The Hadwen Family of Lancashire

St Marylebone Parish Church is an Anglican church on the Marylebone Road in London. It was built to the designs of Thomas Hardwick in 1813-17. The present site is the third used by the parish for its church. The first was further south, near Oxford Street. The church there was demolished in 1400 and a new one erected further north. This was completely rebuilt in 1740-42, and converted into a chapel-of-ease when Hardwick's church was constructed. The Marylebone area takes its name from the church.

The first church for the parish was built in the vicinity of the present Marble Arch c.1200, and dedicated to St John the Evangelist.

In 1400 the Bishop of London gave the parishioners permission to demolish the church of St John and build a new one in a more convenient position, near a recently completed chapel, which could be used until the new church was completed. The bishop stipulated that the old churchyard should be preserved, but also gave permission to enclose a new burial ground at the new site, The church was dedicated to the Virgin Mary. It was closer to the village, at the north end of Marylebone High Street. Having fallen into a state of decay, and was demolished in 1740.

It was in this church Francis Bacon was married in 1606, and its interior was portrayed by William Hogarth in the marriage scene from his famous series "A Rake's Progress" (1735). By 1722, its congregation was so large it needed a chapel of ease in the form of the Marybone Chapel.

A new, small church built on the same site opened in April 1742. It was an oblong brick building with a small bell tower at the west end. The interior had galleries on three sides. Some monuments from the previous church were preserved in the new building. In 1818 it became a chapel-of-ease to the new parish church which superseded it . It was demolished in 1949, and its site, at the northern end of Marylebone High Street is now a public garden.

Charles Wesley lived and worked in the area and sent for the church's rector John Harley and told him "Sir, whatever the world may say of me, I have lived, and I die, a member of the Church of England. I pray you to bury me in your churchyard." On his death, his body was carried to the church by eight clergymen of the Church of England and a memorial stone to him stands in the gardens in High Street, close to his burial spot. One of his sons, Samuel, was later organist of the present church.

It was also in this building that Lord Byron was baptised in 1788, Nelson's daughter Horatia was baptised (Nelson was a worshipper here), and Richard Brinsley Sheridan was married to Elizabeth Ann Linley. This is also the church in which the diplomat Sir William Hamilton married Emma Hart (Amy Lyon), later the lover of Admiral Horatio Nelson. The architect James Gibbs was buried there in 1751. The crypt was the burial place of members of the Bentinck family, including William Henry Cavendish Bentinck, the third Duke of Portland (died 1801).

Construction of a new church was first considered in 1770, with plans prepared by Sir William Chambers and leadership given by the 3rd and 4th Dukes of Portland (owners of much of the area, by now a wealthy residential area to the west of London that had outgrown the previous church), but the scheme was abandoned and the land donated for it in Paddington Street purchased for a burial ground.

In 1810-11 a site was secured to build a chapel-of-ease on the south side of the new road near Nottingham Place facing Regent's Park. Plans were drawn up by Chambers's pupil Thomas Hardwick and the foundation stone was laid on 5 July 1813. When construction was almost complete, it was decided that this new building should serve as the parish church, and so alterations were made to the design. On the north front, towards the new road, a Corinthian portico with eight columns (six columns wide, and two deep at the sides), based on that of the Pantheon in Rome, replaced the intended four-column Ionic portico surmounted by a group of figures. A steeple was built, instead of a planned cupola. No changes were made to the design of the interior, but plans to build houses on part of the site were abandoned.