The Guards Chapel


The Royal Military Chapel at Wellington Barracks usually known as The Guards Chapel was almost wholly destroyed, except for the sanctuary, by an enemy flying bomb on 18th June 1944 whilst the morning service was in progress.

There was a heavy loss of life, including almost the entire Coldstream Guards Regimental Band, resulted. A temporary Nave was added to the existing Sanctuary and services were resumed on Christmas Day 1945. Work rebuilding the Guards Chapel started in 1962 and the new Guards Chapel, which incorporates the old Sanctuary Alter, was dedicated on 26th November 1963.

The Chapel is interdenominational but the Senior Chaplain to the Household Division conducts the normal Sunday Services according to the rites of the Church of England. Other services, including Christening, Marriages, Funerals, Requiem Masses and Memorial Services, may be conducted but the appropriate Minister according to the rite of the Church concerned. The Chapel is for the use of all ranks of the Household Division, but christening, Marriages and Funerals requires the permission of the Major General. This is normally a formality in respect of serving Officers. Application should be made through the Chaplain to the Household Division.

 
Irish Guardsmen in Prayer before Battle 1916


Shortly after dawn on 15 September 1916, Fr Brown of the 1st Battalion came forward and collected half companies or groups of men as he could find them. Together they knelt on the shell-churned ground, Protestant and Catholic, bare headed, their rifles with bayonets fixed by their sides while the small seemingly insignificant figure of the priest gave them Absolution. This simple scene seemed somehow to throw into relief the squalor and the filth, the glory and the sacrifice, which was their war. (Rudyard Kipling)