Church Heritage Record 605047

West tower and spire, the ground floor forming the entrance to the church; rectangular aisled nave with small circular baptistery and vestry on the north side.

The church was built, on the site of a mediavel predecessor, in 1786-90 under the supervision of William Paty's firm. Paty (1758-1800) was the younger son of Thomas Paty, perhaps the most notable of the family of architects and statuaries whose work did much to change the face of Bristol in the Georgian period, and there seems no reason to doubt that William Paty designed the church, although no documentary evidence has yet come to light to substantiate this claim. The church was altered in 1883 by Henry Williams who remodelled the west doorway and all the windows, as well as employing F. Bell to provide a stone reredos. The church was restored and redecorated in white and gold under the direction of T.H.B. Burrough after war damage.

The church is the second to stand on this site; its predecessor is known to have been repaired in 1336, and to have been in its final form a building chiefly of Perpendicular style about the same size as the present church and consisting of an aisled nave without clerestory, with a tower and spire standing in an uncommon position at the east end over the chancel. By 1787 this church, in spite of frequent repairs, had become so decayed that it was found necessary to take it down. On 30th October that year, the foundation stone of the present building was laid by Alderman Benjamin Baugh.

The only exterior feature of the church which is faced with stone is the west steeple, since the other walls were originally concealed by the surrounding buildings. The tower is of substantial scale, only a few feet narrower than the church itself, and is externally divided into four stages separated by moulded cornices. The lowest stage was refaced in 1883 by Henry Williams, who provided a frontispiece of fluted Corinthian capitals and segmental pediment to frame the doorway. Within the pediment is a roundel containing a bust of Christ. The doorway is round-headed, the arch decorated with egg-and-dart moulding and supported on smaller Composite pilasters decorated with panels of stylised foliage in the Italian fashion. Within this arch is an inner arch carved to resemble a continuous shoot of oak leaves bound by ribands.

The second stage of the tower houses the clock, the face of which is protected from the elements by a segmental pediment which interrupts the cornice separating this from the stage above. On each side of the clock face are the famous Quarterjacks which were originally on the old church; when this was demolished, they fell into the hands of the Braikenridge family. A member of this family presented them to the Bristol Corporation who in 1913 lent them to the church in perpetuity. They were made in 1728 by Thomas Paty to succeed a yet older pair, and take the form of small figures of men clad in armour after a Roman style, each wielding a small hammer with which to strike the adjacent bells on the quarters of the hour. They stand on elaborately carved brackets emblazoned with shields of arms, these complementing the consoles which support the pedimont over the clock face.

The next stage is blind in all directions, but treated with skill to disguise the fact. Each face (of which all are identical) is provided with an aedicule of Ionic pilasters supporting a plain moulded pediment, the whole framing a round-headed blind arch. The heads of the arches are emphasised by keystones and alternately projecting blocks of masonry normally associated with the Gibbs manner.

The top stage contains the bells, and accordingly has louvred openings in each direction.

Of the other external walls of the church there is little to be said; all are rendered, and only the south wall may be seen, pierced by three-light windows set high above the pavement, the buildings which they were intended to avoid having been removed from the flank of the church.

The body of the church is divided into three elegant sections by arcades of tall, slender stone columns. To add to their height, these stand on high octagonal bases which were once concealed by box pews; the presence of a panelled dado round the outer walls made up from these pews is extremely important to correct the proportions of the column bases. The columns themselves are unfluted, with Attic bases of two convex mouldings separated by one concave. At first sight their capitals appear to be Corinthian, but they lack the small volutes at each corner, and in fact are composed solely of acanthus leaves. The uncommonly tall section of frieze below a block of cornice is relieved by a patora on each face, and the arches supporting the vaults spring from the cornice. The responds against the walls of the church are similar down to the architrave and are at that point supported on big consoles. The grey stone of the columns and consoles is set off by white walls and white and gold plasterwork on the ceiling.

The ceiling (which has been attributed to Thomas Stocking, 1722-1808) is of particular refinement, with shallow saucer domes to the nave and aisles all of virtually the same height. Each bay is divided from its neighbours by segmental arches with continuous guilloche pattern on the soffits, and the vaults between are divided into aooping panels by moulded lines. The centre panel of each vault is circular with a heavily foliated central boss, the surrounding four panels in each nave bay heing filled by Adamesque garlands while those in the aisles, being smaller, are left empty.

The windows of the church, set all at clorestory level as, for example, at All Hallows, London Wall (of twenty years earlier), are thus placed because of the former enclosure of the church by other buildings. Yet the necessity has been turned to architectural advantage, and the position of the windows acts with the attenuated columns and the lightly drawn platerwork to contribute to the elegance of the building in spite of its small size. The height of the windows from the floor is further accentuated by the reveals, which are carried down to the base of the walls as shallow recesses.