Church Heritage Record 616141

Nave of four bays with aisles and clerestory; south porch; south transeptal organ chamber and north transeptal vestry; a bell-cote rises above the east wall of the organ chamber; chancel.

The church was designed by Sidney Gambier Parry and built in 1888. Sidney Gambier Parry was the youngest son of Thomas Gambier Parry, the Vicar of Highnam for whom Woodyer designed one of the most remarkable Gothic Revival churches in 1847. He was born in 1859 and died in 1948; he lived at Duntisbourne Rouse and designed a similar church at Tidenham Chase which was built in the same year as Bentham. He sometimes worked with the Gloucester firm of Waller and Son.

The church is a good example of a late Victorian chapel of ease which observed all the rules. A spark of interest is provided by the placing of the bell-cote, most unusually, against the east wall of the south transept. This is the side of the church best seen from the road, and the position of the bell-cote gives an interesting profile to an otherwise ordinary design.

The style is Early English, with short lancets for all the windows: two to each bay of the aisles, two (trefoil-headed) to each bay of the clerestory, a group of three in the west wall and a group of five in the east wall. The transepts have two lancets in the gabled walls and the sanctuary has a single lancet to north and south. There are single langets in the west walls of the aisles, and an arcade below the west window alternates three lancets with two blind panels, the lancets lighting the font at the west end of the nave. The walls are faced with excessively rock-cut grey limestone banded with buff stone. There are buttresses at each side of the west gable, at the corners of the chancel and at the foot of the bell-cote; all round the building there is a chamfered plinth and there are stringcourses forming hoods to the aisle windows.

Applied to this basic form there are a few decorative details. The central light of the arcaded lower part of the west wall has a crocketted gablet to distinguish it from the others, the wall below the east window is decorated with chequerwork in two colours of stone and the outer arch of the south porch has a chamfered head and moulded hood with foliate stops. Above it there is a trefoiled-headed niche containing a statue of St. Peter. The east bay of the nave forms the chancel, and the distinction is marked externally by a fleche on the ridge of the nave roof. The bell-cote has a very sharply pitched gable (much more pointed than any other in the church) with a bulky sub-structure carrying trefoiled arches for three small bells. The apex of the gable is crowned by a weathercock.

The interior remains unaltered. The floor is paved with wooden blocks and the arcades have circular pillars banded with buff and grey stone, with circular moulded bases and capitals. The arches have double chamfers and are outlined by mouldings. The timber barrel vault is slightly pointed and is supported on ribbed arch-braced beams at each bay resting on marble colonettes with moulded capitals and bases. The window reveals are of exposed stone except in the aisles, and the stonework round the groups of lancets forming the east and west windows is all exposed also. There is scarcely any colour in the structure or furnishings which is not grey or buff, and the opaque greenish quarries in the windows (surrounded with red or green borders) together with heavily coloured glass by Heaton, Butler and Bayne in the east and west windows, serves to emphasise this tonality.

The east bay of the nave forms the choir and is raised on two steps and enclosed by an iron screen above a low stone wall. The pulpit and lectern form part of the screen. The structural chancel is therefore left for the sanctuary. Its arch has an outer chamfered order which reaches to the floor and an inner moulded order resting on colonettes. There is one step at this point, another at the rails and two more before the altar. The east window is set within a recessed arch of similar dimensions, and has roundels containing trefoils on the spandrels between the five lights. The north and south windows are shafted and there is a Caernarvon-arches credence shelf under the north windows while the south window comes down to form a small sedile. The chancel floor is paved with red, black and buff highly-glazed tiles.