Church Heritage Record 631156

Nave of five bays with aisles and clearstorey; west bell-cote; south porch; chancel with north chapel and south transeptal organ chamber. Vestries east of the chancel.

By Arthur William Blomfield, 1868-9. The builders were Messrs. Foord & Sons and the cost, £6,083, was met by a bequest from Mary Elizabeth Griffith, the wife of John Griffith DD, Canon of Rochester Cathedral.

The west front, facing the principal approach, is more elaborate than the side elevations. The nave is divided from the aisles by short, rather solid gabled buttresses, that on the south thickened to house a staircase and provided with an interesting arrangement of triangular weatherings as a result. A stringcourse which encircles the aisles is incorporated at each side of the doorway at the level of the springing of the arch. The doorway has a moulded arch carried on two pairs of ringed shafts of grey stone and is set under a steep gable within which is a vesica cusped to form an elongated quatrefoil and framing a statue of Christ in Majesty. In the nave wall at each side are quatrefoiled circular windows. The aisle west walls have windows of two lancets and a trefoiled circle in plate tracery under hoods with foliate stops.

The upper part of the nave wall has an arrangement of windows which became a Blomfield trademark in the middle is a pair of lancets within an arch with a tracery cinquefoil above, and at each side a single lancet. The central window is enriched with shafts with moulded bases and capitals, and all three windows are linked by stringcourses between the hoods. High in the gable above is a small niche with a delicately moulded bracket and canopy housing a statue of The Virgin and Child. Above the apex of the gable, standing on a strange substructure of gablets and weatherings, is a small stone spirelet with one tier of lucarnes over an octagonal belfry stage. The bell-openings are uniform lancets surmounted alternately by gablets and curved hoodmoulds - an odd effect, especially when coupled with small projecting spurs.

The side walls are more straightforward. The aisle bays are divided by buttresses and each bay has two small lancets. At the west is an extra half bay without a window. Each bay of the clearstorey has a single window of two lights with a cinquefoiled circle for tracery. The hoods of these windows have returned ends. Against the fourth bay of the south side from the east is a porch with clasping buttresses at the angles, and an arch with a continuous outer hollow chamfer which becomes a plain chamfer on the jambs and a moulded inner order which dies into vertical roll mouldings on the jambs. In the gable above is a roundel carved with the Agnus Dei in relief.

The chancel is of three bays, with lancets at clearstory level. On the north there are two short lancets above a continuation of the aisle which forms a chapel, this being of two bays with paired lancets in the north wall. East of it is a small chamber under a pent roof with a Caernarvon arched doorway in the north wall which seems originally to have been a small vestry but now forms a lobby leading to the vestries added to the east in 1933. The arrangement on the south side is more ambitious. Here is a transept with clasping buttresses at the angles and a window in the north gable of two lights with a big sexfoiled circle above, round which the hoodmould runs to form an unusual outline. Above the western eaves is a cylindrical chimney linked to the chancel clearstorey by a shallowly pointed stone arch. East of the transept there is a small chamber with a doorway similar to that on the north, and above it is a single tall lancet. The chancel roof is slightly lower than that of the nave. The east window has ringed shafts and moulded arches and above it is a tiny roundel. The corners of the chancel have angle buttresses with gablets.

The vestries added at the east end in 1933 are faced with ragstone like the rest of the church and consist of a central rectangular room with slightly lower rooms to the north and south which also project slightly further east. The flat roof is concealed by a straight parapet, giving a harsh rectilinear mass broken only by a square chimney. The windows are rectangular lights, placed either singly or in groups of two or three.

The interior is approached through a narrow and very dark narthex which is part of a stone screen rising the whole height of the nave, an unusual and successful feature of the building. Towards the church the narthex has a chamfered doorway flanked by two pairs of small glazed lancets. It also has doors at each end into the aisles. Above the narthex, approached by a small spiral staircase within the south west buttress of the nave, is a narrow gallery behind arches.

The nave is of five bays, and the floor is paved with plain red and black tiles laid diagonally in the alleys and laid with boards at the same level under the pews. The pillars of the arcades are quatrefoil in plan with additional hollow mouldings in the angles. They have moulded bases and capitals carved with virtuoso naturalistic foliage and flowers which project a considerable distance from the solid stone. The arches have two chamfers and are outlined by moulded hoods which meet in more elaborately carved foliage. The spandrels of the nave arcades have horizontal banding and patterning of lozenges in red against grey bricks. The clearstorey is. faced with smooth ragstone and has a little plain banding of red brick. At the cornice bricks are set diagonally to give a sort of nailhead pattern. The roof is boarded to form a four-sided vault and the principals have moulded arch braces.

The chancel arch has responds against which are set corbels with a face at the bottom of each and three tiers of lavish foliage carving carrying triple colonettes of stone with more foliage on the capitals. The arch itself has a chamfer and a casement moulding.

The chancel is set three steps above the nave floor and has a low stone wall capped by a small iron screen. Within the chancel the architectural detail and decoration becomes more elaborate, although some of the effect has been lost by the unfortunate cream painted on the lower parts of the sanctuary walls and the treatment with gold paint of the reredos and the mouldings of the credence, piscina and sedilia. The floor, which has a step at the rails, two further steps within the sanctuary and a footpace is paved with red tiles with buff decoration which become progressively more. elaborate towards the east, culminating in a fine tile pavement of intersecting design in the sanctuary.

The design of the north and south chancel walls is different. On the north are two arches opening into a small chapel. These have very rich mouldings and are carried centrally on a pair of ringed shafts with foliate capitals and against the responds by short marble colonettes with similar capitals carried on trumpet - shaped corbels. The wall above is decorated with bricks laid diagonally to form a basketwork patterns. The clearstorey wall is faced with smooth ragstone and banded occasionally with red brick like the nave clearstorey, the cornice is carved with an unusual form of billet moulding and the roof, which is of similar design to that to the nave, has odd corbels rather like lengths of moulding butted together. On the south the transept, which contains the organ, opens to the chancel through a broad arch containing two lesser arches and a big roundel filled with an open sexfoil very like the detail in a similar position at Butterfield's All Saints, Margaret Street.