Street's first London Church was initiated by the three Monk sisters in the memory of their father Bishop Henry Monk (Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol, and a Canon at Westminster). Begun 1859 and opened in 1861, it was set in an area of considerable poverty and social distress in Thorndike Street, Pimlico. It was designed with a remarkably rich, patterned interior with original glass and narrative programmes in stone. A Mural over the Chancel Arch is by G.F.Watts. The day of our visit a cheerful ensemble of musicians was rehearsing for a Harvest Festival and Knees-up the next day.

Charles Lock Eastlake (A History of the Gothic Revival) wrote in 1872 of the church,

"Here the whole character of the building, whether we regard its plan, its distinctive features, its external or internal decoration is eminently un-English. Even the materials used in its construction and the mode by which it is lighted were novelties. The detached tower with its picturesquely modelled spire, its belfry stage rich in ornamental brick-work and marble bosses, the semicircular apse and quasi-transepts, the plate tracery, the dormers inserted in the clerestory, the quaint treatment of the nave arcade, the bold vigour of the carving, the chromatic decoration of the roof—all bear evidence of a thirst for change which Mr. Street could satisfy without danger, but which betrayed many of his contemporaries into intemperance."