A simply detailed neo-Georgian brick church of the 1960s by Goodhart-Rendel’s partner, the brick campanile adding an Italianate touch. 

The church was built to serve the post-war Robin Hood Estate and new housing in Kingston Vale. A Mass centre was established in 1955. The present site, which then included a large house called Coombe Leigh, was given in 1958 by Mr Brenninkmeyer. The present church was built in 1960 from designs by F.G. Broadbent RIBA, who inherited the architectural practice of his distinguished associate H. S. Goodhart-Rendel after the latter’s death in 1959. This is his second church. In 1966 St Ann’s was made a separate parish. In 1968 the old house was demolished and a new hall and presbytery, also designed by Broadbent, were added to the rear of the church, and a large car park was formed, bounded by the wall of Richmond Park.

Description

St Ann’s church is designed in a simplified Georgian style. The walls are faced with buff brick with red brick window arches. The roof is covered with Roman tiles. The plan comprises an aisleless nave and narrower sanctuary under a continuous pitched roof, and a square northwest tower with a pyramidal roof. The west front has a broad central entrance door with a Doric surround continued up into a large round-headed window, all set in a shallow round-headed relieving arch which rises into the broad gable. To either side of the doorway are small circular windows. The external corners have red-brick quoins. The side elevations of the nave have four round-headed window openings in red brick surrounds; the windows are of eighteenth-century pattern with  small  rectangular  leaded  lights.  The  sanctuary  has  a  triplet  of  similar  but smaller windows on each side. The east end adjoins the later parish hall but presbytery and has a round-headed window in the head of the gable.

The interior is simply finished with plain plastered and painted walls and a pitched ceiling faced in acoustic tiles. At the west end of the nave is a simple gallery with a modern organ case of limed oak set centrally on the gallery front. The sanctuary is raised one step above the nave, with modernistic marble chancel rails with metal gates. The church is mostly clear-glazed, but the east and west windows and one of the nave windows have stained glass by the John Hardman Studio. The nave has plain benches, presumably original. The organ was installed in 1978.

Heritage Details