Church Heritage Record 646062

5-bay aisled nave with chancel under one roof.  Unfinished north-east tower.

[Approximate] Nave (not including elevated west bay) 11m (36ft) x 18m (60ft), aisles 5m (16ft) wide, chancel 10m (33ft) long.

Beeston is first recorded as Bestone in the Domesday Survey and would once have been a rural settlement. A turnpike road was built through Beestone in the 18th Century and two more in the 1820s. By the 19th Century, Beeston was a coal mining community with an iron works and a small railway (neither remain). In the 20th Century the land was sold and there was rapid development of red-brick back-to-back terrace houses.

Holy Spirit was founded by Holbeck, St Luke. An erroneous attribution is made in the list description to Bedford and Kitson, but the architects were G H Phillott (1851-1926) and H A Prothero (1848-1906) of Cheltenham. Plans were granted approval for a grant of £230 by the ICBS in 1903. The church was intended to seat 860. A foundation stone was laid in the east wall on the 26 September 1903 and the new church consecrated in November 1905. Until the building was completed worship took place in a temporary iron church on the site, relocated from St Luke’s. The north-east tower was never finished to its projected design and a temporary pyramid roof was installed instead. An adjacent church hall (the old iron church?) was replaced by a modern centre c.2000.

Despite its location almost on the crest of a hill, the church of the Holy Spirit has little presence within the street scene. This might have been different had the north-east tower been completed. Instead the Gothic Revival style stone building has a large solid square structure attached to the north-east corner with above it a simple timber bell-cote containing a single bell.

The exterior walls are quite plain. The aisles, which appear low from street level, have parapets and separate pitched roofs to the steeply pitched nave roof. They are punctuated by wide four-light windows beneath flattened arches, and buttresses with gabled coping stones support the walls between them. The west elevation is obscured by vegetation. Set high in the wall beneath square-headed surrounds are two two-light cusped windows with a quatrefoil above each. The east wall has a seven-light window with decorated tracery and a hood-mould that stretches up to the gable and opens to a niche with a statue of the Virgin and Child. At the base is a date stone. Both gables have a stone cross at their apex.

The church is entered from the north-west which opens into an internal wooden porch. A raised platform extends the width of the church at the entry level and is separated from the main body of the church (seven steps lower) by a wooden balustrade. The same ascent is made up to the chancel at the east end. To the south of this raised area a collection of wood chairs and a south-facing altar form a memorial chapel and a columbarium is fixed to the west wall. In the centre is an elaborate wooden canopy with fixed stalls which covers the font. At the north end is a stone stoup.

A high, wooden boarded, barrel-vaulted ceiling with decorative strips and ribs extends the full-length of the church (nave and chancel differentiated only by floor height). The main trusses extend down to stone corbels above the columns of the high five-bay arcades. Wide aisles either side have lean-to boarded ceilings. The overall impression is of a vast and open interior and a sense of height not anticipated from the exterior. The walls are plastered and painted, with the stone octagonal piers and arches left exposed. Flood and spot-lights light the space. Stations of the Cross are hung on the north and south walls.

The floors are tiled throughout in red ceramic tiles with level wood-block flooring beneath the areas seated with the original wooden chairs. The west end of the nave has been cleared with some pews (perhaps relocated here) against the wall of the west-end platform. A kettle point is situated in the north aisle and a childrens’ area in the south. Radiators are fixed to each wall. Doors to the exterior in the south-east and south-west corners provide access to the small curtilage and to the church hall which is set only a short distance apart.

In the north-east corner a chapel is separated from the north aisle by a low stone wall and is raised by three steps. In its south-west corner is a door to the tower stair. The chapel has its own altar, a three-light stained glass east window and various plaques including one which records the redecoration of the chapel in 1948. Outside the chapel, on the east wall of the nave, is a sculpture of St Martin sharing his cloak with the beggar which was installed to commemorate the Golden Jubilee in 1955 as recorded by a plaque.

The chancel is raised by seven steps and separated by a wall. Instead of a chancel arch a timber rood, featuring painted figures of Christ on the Cross in the centre, marks the change. To the north and south sides are stained pine choir stalls on raised platforms. Beyond the stalls to the south is the organ. The sanctuary is raised by a further step. It features several grand 17th-century style oak furnishings which were installed here in 1950 and thought to have come from the priory of St Wilfrid, Little Woodhouse (was a Clergy School now student flats) designed by Temple Moore.  The altar is raised by a further step. Behind it the seven-light east window is centrally placed within a recessed bay, with tracery detail, which extends down to the floor.

Access to a large basement spanning the east end of the church is via stone steps beneath the organ in the south aisle. There is a choir vestry with wooden floor and cupboards and a small clergy vestry which accesses the boiler room, which is disused. East facing windows have been blocked.