All Souls Church is an evangelical Anglican church situated at the north end of Regent Street.
It was designed in regency style by John Nash and consecrated in 1824. It was designed to provide a vista up Regent Street where the road needed to curve to the left to line up with Portland Place.
By 1820, the construction of both Regent Street and Langham Place were well advanced. Nash already had a clear sense of how the new church should stand: "facing the entrance to Langham Place and central to Chandos Street the Portico advancing westward from the East side of the New Street so that it be a central Object from Oxford Street along the New Street". The name All Souls is said to have been chosen in part because it offered a measure of ‘gratuitous accommodation’ for the whole parish, the poor included. "From the nature of the bend of the Street", Nash further wrote, "the portico and Spire will together form an object terminating the vista from the Circus in Oxford Street – the Spire (I submit) as the most beautiful of forms is most peculiarly appropriate to a Church – the Portico I have made circular as taking up less of the passage of the Street at the same time that it is most consonant to the shape of the Spire".
Consecration took place on 25 November 1824. The Rev. Dr John Hume Spry, the first-appointed rector for the district, preached on the day of opening.
On 8 December 1940 a land mine blew out all the windows and caused the main ceiling to collapse. In 1944 much of the spire was taken down for safety. Much exterior was replaced in new Bath stone and some of the main roof beams were strengthened. The internal restoration was largely a reinstatement. The organ which had escaped serious damage was rebuilt.
As it is very near BBC Broadcasting House, the BBC often broadcasts from the church.
