Church Heritage Record 623187

Complex; aisled nave of six and a half bays, but the south aisle is of four bays to the east of the apsidal baptistery, then comes the tower, with a low annex to the west of this; north-east vestry/sacristy, north-west porch, double-gabled south transept and vestry, north transept, chancel and Lady chapel to south.

Nave approx 32m (100 ft) (of which 12m is now taken up by the conversion) x 8m (25ft).

The church was built in 1873-4. The builders were the Dove Brothers, and it was designed by the architectural practice Newman & Billings of Tooley Street, London. They also designed over a dozen other churches in London, including All Saints Hatcham Park, this also in an idiosyncratic 13th-century style, but very different. The church was extended to the west in 1896-1900 by Aston Webb, designer of the Victoria and Albert Museum. He also seems to have designed the rood screen and the reredos of that date, and probably all the chancel fittings and furnishings, which were dedicated in memory of Queen Victoria after her death in 1902.

Externally the church appears almost unchanged since. The interior was subdivided into a west 2-storey conversion in 1972-4 by J A Lewis and Maxwell, New, Haile & Holland, with the eastern part of the nave and the chancel retained for worship. 

This is an unusual and complex building, clearly an expensive and ambitious piece of work. The architectural style chosen is an idiosyncratic French Gothic, with mostly the character of the early 13th-century but with features of later styles. The building is nothing if not lively, presenting an array of gables and rooflines, particularly on the south side, and with much attention to detail. At its core the building consists of a long aisled nave of six-and-a-half bays with a narrower and shorter chancel and Lady Chapel of two bays, and lower gabled transepts also of two bays each; the south transept has a double gable and takes up the south side of the Lady Chapel.

The west front has two 2-lights with reticulated tracery, below a round quatrefoil window in the gable; there are tow more of these in the clearstorey. The nave has a clearstorey pierced by paired short pointed windows containing quatrefoils in a form of plate tracery, but with round windows as in the west front in the two bays east of the tower. The 2-light aisle windows have neo-plate tracery with a roundel in the head. There are string-courses at springing and cill level. The bays are defined by short squat buttresses with one weathering of Portland stone. The transepts have a pair of tall narrow lancets with tracery heads. The chancel projects only one bay and is different in style, with a single window in the north sanctuary wall with a depressed head, a taster for the Tudor Gothic treatment of the chancel inside.  The window opposite, however, is a single cusped light. The vestry adjacent has partly boarded windows. The side chapel has a 3-light pointed window in the east wall.

The south aisle terminates after the third bay at the baptistery, which is apsidal and projects south for two bays. It has three cusped lancets within rectangular frames. Adjacent to this is the impressive (and unusual) tower, which makes a powerful visual statement, visible from some distance. This is of three stages and a spire, demarcated by stone bands. The lower stage has a projecting round stair turret at the south-west corner, which turns to angle buttresses in the second stage as at the other corner. There is a doorway in its south face, one of several means of access, Early English in style, with a pointed outer arch with billet around the inner of two orders, the outer plain; within this arch is a cusped inner arch, these two carried by a pair of columns on each side of the doorway with plain moulded abaci and bases. The western side of the doorway and arch merges into the turret.

Above the outer arch the gable is filled with diaper pattern terracotta under a gablet with a finial cross, which scarcely projects from the wall behind. Above this between the stone band to the next stage and a thinner stone band with circular piercings is a broad band of patterned red brick, which does not continue across the buttresses and turret.   Above this is the ringing stage, which is pierced by tall slim lancets, more slits than windows.  This stage is otherwise plain, with the exception of a thinner band of brick between stone bands as described above.  The belfry stage above has 2-light openings with oak louvres and filigree tracery, within projecting gables flanked by miniature stone spires behind which the spire rises, basically a tetrahedron but chamfered to give eight sides. Stone bands divide it horizontally into four sections, with herringbone brick infill.  A stone terminal and iron cross finial with brass weathercock tops off an impressive townscape feature.

The interior is whitewashed and pleasantly lit by lamps at clearstorey level. The nave arcades are carried on pointed arches with a single chamfer under a thin continuous hood-mould, the apex at the clearstorey string-course, nicely done.  The arcade is carried on columns with octagonal bases and pyramid stops at the corners and ornately carved waterleaf capitals, with the exception of the two western columns beyond the conversion, which have plain abaci. The arch-braces of the nave waggon roof are taken down to colonnettes with trumpet consoles at each bay. The south aisle floor has a length of exposed wooden boards, doubtless where pews used to stand; now there is one row of bench pews against the wall. The rest of the aisle and nave is laid with vinyl.

The arch to the Lady chapel is unusual, repeating the motif of the aisle windows with plain arches springing from a central pier with a central pier and capital carved as the arcades, but square in section. The chancel arch is treated as the arcades, the hoodmould springing from the clearstorey string-course, but with more detail: there is a dark-stained oak rood screen springing from angel corbels carried on clustered colonnettes, and an order of billet around the chancel arch. The rood screen is an introduction to the High Victorian chancel beyond, with excellent furnishings, the focus of which is the extraordinary Aston Webb reredos.

The chancel furniture is of high quality, choir stalls with panelled fronts and sides with blind tracery executed in an Arts and Crafts idiom, and with finials individually carved. Behind the three rows of choir stalls are wide pointed arches with stepped arches taken down to plain rectangular consoles. The north arch is filled by the organ with its displayed brass pipes, while the south arch is open to the Lady chapel but for an oak screen with pinnacles at console level, clearly of a piece with the choir stalls. The lower part of this may have been cut away at some point.

There are good quality encaustic tile floors in the chancel and sanctuary, raised by three steps to the altar, which is of stone, with a blind arcade of trefoiled arches to the front, gilded and painted. There are carved stone credence tables, sedilia and a piscina, and a marble plaque recording that these features were dedicated in memory of Queen Victoria in 1901.  This is all set within an architectural stone frame which runs around the walls of the sanctuary, Tudor in style, with tracery canopies. The head of the frame to the piscina on the south side has an ogee head rising to a colonette which in turn supports a corbel at the base of the cusped lancet here.