Liturgical Movement

Liturgical Movement was a movement of scholarship for the reform of worship. It began in the Catholic Church and spread to many other Christian churches including the Anglican Communion, Lutheran and some other Protestant churches. The movement was influential in church design in France, Belgium Germany, Switzerland and the UK - where it was introduced in the 1950s. The New Churches Research Group was founded in 1957 in the UK to promote "a modern idiom appropriate to the ideas of the Liturgical Movement" The Second Vatican Council saw the acceptance of many of the movement's ideas, resulting in a radical rethinking of design, expressing 'noble simplicity rather than sumptuous display' Some of the churches built during this period are now listed by Historic England in recognition of their outstanding modernist architecture and art and include Our Lady of Fatima, Harlow (Grade II, 1958), St Mary Dunstable (Grade I, 1964) and St Margaret's Church of Twickenham (Grade III, 1969) The Church of St Margaret is now listed as a Grade II listed building in the City of London.