Lopes Chapel

Client:

With BPN Architects

Concept Design

[2025]

A landscape concept for a hotel development in Deritend, Birmingham. Featuring a fine Roman campanile, in a Basilican-Lombardic style with good Arts and Crafts brickwork, the Chapel was built privately as the chapel of a hostel for working boys by Father John Lopes. He was an Anglo-Catholic clergyman who in 1915, before the building was finished, joined the Church of Rome. The small basilican church was never used for services. Indeed, it has always served secular purposes. It was used as a hostel to accommodate Irish girls working in the munitions industry during WW1 and later as warehouse for W H Rhodes China and Glass and mot recently as a nightclub. In relation to the Lombardic style, by the second half of the 19th century an Italian quarter began to develop around the Fazeley Street area in Digbeth where rented accommodation was of poor quality but cheap. ThisBirmingham district was also nicknamed Little Italy. “In Bordesley Street, Bartholomew Street and New Canal Street the 1891Census lists 53 people either born in Italy or of Italian parentage. 19 were organ grinders (there was also a harpist and a violinist) and 12 were icecream vendors” . [https://billdargue.jimdofree.com/]

A pre-industrial engraving of Deritend shows the mature trees lining the high street, whilst sheet metal, smiths and stamping companies are evident around the location of the chapel.

The Landscape concept ’Little Italy’ aimed to capture the history of the site, whilst providing a new mini-square on the High Street to reflect the vibrancy of the area today. Ideas were referenced from my earlier work in the Digbeth Masterplan.