Church Heritage Record 623119

Nave of six bays (including the chancel which is formed within the east bay), five with aisles and clerestory but the westernmost without aisles. Stairs to the galleries which surround the interior are contrived within short projections at each end of the aisles, and the tower stands, oddly at the east end. It is flanked by two small apsidal vestries which are later additions.

The church was built in 1826-8 to the designs of Sir Charles Barry. The foundation stone was laid on 15 September 1826 and the church was consecrated by Bishop Blomfield on 23 October 1828 cost £11,205, and the site was given by the Marquis of Northampton. The Commissioners contributed £8654. This was one of three churches built at this time in the parish of Islington by Barry, all of which have much the same character and plan . St. John's, Upper Holloway (begun May 1826) has a similar plan, but the tower is in the orthodox position at the west end, and Holy Trinity Cloudesley Square (begun July 1826) has no tower, but two octagonal pinnacles at the west end. Charles Barry (1795-1860), after being articled to a firm of surveyors in Southwark, went on an extended architectural tour of the continent. On his return to London he set up a practice in Ely Place, Holborn, and soon obtained the contract for two churches for the Commissioners outside Manchester. He was not in sympathy with the more extreme Gothic Revivalists, and decried "deep chancels, high rood screens and (in a lesser degree) pillared aisles" as "belonging to the worship and institutions of the past rather than the present". This opinion doubtless co-incided with that of the evangelical Vicar of Islington, The Revd. Daniel Wilson, and may explain the existence of four churches to Barry's designs within the bounds of that parish. Barry's later works in the Italianate style brought him honours and recognition, and he is well known as the collaborator with Pugin on the new Houses of Parliament, 1840-60. He designed about a dozen churches and remodelled a few others.

The tower was placed in the unusual position at the east end because this was the principal front of the church. The lowest storey contains an open porch, the four-centred arch of which has mouldings which die into plain responds. There are good carvings of roses and foliage in the spandrels. Above, a stone tablet records that the six bells in the tower are a Memorial to the First World War. The ceiling of the porch is groined and in the side walls are doors communicating with stone staircases to the galleries. There is no access to the ground floor of the church. In the next stage there is a three-light window of Perpendicular character under a four-centred arch, and the third stage houses the clock with a circular face in the east wall under a moulded label. The uppermost stage houses the bells and has two-light louvred openings in each direction, a moulding below the parapet which is decorated with fleurons and battlements between the corner pinnacles. These are set diagonally at the heads of diagonal buttresses rising from the ground with several set-offs.

The aisle walls are divided into bays by buttresses with two off-sets, between which are tall two-light windows with transoms and cinquefoiled heads under moulded hoods. At the base of all the walls is a moulded plinth. The clerestory also has two-light windows with cinquefoiled heads, and both aisles and clerestory have moulded parapets without battlements. At each end of the aisles (except the north west) are small bays housing staircases, with doors at the foot and small lancet windows. At the east end of the church, flanking the tower, are two vestries terminating in apses, which were added in 1900.

The west end of the church, which appears at first sight to be a shallow chancel, has no windows in the side walls (which extend one bay further than the aisles) and in the west wall is a doorway, with a large three-light transomed window with panel tracery above. There are angle buttresses at the corners which rise into substantial stone pinnacles above the parapet. At the west end of the south aisle there is a strange polygonal projection above the staircase which may have contained a stair to an upper west gallery. In the apex of the west gable there is a small quatrefoil opening to the roof space, and the gable is capped by a cross.

The interior has tall, dignified arches of Perpendicular character with attached shafts in the principal directions (except towards the aisles) and hollows between. The moulded arches have no hoods or decorative carving, and an upper series of shafts supports the roof. This is of low pitch with tie-beams supported by four-centred arch braces with tracery in the spandrels. The clerestory windows have shields within squared quatrefoils between the base of the glazing and the inner sills. There are galleries in the aisles, and the west gallery occupies two bays, the further west being without aisles and housing small rooms at ground floor level on each side of the porch. The gallery fronts have also been renewed, and now are of pine with pierced panels. The floor is paved with stone flags in the alleys and the pews stand on timber platforms. The seating was re-arranged in 1880, when choirstalls were placed in the eastern bay of the nave and new open pews were provided throughout the ground floor of the church. The pulpit was also moved. In 1882 a new pulpit was erected, and in 1900 the organ was moved from the west gallery to the east bay of the south aisle.

The arrangement of the east end is uncommon, because of the position of the tower. Behind the altar there is a reredos of stone Perpendicular niches, and above that a parapet screens the lower part of a chamber in the first stage of the tower, opening to the church through a tall tower arch which allows a view of the east window. The glass in the east window is a post-War replacement of the original, which contained the arms of George IV. The second stage of the tower has a groined vault with a square bellway set lozenge-wise in the middle, like the roof of the porch below.