Church Heritage Record 627448

5-bay aisled nave and 3-bay chancel and north chapel, north-west porch, smaller south porch, south east projecting chapel. 

Nave 21.5m (65ft) by 8m (25ft).

The church was built as a daughter church of St Peter’s, the construction beginning with the nave in 1879, designed by Alfred Waterhouse. The chapels and chancel were completed to designs by G E Bodley in 1902-5, with subsequent internal elaboration and a north-west porch added in 1920 as a War Memorial by Sir Ninian Comper. The interior was renovated and partly reordered in the mid 1970’s.

This is quite a large and impressive Victorian town church. It is difficult to appreciate the church from the outside, one has to stand on the other side of London Road for the best view from the north-west. 

The west front has a tall narrow gable with a twin belcote giving some vertical emphasis. The brickwork is decorated with banding and inset crosses. Focus is provided by the tall stepped triple-lancet west window within a pointed recess, set above a pointed west doorway. The west aisle windows are pairs of simple pointed lancets. There are good lead rainwater goods and hoppers throughout.

The 1920 north porch is a two-storey building in a Tudor style with an elaborate west front. This consists of a four-centred doorway with continuous mouldings rising to an ogee finial, above which is a niche with a stone statue of St Bartholomew flanked by shields with symbols of SS Peter and Bartholomew (keys, knives). Two north windows are 3-lights with rounded heads within square-headed frames.

The aisle and clearstorey windows are also lancets, set in alternate groups of two and three in the aisle bays and paired in the clearstorey.  The western two bays of the north aisle are taken up by the porch.

The simplicity and conservatism of the “lancet” nave contrasts starkly with Bodley’s chancel and chapels, which are in an early Perpendicular style.  They are also in red brick contrasting with the more orange brick of the older part of the church, and lacks banding and other decorative features.

The east façade of the chancel has an impressive, large 5-light window with Perpendicular tracery and stained glass. There are twin angle buttresses terminating in gablets, and a further such buttress under the window. There is a small slit window high in the gable.

The north chapel has a similar but smaller three-light east window. It protrudes above the aisle at the west end, with two square headed windows, the smaller of which is high in the gable.  The north wall is pierced by four lancets, with gabletted buttresses between and angle buttresses of the same type. 

The south chapel is a three-bay low block with a flat roof which protrudes beyond the chancel to the east, the walls pierced by 3 two-lights with cusped tracery in square-headed frames with labels over. A small doorway with a pointed head gives access, with a hood-mould over. There is a small south porch, again a square plain block with flat roof, adjacent.

The wide and just pointed aisle arcades are double chamfered, carried on round polished granite piers with Perpendicular moulded octagonal capitals and bases. The chancel and chapel arches are all in the same style. The archway to the south chapel has been glazed in.

The nave and aisle walls are whitewashed throughout, masking the polychromy of the brickwork. The aisle and clearstorey windows are set within wide depressed recesses. The nave has been re-ordered with catalogue chairs facing towards a nave altar.  The organ console sits rather disconsolately in the middle of the nave behind the altar.

Looking east the view is dominated by a large dark oak panelled chancel screen and rood loft with impressive carved rood (by a Herr Zwink of Oberammergau) across the width of the church and of one piece with carved screens between the chancel and side chapels.  These were designed by Bodley and made by F R Newbury in 1907. There is a draught lobby in the same style inside the south door.

Beyond the 3-bay screen one can glimpse the chancel, which has an elaborately and freshly painted, slightly pointed barrel-vault ceiling (also in the north chapel), catching the light from the fine east window and preventing the chancel being excessively darkened by the dark oak of the rood loft and furnishings, indeed the contrast is very effective and doubtless intended.

The chancel floor is of black and white tiles in a chequerboard pattern (also found in the north chapel), with the names of parishioners set into some of the tiles in front of the sanctuary steps. Only one set of stalls is still in situ, the others replaced by red upholstered chairs. 

The sanctuary is very high Church, with an embroidered dossal curtain and flanking screens with riddel posts, fine 17th century sanctuary lamps and large dark and gold paschal candlestick holders. The chancel is currently used by the Greek Orthodox community for worship.

The floors are of woodblock with some tiled strips laid in a chevron pattern and carpeting. The nave roof is of oak and of tie-beam construction, the members carved with quatrefoils and carried down to simple moulded corbels.