A good and complete 1930s church of the traditional Early Christian style popular with interwar Catholic churches, with the majority of its original fittings and furnishing remaining. The church is almost identical in design to the same architects’ English Martyrs, York. 

Newland is a suburb approximately two miles north of the city centre. Pearson Park, Hull’s first public park, was opened in 1862 and was a stimulus to middle-class villa development in the area. Mass was being said for the people of Newland from 1896 and the future parish of St Vincent was established in 1903 with the building of a school and chapel on Queen’s Road, designed by Brodrick, Lowther & Walker. The chapel was in an upper room, later used as a school hall. On 27 August 1932, The Tablet reported that the recently-completed church of the English Martyrs, York (qv) ‘has been the subject of such enthusiastic approval that an identical church is to be erected at Hull’. The new church was designed by the same (Hull-based) architects, and opened in 1933. It cost £9,000.

Description

See list description, below. Built of thin red bricks with Roman tile roofs. The list description refers to Romanesque style but this might be better described as Early Christian or Byzantine style. The listing is a relatively recent one and the description is accurate and comprehensive. The 1930s communion rails of intersecting circles have been adapted and placed in front of the first row of pews. This work was done as part of the 1983 reordering, when the altar was brought forward and the font moved to its present position (the baptistery became St Vincent’s Chapel). The reader’s lectern was made from the former tabernacle door (upper panel) and the letters from the communion rail gates. The 1930s wood carving is by Ernest Pickering, described as ‘Hull’s leading wood-carver’ of the time.

List description

II

Roman Catholic Church. 1932. By Jopling & Wright. Brick with brick dressings and pantile roofs. Romanesque style. Nave with clerestorey and chancel under continuous roof, aisles with internal chapels, porches, vestry, campanile to south-west. Clerestorey has 7 round-headed windows on each side. Eastern apse has dentillated eaves cornice and on either side, a narrow flat-headed window. West end has a tall rebated round-arched recess with a stained-glass window. Below it, a shallow gabled porch with a pair of composite columns. Round arched recess with a pair of panelled glazed doors with metal grilles, and above the enriched lintel, a coat of arms in the tympanum. Beyond, on either side, a small flat-headed window. In the left return angle, a half-round stair turret with slit windows. South aisle, linked to campanile by coped porch, has cogged eaves and coped parapet. Single window at the west end and 2 smaller windows at the east end. South side has 4 windows to right of the campanile. Porch has to west a round-arched pair of doors with a metal grilled overlight. Above it, a square
latticed window. North aisle has 5 windows to north and 2 small windows to east. Vestry, to south-east, has a gable stack. South gable has a round-arched recess with 2 windows, flanked by single windows. East side has a Venetian window. West side has a moulded round-arched doorway and to right, a single window. Square campanile, 4 stages, has a single flat-headed window on each side to the lower stages. Rebated corners with corbelled turrets at the top of the third stage. Corniced octagonal bell stage has ribbed corners and 4 double bell openings with central shaft. Set back canted roof topped with a cross.

INTERIOR has moulded arches without piers to single bay chancel and to half-domed apse. 5-bay arcades with round ashlar piers and cushion capitals, and moulded brick round arches with linked hoodmoulds. Painted sill band to clerestorey. Painted waggon roof on corbels to nave and chancel. West end has a rebated round arch containing the organ and spanned by a bow-fronted gallery. Below, a central pair of glazed doors, flanked by 3 glazed doors to the confessionals. Aisles have strutted lean-to roofs and windows with patterned stained glass. South aisle has Lady Chapel to east, with altar flanked by stained-glass windows, and a squint into the chancel. To south-east, a round-arched doorway. Chapel of St Vincent at west end has a wooden altar with figure and a stained-glass war memorial window. North aisle has similar Sacred Heart chapel to east, with altar flanked by stained-glass windows. Fittings include an eggcup font on a cruciform stand, panelled wooden lectern and wooden benches with shaped ends.

(Buildings of England: Pevsner N: Yorkshire: York and The East Riding: Harmondsworth: 1972-: 283; St Vincent’s Church (Golden Jubilee history): Norton, S: Hull: 1983-).

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Entry amended by AHP 14.01.2021

Heritage Details