Church of St Thomas the Apostle

Hanwell was a small village which began to expand – slowly at first – with the arrival of the Great Western Railway in the 1850s. Much of the new residential development was around where the Uxbridge Road crossed the parish of St Mary and then to the south of it. The resulting increase in souls living in the area thus necessitated the creation of a new parish, that of St Mellitus and formed in 1908. It is situated on the corner of Uxbridge Road and Church Road. The parish lies between the GWR railway and Elthorne Park. In 1906 a new tram line came into service. Running along the Boston Road from Hanwell to Brentford it encouraged more people to take up residence in this more southern part…

The architect was Sir Edward Brantwood Maufe. The building is on a north east axis with a tall square north-east bell tower with a green copper cap sitting astride the northern wall. The exterior of the building is executed in simple lines and is constructed of brown-silver-grey engineering bricks; reputed to have come from Tondu in Wales. A carving of the Calvary by Eric Gill is on the north-east face and incorporates the east window. With the aid of a platform built from scaffolding, Gill was able to carve this in situ from a single block of limestone. There is a carved keystone in the arch of the north east entrance which is the work of Vernon Hill. The interior, in contrast to the…

The parish is within the Willesden Episcopal Area of the Church of England's Diocese of London. From 1995 to 2011, as a traditionalist Anglo-Catholic church that rejected the ordination of women as priests, the parish received alternative episcopal oversight from the Bishop of Fulham. In 2011, it rescinded the resolutions, and now receives episcopal oversight from the local area bishop and welcomes women priests.