Built as a utilitarian hall that could in part be used as a church. Subsequent alterations have made an attractive neighbourhood centre but the complex is of no architectural significance.

St Stephen’s was created in 1966 from the parish of St Bede to serve the growing housing estates of Greatfield on the eastern edge of Hull. It was built as a combined church and hall, with the intention that a future church would be built to the north.

Description

The church is a utilitarian structure, a concrete portal frame with brick cladding and concrete tiled roof. A band of high-level windows light the interior, the east aspect alone has a remotely ecclesiastical character, with a cross on the wall and a pointed arch to the window above. The north side has a cheerful painted mural announcing St Stephen’s Neighbourhood Centre and acknowledging support from The Big Lottery Fund.

The majority of the building internally comprises the hall with the two easternmost bays screened off as the church (though the screen can be opened when a larger space is needed). The church was re-opened on 5 October 2007 on the completion of repairs following flood damage earlier in the year. The floor and seating are all new. On the east wall a recent copy of the St Damiano Cross, the original of which hangs in the church of St Clare in Assisi. The church is now entered from a corridor created along the south side of the church in 2002 by Michael Coyle of Knight & Lowe, architects of Beverley. This corridor forms a kind of cloister to a garden to the south.

Heritage Details