St Anne’s Church
A refuge in the years of the epidemic
St Anne’s has stood in the heart of Soho since 1686. In the 1980s and 90s, as AIDS devastated the community around it, the church became a place of refuge. The Names Project AIDS Memorial Quilt – panels each made by someone who had lost a person to AIDS – was displayed in its churchyard and nave. Between 2001 and 2007 LGBT Catholic Masses were held here, one of very few London parishes to welcome gay and lesbian worshippers in a formal liturgical setting.
The essayist William Hazlitt is buried in the churchyard; Dorothy L. Sayers within the church. In a decade of funerals this was a place you could come. The church is usually open – come in.