Church Heritage Record id19475

North-west tower, veryvide and high nave of four bays with aisles; transepts the same depth as the aisles. Chancel of one bay from which arches lead off into a chapel on the south and the organ chamber on the north. Semi-hexagonal apse. The church is linked to a hall on the south side.

The main entrance to the church is in the ground floor of the tower, a double doorway under a threefold receding set of arches. Between this level and the belfry are three stages, the first with a large three-light traceried window, the next with two lancets and the highest with a single lancet. At the corners of the tower are angle buttresses and the stair rises in a quarter-cylindrical turret wedged between the two buttresses of the north-west corner and has at the foot an independent door. The side walls of the tower are very much plainer than the wall to the north, having only the stringcourses and no windows above ground-floor level. Two bays of the nave appear between the tower and the north transept, lit by large three-light windows in the aisles, but having too little space above the aisle roof to allow for a clerestory. The north transept is flush with the wall of the aisle and of the organ chamber which flanks it on the east side, but is articulated from them by means of tall stepped buttresses which rise to the kneelers of the gable. Most of the wall between the buttresses is taken up with a large window which is of four lights arranged as two pairs of two with quatrefoils in the head and then a large sexfoil in the upper part of the whole.

The other side of the church which may be seen without too much difficulty is the west end which faces on to the games fields of the College over a low. wall. This facade is perhaps the better of the two but even so is mannered and rather textbookish. The tower predominates here again, but there is also a strong horizontal axis provided by the small narthex in front of the west door. This narthex, which is really little more than a porch, has five windows in an arcade on the west side, the door being at the north end. Each of the windows is a two light design of the most common pattern with a quatrefoil in the head. In the wall of the nave above this, are three windows forming together quite a pleasant composition. The lower two, their sills hidden behind the arcaded parapet of the narthex, are identical and like the transept window, are based on a pair of paired lights below. In the head, each has a large circle containing four smaller circles which are filled with trefoils. Higher in the gable a rose window has plate tracery with a central quatrefoils, each motif being enclosed in a circle. The west walls of the aisles have much plainer windows - paired lights with a quatrefoil above. The whole front is geometricality run riot, even to the cinquefoils in the heads of the belfry openings at the top of the tower. From this side can also be seen the. end wall of the hall which is built of the same warm pinkish rubble as the church and has a three-light traceried window under a dripstone contihuing out the details of the church itself, although in slightly different and re.ther simpler form. The church gains much from the well-cut ashlar masonry of the dressings round windows and other features. The east end of the church is concealed from view by trees, but contains the tall windows of the arse separated from each other by buttresses. The south wall is hidden by the church hall and vestries which were added at this side.

Internally the church seems almost square, the effect of the transepts being minimised because they are the same depth as the nave aisles and lead from the aisles through high arches which make the transition almost unnoticeable. The nave itself is huge and bleak. Four bays of the arcade have arches of even height and the fifth has higher arches opening in to the transepts. Those are carried on severely plain piers of circular section with no decoration save a roll-moulding about haif-way up. Even the bases are plain and the carving of foliage on the capitals is so stylised as to be unrecognisable except as an abstract pattern.

Other factors contribute to the impression of bareness - the great height of the roof with its large expanse of dark woodwork; the tall pointed chancel arch; and the ambitious windows of the west wall which start more than fifteen feet from the floor. The floors are covered with the simplest patterns of coloured tiles and the details of the aisle windows are severely plain.

The chancel is short in comparisonwith the nave, the side walls being only of a single bay each side before the angled walls which form the apse. Wide arches in the side walls open on the north to the organ chamber (which also opens into the north transept) and on the south to a chapel (which also connects with the south transept). The roof too is quite different from that in the nave, the latter being a scissor-beam construction while the apse has remarkable arched spandrels added to the main rafters which have nothing to do with the structure at all, and are purely decorative.

The lower parts of the walls of the apse are panelled, and all the surface above is painted. Most of the decoration is abstract, but there are two figures in niches each side of the east window, one carrying the fruit of the vine and the other carrying bread.