Last weekend St Peter's Church celebrated the reopening of its Lady Chapel following a painstaking restoration this summer, 100 years after its decoration as a WW1 War Memorial.

St Peter's in Mount Park Road is open daily but lays off the beaten track of the town's Broadway. Built in 1893 and previously described as 'the finest public building in Ealing', the church is a fusion of Gothic Revival and Arts & Crafts architecture.

The jewel in the crown is its Lady Chapel which was built in 1913, but decorated and rededicated in 1928 as a focus for the many losses suffered by the parish in the First World War.

This history has made the chapel an important focus for this part of Ealing, carrying the hopes of new parishioners, and sharing their later sorrow, loss, and need for remembrance. Accordingly, only the finest materials and most skilled artists were employed in creating this very special place.

The chapel's beautiful interior includes highly accomplished wall paintings depicting angels; hence the name of an Angels in Ealing community project (see below). Water-damage has necessitated urgent fundraising to restore and conserve them. It also prompted research into the artists represented in the chapel; not only the paintings but also the equally fine stained-glass windows, woodcarvings and painted ceiling.

What the research revealed is an artistic circle living and working in the Ealing area. The recovery of these local artists and designers and their work throws fascinating light on Ealing between 1890 and 1930.

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Among the artists are Henry Charles Brewer, part of a notable dynasty of painters and illustrators who lived in Acton; and George Fellowes Prynne – 'the lost Pre-Raphaelite' – one of the country's foremost ecclesiastical designers, whose house and studio were at 1 Woodville Road.

The church also boasts significant work by the architectural designer Leonard Shuffrey, who created Ealing's war memorial and his family house in Edgehill Road, and whose craftsmanship was viewed as second only to that of William Morris.

After The Lady Chapel Reopening a spokesperson for St Paul's Church said: "It was wonderful to welcome so many people to our Open Morning and talks, and to the Blessing Ceremony at our Sunday service. We were particularly pleased to see descendants of the people who are memorialised in the Chapel, and the artists who decorated it.