Church Heritage Record 629108

Aisled nave, chancel, (ecclesiastical) north vestry, south Lady chapel, north organ chamber/vestry, tower rising from the south-west corner of the chancel, west porch with flanking vestibules.

Nave 120ft (38m) x 40ft (13m).

The church was built in 1914-15 with money (£10,000) donated by Mr Heath Harrison to designs by E Stanley Hall. The site is on land belonging to the medieval manor of Copnor. The church replaced a mission chapel built shortly before to serve the expanding community. He also designed the vicarage, built in 1924.

The church’s fortunes continued to be dominated by World Wars, Luftwaffe bombs destroying the chancel and damaging the nave.  A church hall was built in 1948 adjacent to house the congregation and the church itself was not repaired until 1953-7, whereby the previously apsidal chancel was replaced with a simpler square-ended version, with a fine new stained glass window.  The Lady chapel was also rebuilt, again with a square end instead of an apse.

This is a large and quite grandly conceived church; it is worth noting that it was briefly considered for the role of cathedral of the nascent diocese in 1926.  Since the destruction of the original chancel the unchallenged focus for the eye is the bell tower, very reminiscent (though obviously smaller) of that at Westminster Cathedral, built a few years earlier.

The tower is of three stages, surmounted by a lead dome with cross finial rising from an octagon with pierced brick and terracotta panels.  The belfry stage beneath the dome is a circular drum with four diagonal buttresses, between which are open arcades of round-headed arches supported by columns with cushion capitals. 

The stage below has strip pilasters rising from the lower stage defining tall panels decorated with brick lozenges. A moulded stone band defines the tall lower stage, the pilasters defining pairs of tall round-headed blank arcades; there are two pairs of narrow windows lighting the stairwell in the west face.

The chancel was rebuilt with a tight hand on the purse-strings and this is reflected in its simplicity, nevertheless it succeeds in blending unobtrusively with the rest of the church.  The east wall is plain, with the exception of the three-light window set within a recessed arch.  The lights are round-headed and of equal height, leaving a wide tympanum above which is infilled with diagonal brickwork.  There is a blind arcade of short pilasters along the window sill. 

The chancel side walls are pierced by three single round-headed lights at the same height and dimensions as the nave clearstorey windows.  The roof is of the same pitch as the nave, which is slightly higher, the exposed gable left blank; all the roofs have stone copings.

The chancel is flanked by a low Lady chapel to the south and an almost symmetrical organ chamber/vestry to the north, both with flat roofs.  The latter has a row of rectangular domestic windows, while the Lady chapel has three similar windows in the south wall within round-headed recesses, flanked by square pilasters.

The nave has two sets of such windows equating to the large internal bays, each group of three windows flanked by pairs of thick gabled buttresses pierced with round-headed arches up to the height of the window arches, continuing up as square strip pilasters to the eaves.  The cast iron rainwater hoppers are noteworthy, dated 1914; there are faithful copies in the chancel. 

The west front is particularly well articulated, unfortunately the vicarage stands rather too close to it and impinges on the view.  There is a protruding narthex flanked by transeptal vestibules, entered from the sides through recessed round-arched doorways with double-leaf doors.  At the junction of the vestibules with the projecting narthex are buttresses with pierced archways, as with the nave. 

The projecting front is pierced by four rectangular windows within round-headed recesses of equal size, one each in the flanking vestibules and two flanking the west entrance, which has a projecting arched hood over double doors.  Above this, the west wall of the nave is pierced by three large round-headed windows within a broad recessed arch.  Above this again, the gable is decorated with tile bands to either side of a round-headed louvred opening.

the interior is quite sparsely furnished and there is a great sense of space. The narthex is defined by a three-bay arcade carried on round and engaged stone columns with cushion capitals and bases, the side bays partitioned off by glazed and panelled screens to create a memorial chapel and a children’s room.

The nave arcades are of two large bays with square brick piers and responds within which are groups of three narrow round-headed arches with continuous hood-moulds, giving access to the narrow aisles. These are again carried on round and engaged stone columns with cushion capitals and bases.

The clearstorey windows above are contained within arches spanning the full width of the bays which support the domical vaulted ceiling.  The chancel arch responds are plain and square in section, with a tall round-headed recess in the thickness of each with doors giving access to the Lady chapel and organ chamber/vestry.

The chancel is of one bay, barrel-vaulted, the ceiling painted white. The side walls have blind arcades of three bays, with a similar motif of arches springing from pilasters with scalloped capitals, with wood panelling below the brick tympani, the panelling continuing around the east wall.

The floor is of woodblock, with the exception of red and black tesserae down the length of the central aisle with cross arms at each end of the nave.