Church Heritage Record 623430

Nave of five bays with aisles and clearstorey and west narthex forming a baptistery and having porches at the north and south ends, that on the south intended as the base of a tower which has never been built; chancel with south chapel and north organ chamber and vestries.

Nave 72ft by 28ft; aisles  each 14½ft broad; narthex 8½ft by 28ft; chancel 33½ft by 24ft; south chapel 32½ft by 13ft.

The church was designed by JEK and JP Cutts and built in 1899-1900; the foundation stone was laid on 14 July in the former year by Princess Henry of Battenburg on behalf of Queen Victoria, and the church was consecrated on 25 July in the latter year by Dr Mandell Creighton, Bishop of London. John Edward Knight Cutts (1847-1938) and his brother John Priston Cutts (1854-1935) were in partnership for many years and between about 1873 and 1910 designed a large number of capacious brick churches of straightforward lancet style for the expanding suburbs, many being in London. 

This church was built from funds raised in memory of Charles John Vaughan (1816-1897), Vicar of Doncaster (1860-69), Master of the Temple (1869-94) and Dean of Llandaff (1879-996).

Well proportioned church in the Early English style with brick walls and stone dressings. 

The five-bay nave has two lancets in each bay of the aisles, the bays divided by small gabled buttresses, and two two-light windows in each bay of the clearstorey, the bays here divided by pilaster strips. The windows have stone tracery with a quatrefoil in the head. At the west end is a narthex under a pent roof between two porches. The narthex has lancet windows and the north-west porch is under a gable with a doorway facing west with two continuous chamfers; there are low angle buttresses at the corners. The south-west porch is much larger and seems to have been intended as the base of a tower. It has angle buttresses and a double doorway in the south wall with a cinquefoil piercing the trumeau. Above it are two lancets. The west gable of the nave has two two-light windows above the narthex, each with a sexfoil in plate tracery, and higher in the gable a sexfoil in a roundel opens into the roofspace.

The chancel roof is slightly lower than that of the nave, and is divided from it by a stone coping with square pinnacles at eaves level and a bell-cote of stone surmounted by a spike on the apex. The chancel is of three bays, with groups of three trefoil-headed lancets in plate tracery with pierced spandrels in each bay of the clearstorey and a large east window with five trefoil-headed lancets of varying lengths in plate tracery with a cinquefoil in the head. The lower part of the east wall is blind. The chapel on the south is also of three bays, with a single lancet to each bay, and has an east window of three trefoil-headed lancets and a sexfoil in plate tracery. On the north side away from the road, the organ chamber stands under a gabled roof and t the north of it are two vestries.

The interior has stone dressings and plastered and whitened walls. The pillars of the nave arcades are quatrefoil in plan with moulded bases and capitals, and the arches have two simply moulded orders. The narthex is linked to the nave by a three-bay arcade with similar details but slightly narrower arches. The floor is paved with wood blocks with alleys of a composite material. At clearstorey level a stringcourse encircles the nave and marks the sills of the clearstorey windows, and at each bay colonettes attached to the wall carry the arch-braced principals of the open timber roof.

The chancel arch is broad and tall, with triple shafts against the responds and mouldings on the arch like those on the nave arcades. It is spanned by a later oak screen and a rood-beam with a cross. At the east ends of the aisles arches open into the south chapel and organ chamber and at the west ends are doorways leading to the porches.

The chancel has pairs of arches on north and south spanned by oak screens, which lead to the organ chamber and chapel, and the three-bay roof is of similar design to that of the nave. It was lightened with colouring by FC Eden in 1924, when chevron patterns were added to the beams and sacred monograms to the panels between. The east window is set very high in the wall, leaving space for a reredos below, which is appropriately filled by the later triptych which now stands here. The floor is tiled with a number of stone steps rising to the high altar. In the south wall are two trefoiled arches for the piscina and credence and three cinquefoiled arches for the sedilia.