Trinity, Church of Holy 15 Warwick Gardens, Wesleyan Chapel 27 Westbourne Grove Chapel (Baptist) 48 Workhouse Chapel 61 ESSAYS. A Comparative Denominational View 72 Church Building 74 Church Music 77 Church and Population 79 St. Mary Abbotts Church 81 The Parochial System 82 Notes 64 ILLUSTRATIONS. Views of the following Churches will be found in their appropriate places:—St. Mary Abbotts, Kensington; New Church (exterior, interior, Organ); Old Church (exterior); St. Barnabas, Kensington; St. Peter’s, Onslow Gardens (exterior and interior); St. Jude’s (exterior and interior); St. Paul’s, Onslow Square; Onslow Chapel; St. Mark’s, Notting Hill; St. Mary, Bolton’s; Warwick Gardens Wesleyan Chapel; Tabernacle, Notting Hill; St. Luke’s, South Kensington. PREFACE. PARTICULAR church chronicles are scarcely found among the thousands of volumes which annually issue from the press, although there are no chronicles that have in them more of what is really of public import. In regard to Metropolitan churches, nothing of the kind we here present to our readers has yet been attempted. Detached notices of a church here and there will sometimes be found in our periodicals or newspapers; but no effort has yet been made to supply a collective and relative view of all particular church history and operations in given districts in a permanent and useful form. Yet, these churches have now become so numerous and influential, and are yearly increasing to such a degree, unparalleled in any former age, that it would seem they demand distinct and special recognition and record, and surely are worthy to be preserved in their characteristics as among the ingredients which must enter into the general church history of our times. It may thus happen that we are supplying a real desideratum in Christian literature. The present issue may either be taken as an entire work in itself, or as the first of a series which will appear at intervals, as often and as regularly as circumstances may determine. It contains accounts, longer or shorter as each case admitted, _historical_, _ecclesiastical_, _architectural_, _clerical_, religious, and social of over fifty churches—established and non-conforming—in the populous parish of Kensington. This parish extends from the Brompton Road, the Boltons and Earl’s Court southward, where it joins the parishes of Chelsea and Fulham, to Upper Westbourne Park and Kensal, beyond Notting Hill, north, where it abuts upon Paddington, and from Hyde Park and Bayswater, east, to Shepherd’s Bush and Hammersmith, west.