Church Heritage Record 605040

Nave of five bays with low passage aisles; transepts; chancel with apsidal sanctuary.

The church was built to designs by C.F.W. Denning, who also designed St. Christopher, Hampstead Road, Arno's Vale not far away. Knowle was built in 1938.

The style of the church might best be called "Contemporary Romanesque" since it is characterised by the features both of the Ravenna brick churches and of churches and public buildings being built in the modern style at the period when the housing estate of Knowle West was being laid out. Externally the major feature of the cruciform plan is the nave, which has a low-pitched roof covered with Roman tiles reminiscent of Italy. The roof ridge runs further east than the crossing and the transepts therefore intercept the parapet.

The side walls of the mave have low passage aisles pierced only by a single square window in each bay. Emphasis is thus placed on the tall round-headed windows which light the nave; these come too low to be called a clerestory. At the wall-head is a simple cornice of projecting rows of bricks. The west wall projects to the north and south, forming buttresses which are capped at roof level with small tiled gablets above which two steps lead to the gable of the wall. A large circular window is placed high in the wall and this is linked with the porch by a pair of gabletted buttresses which rise sheer from the side walls of the porch. The porch has a rectangular doorway with a stone surround flanked by walls blind save for small square windows on the model of those in the aisles.

The south gable of the south transept has the same bones as the west wall a central doorway, single window, both flanked by sheer gabletted buttresses, and a stepped gable. Here, however, there is no porch, and the window takes the form of an enlarged version of the simple round-headed lights in the nave wall. It is accentuated by being set within an arch which also embraces the porch. On the apex of the gable is a bell-cote pierced by a round arch containing one bell and surmounted by a cross. The north transept is a simplified version of the same without a bell-cote or such pronounced buttresses.

The chancel is of three bays, the bays divided by buttresses, and each having a single round-headed window, taller and narrower than those in the nave. The apse is externally five-sided.

The interior of the church is barrel vaulted throughout. The bays are marked by pilasters strips which continue above a simple unmoulded cornice to form transverse arches across the vault. The windows in the side walls are set within arches which cut across the barrel vault forming small arc-shaped indents on the ceiling. Between the pilaster strips, and set back a little so that they do not interfere with the main vertical lines of the building, are transverse lintels forming the tops of openings into the passage aisles. The transepts occupy a space half as wide again as the other nave bays, and also are roofed with barrel vaults which intersept the main nave vault without any rib or fillet. The organ stands on a gallery over vestries in the north transept and the south transept is arranged as a Lady Chapel with a small projecting sanctuary in the east wall, with a round window set above the projecting panel which takes the place of a reredos. In the crossing space is a nave altar.

The chancel is narrower and lower than the nave, the chancel arch being represented by a continued pilaster strip like those between the bays of the nave. It is three steps higher than the nave, and the division is marked by low screen incorporating two projections for the pulpit and lectern. Beyond the screen, the western part of the chancel is filled with tall, rather angular choirstalls. At the east end the apse is smaller by about the same again as the chancel had been in comparison with the nave, and again the wall surface is entirely plain. The apse is only lit by a lunette at the top of the semi-done. There was formerly a tall dossal curtain, but this has been removed and its place has been taken by a plain black wooden cross hung on the wall. There is an aunbry on the north side.