Church Heritage Record 623226

Five-bay nave with aisles and clerestory, tower and spire within the west bay of the south aisle; south porch; chancel with south transeptal organ chamber and north vestries. There is a later choir vestry east of the chancel, approached by a short passage from the vestry.

The church was designed by F. and H. Francis and built in 1868, being consecrated on 30 July that year. The spire was completed in August 1869. The church succeeded a temporary iron church, which had been given a parish (taken from that of St. George, Brentford) in 1867. Frederick John Francis (1818-1896) and his brother Horace Francis (1821-1894) were in partnership and provided a number of good straightforward churches in a gothic style between about 1850 and 1880. They designed several other churches in and about London, of which Christ Church, Lancaster Gate (demolished but for the spire in 1978) was perhaps the finest. Their rebuilding of the parish church of St. Elphin, Warrington in 1859-67, provided south Lancashire (or, now, Cheshire) with a magnificent needle-thin spire which may be seen for miles. St. Paul, Brentford, was damaged during the Second World War and restored in 1953 by Michael Arthur James Farey.

This church is typical of many built in the fast expanding diocese of London in the 1860's. The style is thirteenth century and the material Kentish ragstone. The steeple is placed at the south-west corner of the church so that it may be visible along both branches of St. Paul's Road - from the south and from the west. The tower is of three stages, with the principal entrance in the west face of the lowest stage. This is a doorway with nook- shafts and a moulded two-centred arch. There is a two-light window in the south wall. The middle stage has two trefoiled lancets with quatrefoils in the heads in the west face and a clock face in the south wall. The uppermost stage has two-light louvred openings in each face and at the midpoint of this stage the diagonal buttresses terminate. Access to the upper floors is by a staircase within a square turret at the south-east angle which terminates at the middle of the second stage. The broach spire rises without a parapet above a moulded course decorated with fleurons and at the corners with busts of angels holding shields. There are lucarnes low on the principal faces, repeating the design of the belfry openings on a smaller scale under crocketted gablets, and the tall spire is banded three times with small incised motifs like the heads of trefoiled arches which have eroded until they are almost invisible.

The south aisle has three-light windows with geometrical tracery in each bay, divided by buttresses, with a porch in the third bay from the east. The north aisle has two separate lights in the west bay, two-light windows in the three middle bays and a three light window in the eastern bay, which is slightly wider. The clerestory has two pairs of trefoil-headed lancets in each bay, the bays being divided by pilaster strips. The west window has five lights with two septfoils and a circle containing three quatrefoils above. The gable is very steeply pitched.

The north and south walls of the chancel are for the most part obscured by lower buildings - the vestry on the north and the organ-chamber on the south, both under cross-gables like small transepts. The organ-chamber, being on the more visible side of the church, is more decoratively treated, with a doorway and a window and a rose window containing six trefoils round a cinquefoil. The east chancel window has five lights, the middle one taller than the outer pairs, with two sexfoils and a circle containing five quatrefoils in roundels above. There are diagonal buttresses at the angels and moulded hoods with stops carved as heads to all the windows. The choir vestry, which is only attached to the main church by a passage, is a later brick rectangular construction.

The interior has wall surfaces of exposed brick which are now whitewashed. Originally, however, they were banded with bricks of two colours. The arcades have quatrefoil pillars with richly naturalistic carving on the capitals, including passion flowers, roses, holly, oak, mallow, grapes, ferns, ivy and lilies. The arches are moulded and are outlined by moulded hoods terminating in naturalistic carvings of similar plants - one has a squirrel eating nuts, another a bird pecking blackcurrants and a third a snake coiled round an apple. Above these are corbels, again richly carved with leaves and flowers, supporting detached shafts which carry the principal roof timbers. These are scissor-braced with similar, slightly lighter, scissor braces at the middle of each bay. The roof is of very steep pitch. The floor is paved with red tiles intersected by black lines and buff florets, and there are wooden boards under the pews. A doorway at the east end of the north aisle opens into a passage leading to the vestry and an arch at the east end of the south aisle opens into the organ chamber. The west bay of the south aisle is occupied by the base of the tower.

The chancel arch is tall and wide with a continuous outer chamfered order and moulded inner orders resting on colonettes which in turn rest on corbels, one carved with arum lilies and the other with bulrushes. The arch is outlined by a moulded hood terminating in carved heads and there is an oak chancel screen. The chancel floor, which is four steps above the nave is close-carpetted but is tiled underneath. An arch on the south opens into the organ chamber and of the east of it there is a window of two lights. Opposite this window an arch in the north wall opens into the vestry and is closed by a wooden screen. The chancel roof is of three bays with arch-braces merging into scissor-braces. A trefoiled arch in the south wall of the sanctuary houses a white marble credence shelf.