The Good Fortune of Warwick Street Parish

The survival of Warwick Street Parish as a Catholic church open to the public was the purest good fortune. When the Portuguese Embassy moved to Mayfair in 1747, the Catholic Bavarian Minister, Joseph Franz Xavier Graf von Haslang, took over both houses (numbers 23 and 24 Golden Square and so the chapel left behind by the Portuguese continued to be available for public worship under the Bavarian Ambassador. The church became known as the Bavarian Chapel by which name it was known well into the 19th century even after it was officially regarded as a church rather than a chapel from 1790 onwards.