Church Heritage Record 608188

Nave of six bays with aisles and clerestory; north-west bell turret, north and south porches against west bays of the aisle. Chancel with patio north Lady Chapel and south organ chamber with choir and clergy vestries beyond.

The church was designed by W.D. Caroe and built in 1902-3. William Douglas Caroe (1857-1938) was a pupil of J.L. Pearson, and the Catalogue of Drawings in the RIBA collection points out that he was established by his early churches at Exeter and Stanstead Mountfitchet as the leading Arts and Crafts Gothic church architect outside the High Church party. He was Architect to the Ecclesiastical Commissioners from 1895 to 1938 and designed their offices at 1, Millbank at the same time as this church was being built. Many of his churches are in suburban Middlesex. The church of St. Barnabas, Walthamstow, was begun on 14 June 1902, the foundation stone was laid on 4 September that year and the church was consecrated by the Bishop of St. Albans on 7 November 1903. It was paid for by Richard Foster, (1822-1910) who gave the site for the church, vicarage and hall, and laid the foundation stone on his eightieth birthday. The church replaced an iron mission church erected in 1900 which received a parish in 1901. In 1961 the parish was united with that of St. James the Greater and the latter church (which was by J.P. and J.E.K. Cutts) was demolished.

The west front is broad, with a low-pitched gable at the top and the wall below divided into three narrow panels by slender buttresses. At the foot, these buttresses become more substantial, flanking a small two light window, and stone gablets ending in fleur-de-lys mark the transition. In each panel of the wall there is a tall two-light window, each with two transoms and trefoiled heads to the uppermost lights and a pointed quatrefoil between. Below the sills there is a band of recessed quatrefoils of pressed brick against a stone facing. High in the gable there is a small louvred vent in the form of a cusped arch. To the south a more substantial buttress marks the south aisle (with a two-light west window) and to the north is the bell turret.

The bell turret is square at ground level with a buttress in the middle of the west wall. The walls rise sheer without decoration or even windows up to the level of the nave gable, at which point small stone weatherings effect the change from square plan to a near octagon. In the west face at this point there is a stone quatrefoil opening. Above the weatherings there are small buttresses at the angles and big arches with segmental heads in the principal faces which surround the bell. The embattled parapet has been coated with cement and within it rises a slender shingled spike.

The flanking walls of the nave have two-light windows in each bay of the aisles with varying tracery designs and each bay is divided from the next by a stout buttress which has two off-sets before dying into the wall just below the eaves. Above the head of each buttress the moulded cornice of pressed bricks returns vertically to link the cornice to the buttress. There is a further moulded stringcourse of bricks at sill level. The buttresses have chamfered brick plinths which do not continue along the wall between. The north and south porches are quite spacious, which deeply splayed plain brick jambs and moulded segmental arches, above which are two small round-headed openings and a quatrefoil in the gable. The three-light clerestory windows are under rectangular heads and the same detail of the moulded cornice occurs above the buttresses which mark the bays as in the aisles.

The chancel has the same Perpendicular profile as the nave, with a low-pitched gable and a parapet of moulded bricks. At the apex of the gable the bricks give way to stone and the coping juts sharply upwards into a gablet over a cross carved in relief. This typically of Caroe down (still in stone) into the brick work below and in fact stands on a series of steps on the apex of the east window. The window itself is broad, of seven lights grouped 2-3-2, the inner three taller than the flanking pairs. There is panel tracery above the outer lights but a roundel above the middle lights with a border of quatrefoils into which the head of the middle light breaks. The jambs of the windows are widely splayed in the same way as those of the porch doorways, and the sill is steeply sloped. This emphasises the thickness of the wall, and Caroe also plays tricks with the planes of the wall surface by providing buttresses so broad and flat that in their lower parts they seem to be the wall surface while above their termination it becomes clear that the recessed wall below the east window is in fact in line with the real plane of the gable above.

In the north wall of the chancel there are three slender lancets at clerestory level and in the south there is only space for one before the sloping roof of the organ chamber. The Lady Chapel on the north side of the chancel has two pairs of lights in the north wall and a broad five light east window with bar tracery but none of the tricks of the chancel east wall except that the gable is false, the chapel having a pent roof. The east wall of the choir vestry is altogether plainer than either, with two three-light windows in the wall and a sexfoil above and between them. To the south of the vestry a two-bay arcade forms a porch for the vestries and for the hall which adjoins to the south. The only other feature of the exterior is the turret at the junction of the nave and chancel on the south side which contains a staircase access to the nave and chancel roofs. It is similar to the bell-turret at the opposite corner of the nave.

The nave has tall arcades with chamfered arches, the outer order of brick and the inner of stone. These rest on lozenge-shaped pillars with subsidiary shafts on the points which carry a further series of shafts rising up to the roof timbers. The upper shafts are divided from the lower by the embattled capitals of the pillars. Between the apex of the arches and the clerestory window sills there runs a band of quatrefoil arcading of pressed bricks but the shafts rise in front of this, uninterruptedexcept by the horizontal moulding at the foot of the sloping sills. The upper part of the shafts, just below the capitals, are fluted and similar small shafts stand in the intermediateposition in front of the clerestory windows. The main shafts carry braced tie-beams and the intermediate shafts carry braced rafters. The aisle roofs are carried by brick diaphragm arches at each bay which curve towards the nave pillars and have a notch at the top. All the walls are of exposed brick and the aisle windows stand within plain reveals of brick with moulded rere-arches. The lower courses of the wall, up to The floors are sill level, are of glazed bricks. of wood blocks with red tiles in the alleys.

That being the basic scheme, there are some idiosyncrasies. These include the canted walls each side of the chancel arch, that on the south pierced by an arch which leads from the lower part of the turret stair into the pulpit. At the opposite corner of the nave there is a little arch in the aisle which leads into a small space for the bell-ringer at the foot of the turret.

The chancel arch has an outer chamfer of brick which also forms the corner of the north and south walls of the chancel, while the inner moulded order of stone rests on moulded corbels. There are also traceried patterns on the lower parts of the arch itself. On the north side three arches similar in design to those of the nave but smaller in scale open into the Lady Chapel. There is an arch also from the north aisle into this chapel which has a relatively ordinary corbel against the north respond but on the south, there being no wall for it to abut because of the canted walls each side of the chancel arch, it comes down onto a detached stone column with a moulded base and a concave-sided moulded capital. On the opposite side, a small doorway in this position gives access to the turret stair and the pulpit.

The chancel has a paved floor and a panelled wooden roof of low pitch but with less eccentric features than that in the nave. The east wall has a window set high up with big fleurons round the arch, and panelling below it. The foundation stone is set at the foot of the wall, concealed by the high altar. On the south side a broad arch opens into the organ chamber behind the choir stalls and further east, within the sanctuary, a wide arch forms a canopy above the sedilia, simply a long bench, and the piscina with a decafoil bowl set under a shelf.