Church Heritage Record 610408

Aisled nave of five bays, polygonal west baptistery and flanking lobbies, chancel, south chapel, north vestries and organ loft.

Nave 24m (75 ft) x 8m (25ft).

The church was built and furnished in 1889-91 with money given by Elizabeth Mason to designs by the noted architect and designer Sir Arthur Blomfield, who also designed Christchurch and St John’s in Hastings.  Externally it is unchanged, and internally there have only been modest accretions of furnishings and fittings, which do not detract from the original concept; the lighting and heating components are not overly intrusive.

Despite the lack of a tower, this building dominates through sheer mass and quality of design. The basic style chosen is simple Early English with groups of pointed lancets regularly spaced, relying on the variegation of the roof-lines and details such as chevron and billet eaves mouldings to elaborate what might otherwise have been a plain vista. Blomfield has grafted on motifs from various styles, but it never jars. The church is undeniably, as Pevsner commented, “serious”.

The east end and south elevation facing respectively Berlin Road and Athelstan Road can be fully appreciated, the other sides are built up against, with a large Victorian house adjacent to the west end.  An evergreen tree between the two further obscures the west end from view.  Peering past these, the west wall can be seen to contain a plate tracery window, consisting of two Y-tracery 2-lights under a continuous hood-mould, with a blank roundel in the gable above containing a recessed delicately carved stone cross.

Beneath the window sills, there is a polygonal baptistery with simple lancets in the three projecting walls, flanked by asymmetrical lobbies (the aisle west ends are blind).  The south lobby is rectangular, with four narrow lancets in the west wall and a doorway where it fronts the road under a small gablet, forming a miniature porch.  The northern lobby has a canted north corner with three lancets in the faces, and a doorway adjacent to the baptistery.

The nave has a tall clearstorey, with the eastern and western bays pierced by plate tracery 2-lights flanking the middle bays which have stepped triplets of lancets, all recessed within pointed arches.  The bays are demarcated by strip pilasters.  The aisles have two lancets in each bay between buttresses of two steep weatherings, with the exception of the western bays which have a single lancet, and the eastern bays which are again taken up by asymmetrical lobbies. 

Of these, the southern lobby has three narrow lancets and a pointed doorway in the west wall, while its counterpart on the north side is of two bays, one with a lancet, the other with a doorway in its outer, northern face. The lancets in the lobbies have cusped heads let into stone lintel bands; this is the case with all the cusped lancets described below.

The south wall of the gabled south chapel has pairs of Y-tracery 2-lights in its two bays.  The corners have clasping buttresses with stone gablets.   The eastern bay of the north chancel wall has a pair of Y-tracery 2-lights, while the west bay is taken up by the projecting vestry and organ chamber.  The north gable is surmounted by a nicely designed, but potentially unsafe chimney stack, under which is a circular light in the gable head to light the organ loft.  Beneath this is a projecting wooden belcote carried on simple stone corbels, housing a single bell.  This is flanked by two very slim lancets with cusped heads.  Beneath these a roof slopes down to the eaves of the vestry, which continues at this height under a stone parapet to the east end. There are domestic square-headed 4-light windows in each bay within rectangular stone frames.

The chancel east wall is a very complex composition.  The gable head under a stone cross finial is pierced by three small stepped lancets with cusped heads.  These are framed by brick strip-pilasters with triangular heads, a clever neo-Anglo-Saxon touch.  Beneath this is a tall lancet between two Y-tracery 2-lights, with blank panels underneath, all recessed within an arch and with a plain hood-mould over.  The central panel under the tall central lancet is occupied by a stone niche with traceried spandrels.  The window is flanked by strip pilasters, into which are set pairs of blind lancets with cusped heads let into stone gablet terminals, these also pierced by a quatrefoil in the head.  The east wall of the south chapel has a similar but simpler arrangement, but the window is of five stepped lancets, and there is no niche.

The interior is high and spacious, of exposed red brick.  The splendid open timber roof is an arch-braced construction with scissor-beams and a finely moulded wall plate and collar. The aisle arcades are of moulded brick pointed arches carried on circular brick piers with moulded stone capitals. A sting-course below the clearstorey has chevron moulding. There are demi-arches at the east ends of the aisles, the south aisle arch with a square-headed opening under a spandrel pierced with three stepped round-headed arches, a clever device allowing a view into the chapel.  The east end of the north aisle is taken up by an altar with a panelled oak reredos.

The nave is still fully pewed with unusually slender benches with curved sides terminating in trefoils.  These are also to be found in the south chapel. The chapel floor has encaustic tiles in a geometric pattern in green, black and red, very handsome and complementing the other fittings, rising by single steps to the altar.   This has an altar and panelled triptych reredos with a central figure of the Madonna and child.

Blomfield concentrated most of his creative energy on the design of the chancel, commencing with a fine filigree wrought-iron chancel screen with cornice containing text, rail and pulpit, all of one piece as are the three chancel steps and the moulded stone pulpit base.   The organ pipes are displayed within a huge arch in the western bay of the north wall of the chancel, beneath which is a wrought-iron screen. 

The eastern bay contains a pointed doorway to the vestry, with a hood-mould.  Opposite is an arcade of two bays, with another such screen up to the height of the capitals in the western bay, and a tripartite stone sedilia with cusped heads in the east bay. Above this is a clearstorey of four pointed lights allowing in light from above the roof of the south chapel; these lights are virtually invisible from the outside.  The chancel floor has encaustic tile floor as in the chapel, rising by single steps to the sanctuary.   At the east end is a gilded altar and huge reredos, rising to the sill of the stained glass east window, altogether a fine composition, originally lit by ornate brass sanctuary lamps.