Church Heritage Record 602096

Three-and-a-half bay nave with north and south aisles and north west tower; chancel of one bay with apse, with organ chamber and choir vestry to the south and clergy vestry to the north, the latter with boiler room below.

The church was built to designs by J.. Chatwin and was consecrated on 11th September, 1880, its parish being assigned out of St. Silas, Lozells, in the following year.

Only the west front of the church is faced with stone for, until recent demolition took place, this was the only readily visible part of the church. It is in the Perpendicular style, with a broad six-light west window to the nave with panel tracery incorporating cinquefoils and a parapet decorated with blind arcading. At each corner are slim angle buttresses terminating in gablets and below the window are two doorways flanking a smaller three-light window which lights the narthex under the west gallery. To the right, the south aisle has a simple two-light window of similar style to those in the nave wall, and to the left rises the tower which, though not especially tall, is quite a prominent landmark in the area. It is of four stages, the lowest with a doorway in the west wall and the next with three equal lancets in the west wall. The third level has small rectangular slits in the north and west faces and the top stage has paired bell-openings of a standard design with a trefoil for tracery. A pyramid roof rises within the embattled parapet and at the north-west corner is an octagonal turret containing the stair to the upper floors, rising higher than the parapet to give access to the roof. From the summit of the roof rises a weathercock.

The rest of the exterior is all faced with brick, the window tracery and surrounds being of Bath stone. Whereas the west front could be said to be entirely in the Perpendicular style, the sides show that the aisles are in an earlier idiom, with paired lancet lights to each bay, the bays divided by plain buttresses with single off-sets which die into the wall below the eaves. The windows of the clerestory above run in a uniform row, eight in all on the south side and six on the north, each of three cinquefoiled lights with panel tracery above. The eaves below the low pitched slate roof are simply projecting courses of bricks. At the east end, the apse of the chancel is given additional height by the falling ground. The three large windows round the apse each have three tall transomed lights, the lower series with cusped square heads and the upper series with cinquefoiled heads; above these is panel tracery. The windows stand above large areas of bare brick wall, and the angles are supported by slender buttresses with three off-sets which die inte the wall at the level of the springing of the window arches.

The interior of the church bears out the use of two quite separate styles of architecture noticed on the exterior, for the nave arcades are in typical Early English vein, with cylindrical pillars on roll-moulded bases carrying double-chamfered arches, their capitals ornamented with naturalistic carved foliage. Although the clerestory windows are in a different style, they are linked to the arcades by attached shafts carried on corbels carved as human heads placed above the springing of each arch. Subsidiary attached shafts in the middle of each bay rise from foliated corbels above the apex of each arch, but all have similar foliated capitals. The arches of the arcades and the clerestory windows are all outlined by moulded hoods. The west end of the nave is filled by a gallery below the large window, under which is a narthex within the west doors. At the east end of the nave the carved capitals of the half-pillars which form responds continue eastwards to form a band of wall decoration between the two corbels which carry tall attached shafts rising to the roof, these forming the only minimal suggestion of a chancel arch. Similar shafts rise in the angles of the apse.

The roof structure is Perpendicular in design and, save for the double beams at the position of a chancel arch, is uniform throughout, with stout tie-beams supported by curved brackets at each end above which is simple arcading rising to the principal rafters. The wall-plates are pieced with quatrefoils, and the general effect of the roof is one of the best features of the church. The clerestory windows and those of the eastern apse are filled with leaded glazing which appears to be original, forming naturalistic patterns enhanced by the coloured glass (chiefly green and yellow) with which they are filled. The chancel is two steps above the nave and the sanctuary two steps higher again, while two windows on the north side give additional light, there is a wide arch on the south side framing the organ which stands in a stone gallery at this point.