Building » Hull – Corpus Christi

Hull – Corpus Christi

Spring Bank West, Hull, East Yorkshire

A modest and architecturally unexceptional Gothic church, unusual for being designed by a bishop.

The parish was created to serve the Derringham Bank estate in northwestern Hull, one of eight new parishes created in the diocese in the decade before the Second World War. The foundation stone was laid in July 1932 and the building was opened in October of the same year. Designed to seat 300, the church cost £2,500, financed by the Church Extension Fund. Bishop Thomas Shine is credited with the design, although he had no formal architectural training. F. Spink of Bridlington was probably responsible for putting the design on paper and was the builder.

Description

A small red brick (in English garden wall bond, with thin sandstone dressings) gabled building of a main rectangular space with a projecting gabled west porch, a sacristy at the northeast corner, a smaller lean-to projection in the corresponding position on the south side (for confessionals) and a sanctuary with apse, though with a flat end externally. Plain Gothic style. Tall lancet side windows to the nave, separated by taller buttresses. The front has a gabled porch with small, paired lancets to either side and a three-light window above under a four-centred arch and with painted timber tracery. Pointed arched niche in the gable with a relief carving set in. Small single lancets to either wide of the sanctuary and a pair on the east wall, all set high up. Foundation stone set low down on the right-hand side of the front, the lettering becoming illegible. Smaller stone above commemorating the seventieth anniversary of the church.

The interior is plastered and painted with a stained tongue and groove boarded ceiling of canted form. Parts of trusses exposed and metal tie rods. Plain chamfered arch to the sanctuary without imposts. West gallery with Gothic panelled front. Later glazed screen below to create a narthex. Open-backed benches, timber high altar and nave altar, ambo; none of them of special interest. Stations of the Cross, small tablets, probably plaster, with scenes in shallow relief. Unusual heavy timber niches (four in number, set either side of opposing windows) with figures of saints probably brought from elsewhere. Saints in recessed niches either side of the sanctuary arch.

Amended by AHP 14.01.2021

Heritage Details

Architect: Bishop Thomas Shine and F. Spink of Bridlington

Original Date: 1932

Conservation Area: No

Listed Grade: Not Listed