Church Heritage Record 624035

Aisled nave, west apsidal baptistery, vestry rooms, transepts, chancel and organ chamber, north porch.

Nave 24m (75ft) x 13m (40ft).  Chancel 10m (31ft)x 11m (34ft)

The foundation stone for the church is dated 21st November 1914, and it would appear that the entire building is of this date. The apsidal baptistery at the west end was not included on the original plans but was built at the same time, although plans for a lady chapel to the south were not realised – as the blocked archways reveal. 

Externally, the style of the building is clearly Gothic, shown in the window tracery and pointed arches of the transeptal and main east and west windows. There is a continuous tiled pitched roof for both nave and chancel and low aisles to either side of the nave.

The west gable is the most interesting; there are a jumble of features none of which give a definitive focal point. Two tall single lights, effectively set into wide buttresses, flank the small apsidal baptistery.

Above this is a 3-light window with thick terracotta mullions and odd cusped tracery with quatrefoils, semi-circles and mouchettes in the heads, this free Gothic style is mimicked in the two other windows of the elevation and also throughout the church. Rising from the south-west corner is a tall bell tower of two stages surmounted by a cross.

There are symmetrical porches projecting from the western bays, with gabled fronts and four-centred arched heads. The clearstorey also has three windows with three lancets each set within segmental arches. The aisle and vestry room windows are rectangular and of three lights with thick mullions, except for two single light windows at either end.

The organ chamber and transepts each have separate projecting gabled roofs and windows set within pointed arches of two and three lights respectively. The north transept extends slightly further than the aisle and organ chamber and has a doorway to the east side of it, both the door and window of the transepts are flanked by brick pilasters.

At the eastern end of the north aisle there are vestry rooms and a passageway which forms the external wall to connect with the transept, (the organ room is effectively behind this passage but rises above it). The east gable is very simple and contains a window with six cusped lights and rather robust tracery in the head with quatrefoils and semi-circles, as seen on the opposing gable.

In the south chancel wall there are three small 2-light windows in the chancel wall as opposed to one in the north, and there is evidence of blocked arches where the original plans for a lady chapel were not realised.  The south elevation is less exposed than the north because of the vegetation marking the boundary of the garden, including a tree which has grown close to the wall to the east of the south transept.

Inside, the building is quite different in character, architecturally unadorned and surprisingly spacious. Despite the Gothic detail of the windows the interior is undeniably Romanesque, seen most clearly in the high nave, narrow aisles and round arches of the arcading. The nave arcades are of three bays of round arches with a single chamfer, carried on square piers. These continue as pilasters, rising to create segmental arches enclosing the clearstorey windows.

The aisles are relatively narrow in comparison to the nave and have transverse round arches that die into the columns of the arcading; there are small rectangular windows of either single or triple lights; to the north west of the north aisle there is a single pane of stained glass.

Both the aisles and the nave are heavily pewed, much of which is visibly distorted, revealing the subsidence of the building.  The floors are also affected and the screed in the west end is cracked and curling; similarly in the chancel area the concrete is breaking up severely.  The problem is demonstrated most acutely in the west apsidal baptistery which is currently shored up from the outside and closed. The windows have been filled in and the cracks in the brickwork are obvious. 

The south transept has a blocked archway on the east wall and this is also true of the south chancel wall, both indicative of the intended south chapel. The south chancel wall also has a plain sedilia. To the north side of the chancel is the organ, housed in a separate room with display pipes showing through pointed arches into the chancel and the transept. 

A squat brick wall topped with white stone coping divides the chancel from the nave and the pulpit is built into this structure. The roof in the nave and chancel is false hammerbeam; just below the roof the chancel and transept walls show evidence of rising salts.