The ashlar facade of the London Oratory, next to its neighbour the Victoria and Albert Museum, continues to dominate the west end of the Brompton Road shortly before it becomes the Cromwell Road, as it has since its opening in 1884. It remains Ein feste Burg (A mighty Fortress) for adherents of conventional not to say traditional Catholicism. (Luther might not have appreciated the opening words of his great hymn being applied to such a child of the Counter Reformation as the Oratory)
In 1849, Father Frederick Faber led a Congregation of Oratorian fathers from Maryvale outside Birmingham to London where they established a house and church in King William Street off the Strand. Shortly thereafter they aspired to “a good, large and stately church” of Italianate style in a better position.
