Anglican worship in Sweden dates back to 1653, when the first English diplomats were sent by
Oliver Cromwell. They brought with them two chaplains, who conducted services at the residence of the
ambassador,
Bulstrode Whitelocke. An Anglo-French
Huguenot congregation was later formed with a French pastor, who held services in both French and English. In 1741
King Frederick I accepted their petition for the right to worship publicly, since a
Swedish church had already been established in
Wapping,
London. The church was supported by a poor box into which, until 1871, every English ship captain calling at Stockholm contributed 24
Swedish riksdaler. In 1842 the
Bishop of London,
Charles James Blomfield, whose duties included supervising the provision of Anglican services abroad, wrote to the
British ambassador in Stockholm,
Sir Thomas Cartwright, regretting the lack of Anglican worship available to British residents and visitors in the city and suggesting the appointment of a “regularly ordained clergyman” as chaplain. A decade later, the congregation began to collect funds for the construction of a church building of its own. A site was purchased on Rörstrandsgatan (later renamed Wallingatan) in the
Norrmalm district of Stockholm, and the foundation stone of St Peter and St Sigfrid's Church was laid and dedicated on 7 April 1863. In 1866 the completed church was consecrated by the
American Episcopal Bishop of Illinois, the Rt. Rev.
Henry John Whitehouse. A number of senior clergymen of the
Church of Sweden, including the
Archbishop of Uppsala,
Henrik Reuterdahl, were present. The original location being considered unsuitable, the church was moved, stone by stone, to the
Diplomatstaden area of
Östermalm, close to the
British embassy, in 1913 thanks to the efforts of
Crown Princess Margaret, a granddaughter of
Queen Victoria. The reconstruction, including the addition of a vestry and the extension of the nave, was supervised by the Swedish architect A. E. Melander and took a total of nine months. The site had previously been a garrison cemetery, and a number of old gravestones can still be seen. ==Architecture and furnishings==