Church Heritage Record 625173

West tower, nave of five bays with aisles, clerestory and north porch; chancel with north chapel and south vestries.

The church was designed by Anthony Salvin and built in 1846. The foundation stone was laid by the founder on 28 October 1845 and the church was opened on 18 October 1846; it cost about £12,000. Salvin was born in Worthing in 1799 (although he came of a Durham family) and began his architectural training with John Paterson of Edinburgh, until he went to London in 1822, where he may have entered the office of Nash. Commissions to design houses at Mamhead and Harlaxton established his position. He was a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries and of the Royal Institute of British Architects and his pupils included W.E. Nesfield, Norman Shaw and (briefly) Pearson. He died in Sussex in 1881. The principal works of his London-based practice were numerous, but he specialised in the restoration and creation of castellated country houses for the aristocracy, for which purpose he was employed by the Fourth Duke of Northumberland at Alnwick between 1854 and 1860, entirely obliterating Robert Adam's decorations and building a new polygonal apsed and vaulted chapel. His designs for St. Paul's Church, however, were made for the Third Duke. Thereafter he designed several churches to be built on ducal lands, notably at Cullercoats (1864) and Percy Main (1864). In 1834 he had built a Neo-Norman church at North Sunderland and he virtually rebuilt Simonburn chancel in 1860.

The church is a large, straightforward and serious-minded essay in the Decorated style which is more striking for its size and dignity than for any ingenuity of detail or plan. The tall west tower dominates. It is the same width as the nave and has four stages with diagonal buttresses at the angles which rise with only the most shallow of off-sets to terminate in gablets just below the level of the parapet. The lowest stage has a doorway in the west face with three chamfered orders round the arch and then the next stage, separated by a stringcourse, has a two-light window with a pointed quatrefoil in the head. The third stage, which is much taller than those below, has two foiled lancets in the west face and single ones. in the north and south faces, all these placed low down for the clock, with three circular faces, occupies the upper part of this stage. Finally the top stage has tall two-light belfry openings like the window in the second stage with a pointed quatrefoil in the head, but larger, and giving an almost Norfolk appearance to the tower. The parapet, which rises above a moulded stringcourse with carved projections at the angles, has no pinnacles, but only three large merlons in each face, giving rather a weighty termination to the building.

The aisle walls have two-light windows with flowing tracery designs in each bay (the bays being separaged by buttresses) except for the second bay from the west on each side. On the south in this bay is a small doorway with a moulded arch under a pointed hood on the north (in the direction of the centre of the town) is a large porch with paired buttresses at the angles and a doorway with a moulded arch set on grouped shafts flanked by cinquefoil-headed niches. Within, the porch has a stone vault with foliate bosses carried on corbels carved as heads, a remarkably ambitious piece of design. It is lit by small trefoiled lancets in the side walls. The clerestory lights are all of a uniform two-light design under flattened arches and the walls are unbroken even by hoodmoulds, giving rather a bland appearance to this part of the building. In the east gable, above the chancel roof, there is a circular window filled with flowing tracery made up of whirling mouchettes and curved daggers. The main roofs are all steeply pitched.

The chancel, like the tower, has diagonal buttresses at the angles. On the north side is a two-bay chapel slightly shorter than the chancel itself and having two paired lights in the north wall separated by a buttress. Its east window is of two lights. The vestry stands on the south side outside a similar chapel, set under its own gable with a cross-gable at the west end which distinguishes the clergy vestry. The windows are for the most part paired lancets. The east window of the chancel is of five equal lights with ogee heads leading up into curvilinear tracery with good archaeological precedent.

The interior is normally entered through the ground floor of the tower, which is windowless, so that the first impact is a longitudinal view of the nave and chancel. The nave arcades have pillars of quatrefoil plan and double chamfered arches, the outer chamfer being slightly hollow. Above these the timber vault (which is a later insertion) rests on short colonettes springing from corbels carved as heads. The vault is a rib vault with large carved bosses, and blocks the round window above the chancel arch (the appearance of the original roof may be seen in a watercolour preserved in the porch of the church). At the west of the nave a large arch opens onto the tower, and this contains a gallery upon which an organ was originally placed. (This was the only gallery, the Ecclesiologist was glad to note, in the church). The roofs of the aisles are boarded with pine, and have curved braces to the horizontal beams which abut the nave arcade. The floor is of hexagonal wooden blocks in the alleys with wooden boards under the pews. The eastern part, in front of the chancel arch, was relaid in 1959. The stone reveals of the window are left exposed but otherwise the walls are plastered and painted white.

The chancel is dominated by the painterly glass in the east window, with a large scene from the life of St. Paul stretching across all five lights in brilliant glowing colours. There is also heavily coloured stained glass in the north chapel and the organ stands in the virtually windowless south chapel so that the chancel is altogether much darker than the nave. Both the chancel aisles communicate with the nave through arches. The aisle on the north, which communicates with the chancel through two arches with bearded heads and wimpled heads at the stops, has a large tomb- chest in the eastern part commemorating the Third Duke of Northumberland who built and endowed the church, and the western part has been furnished more recently as a small chapel. The organ occupies the west bay of the south chancel aisle and the east bay is left open. Behind the organ a door communicates with the clergy vestry and beyond that is the spacious choir vestry. The roof of the chancel is panelled with timber and has arch braces supported by corbel heads set quite close together. The sanctuary is panelled in oak and the floor is paved with excellent red and buff tiles, those in front of the choirstalls arranged in circular patterns in groups of four.