Church Heritage Record 623079

West tower and spire, large rectangular nave with galleries, porches at each corner with stairs to the galleries within; chancel with north chapel (originally the organ chamber) and south vestry with chapel above (now the parish office).

The church was built in 1846-7 to designs by Thomas Cundy II, and the new building was consecrated on 24 June 1847 by Bishop Blomfield of London. The total cost was about £11,000 but the spire was not finished until 1864. A parish was assigned to the new building in 1850. Thomas Cundy II (1790-1867) was the son of Thomas Cundy I, surveyor to Lord Grosvenor's estates in Westminster and Pimlico, with whom he worked until the father died in 1825, upon which the son succeeded to the practice and the surveyorship. His works include several buildings for the Westminster estates which were by then being developed by Thomas Cubitt, and from the late 1840's onwards he was assisted by his son, Thomas Cundy III.

As with many of the Cundy's earlier churches, a chancel became desirable to accommodatemore elaborate ritual later in the century, and the foundation stone at St. Mark's for a new chancel was laid on 23 June 1866 by H.R.H. Prince Leopold, Duke of Albany, the youngest son of Queen Victoria to whom the Vicar, Canon Duckworth had been tutor. The plans were by Benjamin Ferrey (1810-1880) and allowed for an organ chamber on the north side so that the organ could be brough down from the west gallery. New porches were built towards the east end of the nave, and the nave roof was covered with boarding. The building work was finished in 1878 and for the next few years work proceeded on decorating the new building. The church was re-opened on 24 February 1878 and rededicated on 20 July. The chancel arch was embellished in 1886 by Messrs. Underwood.

The only other addition to the church was the south-west baptistory, erected in memory of Canon Robinson Duckworth (d.1911) which was designed by Charles Stanley Peach, FRIBA, and built in 1912 (foundation stone laid 22 June 1912).

The church stands well amongst the broad leafy roads of St. John's Wood, and its tall spire is a familiar feature of the area. The lithograph in the church shows the design virtually as built, but in the drawing (by T. Bury), the feeling is more genuinely mediaeval than in the finished building. The tower is of four unequal stages, with a shafted doorway at the foot of the west front and a large traceried window above, these two stages being undivided by stringcourses. Above the window is a clock face set within a square moulding set lozenge-wise, and there are small lancets in the north and south faces at this point. An octagonal turret housing the spiral staircase terminates at this level rather abruptly; it looks as though it once had a more elegant roof. The uppermost stage, divided from those below by a moulded stringcourse, houses the bells and has two two-light belfry openings in each face with tracery of standard design of a pointed quatrefoil. The openings are shafted and outlined by moulded hoods. There are angle buttresses at each corner of the tower which rise through to the parapet where they terminate below pinnacles with crocketted caps. The parapet is pierced and has a flowing cusped motif which also appears round the walls of the church. The broach spire has widely spaced crockets up the edges and three tiers of lucarnes in alternating faces. The lucarnes look larger and more convincingly mediaeval in the engraving than on the building. At the apex of the spire there is a metal weathercock.

The side walls of the church are divided into eight bays by tall slender buttresses which all rise above the parapets into crocketted pinnacles carved with many small heads, giving an unarchaeological but rather festive air to the building. The windows are of two slender lights with alternating designs of flowing tracery. In the second and eighth bays there are two- storeyed porches enclosing stone staircases to the galleries. At the west end of the south aisle is the later octagonal baptistery, sympathetically provided with buttresses, window tracery and pierced parapets similar in style to the body of the church. The octagonal slated roof makes an attractive feature in the usual view of the church from the cross-roads to the south-west. Large pinnacles from above the chancel arch have been removed.

The chancel externally is faced with the same Kentish ragstone as the nave and tower, and has a large two-storeyed transept to the south with a vestry below and the parish office above, approached by the nearby gallery staircase. East of this another vestry, roofed parallel with the chancel, conceals the rest of the south chancel wall. It has a two-light east window. The chancel east gable is pierced by a large five-light traceried window with the main lights grouped 2-1-2 and a cusped cinquefoil above. On the north side there is another transept, intended as an organ chamber but now arranged as a chapel. This has a two-light window in the east wall and a two-light window copying those of the nave in the north wall. The angle buttresses also copy those of the nave.