Demolition of the Sardinian Chapel, Kingsway, No. 1

Sir Muirhead Bone was a Scottish printmaker and watercolor artist noted for his depictions of architectural and industrial subjects, city views, landscapes, and his work as a war artist during both the First and Second World Wars. Bone moved from Glasgow, where he was born, to London on 1901-02. In this London street scene, he represented the Sardinian Embassy Chapel (building at center; note how its walls are being shored up by long supports) just before it was demolished to make way for the wide thoroughfare of Kingsway. Along the street, Bone included horse-drawn wagons at the left and center of the image; pedestrians are indicated along the sidewalk extending from the center of the image to the right foreground. The Sardinian Embassy Chapel was an important Roman Catholic church attached to the Embassy of the Kingdom of Sardinia; it was located in the congested Lincoln's Inn area of London. In the early twentieth century, to make way for constructing the much wider north-south route known as Kingsway, the maze of tiny streets west of Lincoln's Inn Fields and this church (among many buildings) had to be demolished. On 6th July, 1909, the last Mass was celebrated in the old Chapel of the Royal Sardinian Embassy.