Church Heritage Record 623260

Nave of four bays with aisles and clerestory, west apsidal baptistery with north and south porches arranged as chapels; crossing with shallow north and south transepts; chancel with apsidal sanctuary; apsidal south Lady Chapel and rectangulur north chapel with small chapel for reservation of the Blessed Sacrament beyond and a sacristy to the north-east. Below the sacristy is a storeroom and above a sacristy for the clergy. The staircase also leads to the organ chamber above the north chancel chapel.

By James Brooks, whose first design for the church was published in Building News for November 29th 1872. Building began at the east end in 1874, although owing to various setbacks, chiefly financial, the eastern parts as far as the crossing were not completed until 1885. By 1892 the nave had been completed with the omission of a fleche which had been intended over the crossing. The west tower was not built and the west front remained as exposed brick until the present facade was added in 1909-11 to designs by J.S. Adkins who had by that time bought the practice of James Brooks and Son.

James Brooks (1825-1901) designed only about twenty-five new churches, a modest output compared with Gilbert Scott a generation earlier or his almost exact contemporary G.E. Street. St. John, Kensington, comes quite late in his career. 

The first part of the building to be seen, the west facade, was the last to be built. Adkins chose to provide a baptistery in the form of an octagonal projection below the west window. In the three western faces of this he placed windows at the upper level and a door in the centre face at the lower level. At the angles are slender buttresses terminating in pinnacles. To north and south are porches under gables, and beside that on the north is a calvary. Small pavilions with pyramidal roofs extend the frontage to cover the whole site, that on the north with a passageway leading to the alley alongside the north wall of the church and that to the south attached to the vicarage. 

The north and south walls of the nave are seldom seen, but are pierced by large paired lancets in each bay of the aisles, of the wide proportions which Brooks liked, and with single lancets at clerestory level, the bays each being marked by arched flying buttresses of simple design which support the stone vault of the nave. On the north, Brooks provided a bold chimney stack, architecturally treated, rising from the second flying buttress and linked to the roof of the nave by a dormer-like secondary roof. There is nothing to balance this on the south.

Similarly, while the treatment of the transopts is symmetrical, each with a tall gabled wall rising to the height of the nave like a great French cathedral (and quite unlike the early churches of the Gothic Revival), there is in addition an equally large second gable on the north side, of the same height and actually slightly wider than the neighbouring transept, and this houses the organ gallery above a chapel. Against the lower part of this is placed a staircase, a stone dog-leg housed within a shallow projection roofed with stone weathering against the wall of the north chapel. This gives access at three levels to the sacristy block east of the organ chamber projection. The roof of this block has a gable of the same steep pitch as the various parts of the body of the church, with a stout chimney stack at the east end supported by a buttress which runs straight up the middle of the wall without an offset to terminate in a sharp gablet against the chimney stack.

The chancel has a tall apse, starkly semi-circular like the contemporary one at Plaistow, and this is abutted on the south side by a smaller apse which houses the sanctuary of the Lady Chapel. The larger apse has two storeys of windows, the upper larger than the lower and all in each level being connected by a continuous hood moulding shouldered each side of the windows. An ornamental ridge along the roof terminates in a slender iron cross. It only remains to mention a tiny chapel between the vestry block and the sanctuary. Its purpose was to house the Blessed Sacrament and although its position and reticence may have been dictated by ritual controversy it appears in any case to have been an afterthought. 

The west doorway opens into the apsidal west baptistery. Although this is a fine space, with an open timber roof supported on shafts in the corners, the most notable feature is the great west door which leads into the nave. The disposition of statues against the numerous shafts of the doorway is reminiscent of the French style although here, instead of representing saints, the figures are the Ten Wise and Foolish Virgins, dramatically displayed in flowing robes, the Foolish Virgins disconsolately surrounded by empty lamps. The capitals of the shafts above their heads, alternately large and small, are lavishly decorated with stiff-leaf carving and the arch above is of three major orders separated by three recessed orders of mouldings.

The nave is of four bays, the crossing beyond being slightly wider and separated from the nave by clustered shafts rising from the floor to the middle of the clerestory level. The other bays of the vaulted roof are supported by clusters of triple shafts supported above each nave pier by odd corbels composed of shafts jointed like bamboo stalks. The simple quadripartite vault has moulded ribs without bosses, although at the intersection in the crossing there is a small circular bell-way provided for the fleche which was never in fact erected. At the west end of the nave a gallery is provided above the west doorway, with a front of blind trefoil-headed arcading. Above this is an arch framing the west rose window. This, inspired by such examples as Chartres, has a central roundel with twelve lobes and then twelve sectors separated by straight spokes. The outermost section is composed of a series on twelve quatrefoils. It is understood that, owing to the changes of plan at the west end, there is no access to the west gallery. The windows of the clerectory are quite plain but those in the aisles are provided with shafted reveals.

The chancel is the same height and width as the nave and is separated from it by a large and elaborately carved stone screen which has not always been approved of by writers on the church. Although the screen is so substantial, it is strictly a furnishing and as such a detailed description is given below. It is enough to remark here that it has three arches, the wider central arch closed by low iron gates while the outer arches have low stone walls with reading desks at each side. Above a frieze of arches containing statues are free-stending figures standing on the top of the screen. Higher still is the rood with St. Mary and St. John. There is a loft, and access to this can be had from the organ gallery on the north side of the chancel.

There are further smaller stone screens in similar style between the transepts and the chapels lying to the east and between the chancel and these chapels, making a total of seven screens.

The chancel is four steps above the level of the nave and is floored with tiles rather than stone flags. The apse with its two tiers of shafted single lancets is most impressive, even though much of the lower tier is concealed by the elaborate rerados. The ribs of the stone vault are moulded and meet at a central boss of considerable size carved with the Pelican in Her Piety. Some of the ribs, like those which delineate the crossing, are decorated with bands of nail-head. They are supported by shafts in the angles of the apse which stand above arcading, the spandrels of which are carved with angels bearing the symbols of martyrdom, and the windows also have shafts to the rere-arches. There is a piscina in the south wall of the sanctuary. The arches opening into the north and south chapels are richly moulded and continue the design of the nave arcades. The chancel is paved with stone flags with small tiles laid diagonally at the intersections and the sanctuary is richly floored with a marble pavement and provided with marble steps.

The Lady Chapel on the south side, like the chancel, is vaulted in stone but here the ribs spring from the level of the sills of the windows round the apse, so that they are very prominent and the windows are sunk in deep recesses. The ribs are further made prominent by bands of nailhead between paired roll-mouldings. The vaults of the two rectangular bays are quadripartite in plan but with an additional rib rising from a wall shaft in the middle of the south side of each bay. The ribs of the apse meet at a central boss of drum-like shupe with a roll-moulding and nailhead round the edge and stylised foliage carved on the round underside. The floor is paved with stone flags with small tiles bearing a heraldic motif at the intersections. The chapel, like the chancel, has an elaborate reredos in the apse of markedly French character.

The chapel on the north side was furnished later than the rest of the church, having been panelled in oak in a Perpendicular style and provided with a complementary reredos in c.1920. It is architecturally simpler than the Lady Chapel, having a straight east wall and plainer quadripartite vaulting without as much nailhead along the ribs. The east wall, again an example of Brooks' uncomplicated admission of unsymmetrical features where these seen practical, has a single lancet to the right of the centre, set within a plain reveal.