Church Heritage Record 608181

Nave of four bays with aisles and clearstorey; north and west porches; the lower parts of intended transepts; chancel with north and south vestries.

Nave 65ft by 28.5 ft ; aisles 11.5 ft wide; chancel 27ft by 28.5 ft

By Granville E S Streatfeild and Frank L Attwell, the designs being prepared in 1905. The site had been purchased for £ 1,250 in October 1902 , and an iron building formerly used by the Wesleyan Church as a Sunday School was hired and erected on the site of the present vicarage. as a temporary church, being dedicated by the Bishop of Barking on 28th February 1903.

This church is a particularly sad example of unachieved ambitions so often found in suburban churches where the First World War intervened to ensure that the building was never completed. 

The church presents its least cheerful aspect to the visitor approaching from the west. Nave and chancel are under one roof ridge, but only three bays of the nave were achieved to full height and the fourth bay is covered by a sloping slated roof with a domestic five- light dormer placed centrally. Below the eaves is a " temporary" west wall of brick pierced with lancet windows and in the middle is a porch with a simply moulded. pointed arch, built in 1950 when all hope of achieving the rest of the nave had finally been abandoned.

The bay design of the completed part of the nave is rather routine, with paired lancets in the aisles and two - light windows in the clearstorey. Against the western bay on the north is a porch with a pointed doorway having mouldings dying into canted jambs and a pent roof against the non existent transept. The windows all have brick relieving arches. Near the porch is the foundation stone dated 30 June 1906 and inscribed "VAE MIHI SI NON EVANGELIZAVERO " . The aisle buttresses are finished with slate caps suggesting that something more ambitious was intended. Against the eastern bays of the nave were intended double transepts, but only the lower parts of the walls were built, with catslide temporary roofs running down in line with the pitch of the nave roof. That on the south has a three light window of unusual design with tracery of three quatrefoils under a segmental arch and brick relieving arches in the west wall .

The chancel roof continues the line of the nave roof. Its north and south walls are flanked by low vestries built respectively in 1954 and 1966 in a simple lancet style with flat roofs . The angles have set -back buttresses and the large east window of five lights with Perpendicular tracery is one of the finer features of a sad building. Ignoring the temporary west wall which slices off the western bay of the nave and the incomplete transepts, the visitor can appreciate within the nave something of the architect's intentions . Clearly Streatfeild's building would have been a fine church, of good proportions and with careful details. 

The three- bay arcades are carried on octagonal stone pillars with moulded bases and capitals from which spring double- chamfered round arches. Pilasters run up from the capitals to spring again into arches framing the clearstorey windows at each bay, and these form the pattern for the tall arches opening into the transepts from the eastern nave bay. The clearstorey windows have paired cinquefoil- headed lights. with Decorated leaf tracery. Octagonal corbels with leaf finials carry the hammerbeams which support arch- braced roof principals. The tall arches opening into the transepts rest slightly awkwardly on responds. shaped as semi- octagonal pillars to match the arcades, and the space within the transepts is much more meagre than was intended, with simply a long slope of roof from the eaves down almost to the ground. The floor is paved with woodblocks.

The tall chancel arch has two orders of mouldings, the outer continuous and the inner carried on tall filletted shafts. The floor is scarcely higher than the nave, having only one step at the chancel arch and one at the rails, beyond which the sanctuary is paved with stone and the altar stands on a double footspace. The large clear - glazed east window has lights of equal height grouped 2-1-2 and in the side walls are two two - light windows. The walls are whitened and there is very little colour in the building. The chancel roof is boarded, of two bays with hammerbeams to the principals carried on long tapering corbels.