Church Heritage Record 602060

The original church was a straightforward building typical of its date, with west tower, nave with north and south aisles and chancel. Holmes, however, in enlarging the church chose to double the width of the south aisle, thus making the plan lop-sided, on account of practical necessity rather than aesthetic consideration. The south aisle has a porch towards the west end and beside this a small turret containing the stair to the west gallery. The chancel was also enlarged at this time, and an organ chamber was built on the south side in the form of a transept. This was more recently used as the Lady Chapel and is now not used at all.

The original church was built to designs by J.L. Pedley, the foundation stone being laid on 17th May 1852 and the building being consecrated on 17th May 1853. The enlarged south aisle, with organ chamber and lengthened chancel were built in 1865 to designs by Edward Holmes. The parish was carved out of St. Nicholas, King's Norton. The architect estimated that the church would cost £3,600 and the project received £300 from the second Commissioner's grant. The building and the site together cost £4,575.

Of the external features of this church only the north flank of the nave and the west tower remain undisturbed. The tower, of four stages marked by stringcourses, has the main entrance to the church in the west wall of the ground stage, with small lancets in the north and south walls to light the entrance porch within. The next stage is lit by a two-light window in the west wall with cusped Y tracery, and also by similar small lancets to north and south. The third stage has small lancets in each of the three visible faces, together with clock faces placed immediately above them. The topmost stage has the customary paired lancet bell-openings with timber louvres. Above a corbel table with griffin like gargoyles at the angles rises an embattled parapet with broken pinnacles at each corner. The stair, which is contained by an octagonal turret at the north-east angle, rises above the parapet in a larger octagonal pinnacle.

The north aisle shows the original external appearanceof the church, the wall pierced by two-light Y- traceried windows with coarse cusping in the heads of the lights. The south aisle is a much more ambitious later replacement, of large enough dimensions to form a church in its own right and indeed so it appears when the church is first seen from the south. In the west gable is a large four-light window with Geometric tracery set high in the wall, the three roundels arranged horizontally below proclaiming the presence of a gallery within. This is reached by a spiral staircase housed within a turret beside the south porch. The porch itself has a simple two-centred arch doorway and a spherical triangle to admit light in the south wall. The remaining four bays of the south aisle, each separated by a buttress from its neighbour, are provided with three-light windows with a variety of designs in the tracery, all geometrical.

At the eastern end, the aisle abuts awkwardly against the south organ chamber, which externally is treated as a transept to the chancel, with cross-gabled roof. In the south wall this has two lancets with a roundel filled with geometric tracery above; at the south-east corner is a chimney stack. The chancel projects further east beyond the organ chamber, giving enough wall-space for one lancet light in the south wall, with a trefoil in the head. It is balanced by a similar light on the north wall; the large east window, of five lights with three sexfoils in the tracery, is now blocked.

The interior of the church is typical of a plain routine work of the period, the arcades with cylindrical pillars being of five bays, the capital of each column octagonal in order to effect a smoother transition from the round top of the column to the moulded arches above. The clerestory (not visible from the ground outside on the south) has small two-light windows which make little difference to the overall aspect of the church. The roof has arch-braces at each bay, and similar braces mid-way between which are supported on simple corbels just above the clerestory windows. The west gallery runs continuously across the church from the north wall of the north aisle to the south wall of the south, supported on cast-iron piers and with a wooden panelled front. To the north and south of the doorway leading to the base of the tower are vestries contrived under the gallery, and the organ stands in the middle of the space above, the simple pipe-front blocking the upper part of the tower arch. The north aisle is of little interest, under a pent roof, while the south aisle has a widegabled roof with scissor-braces to each bay and wall-posts supported on foliated stone corbels.

The chancel arch obviously belongs to the later building date, and is perhaps the most striking instance in the church of how taste had changed in a dozen years between 1853 and 1865; no longer the restrained geometricality of the arches of the nave arcades, but a forthright example of High Victorian Gothic, with luscious foliage on the corbels (of remarkable naturalism) and, by comparison, slender marble shafts rising from these corbels to equally lavish foliated capitals, the shafts standing several inches away from the responds. The arch itself, outlined by a hood-mould terminating in stops carved as angels, has an inner order with single leaves set at regular intervals along the recessed moulding.

Since the east window was blocked (after war damage, when the stained glass was lost), the chancel has lost all its source of light save the meagre north and south single lancets. It must therefore always be lit by articical light, and the place of the window is taken up by a timber reredos with five painted panels surmounted by panels of pierced lattice-work instead of canopies. Low at each side is a dado of blind quatrefoils of stone which give an indication of the style of the reredos which once stood here. The low stone wall at the entrance to the chancel also shows the sort of straightforward gothic detail which characterised the original furnishings. The sanctuary is now paved in marble, and has a credence shelf on the north side within a gabled recess and sedilia on the south composed of three gabletted arches on free-standing marble colunettes with oddly placed crockets on the gablets. On the south side of the chancel is a chapel, originally built to house the organ, but latterly used as the Lady Chapel (judging by the theme of the stained glass in the south wall). This also opens to the south aisle of the nave through a pair of arches with foliated capitals to the responds and central pier.