An interwar brick church of traditional form but with modernistic detailing, built to serve a new and expanding suburban housing development. The broad, squat tower is a local landmark.

The parish for this suburban district was founded in 1926. The church and presbytery were built in 1937 from designs by McCarthy & Collings of Coalville, Leicestershire.  The parish school behind the church opened in 1961. The church was consecrated in 1966.

Description

The church is designed in a modernistic style typical of the interwar period. The external walls are faced with brown brick laid in stretcher bond. The plan comprises a west tower with west porch, a continuous nave and sanctuary with side aisles and a south porch. The west tower is rectangular on plan with bold triple buttresses on each face with slit windows between and a plain parapet. A small brick porch is attached to the west face. The main body of the church is four bays long with angled brick buttresses dividing the bays and a plain parapet concealing the roof. The flat-roofed aisles are three bays long with the same kind of bay divisions. Both the aisles and the clerestory have a triplet of long narrow window openings in each bay.

The interior has a parquet floor, plaster walls with some painted stencil decoration beneath the clerestory windows and a flat trabeated ceiling. The windows have patterned clear glazing. A gallery is formed in the west tower with a rectangular opening to the nave. There are three straight-headed openings to the aisle on either side of the nave, with square piers on the bay divisions. In the east wall of the sanctuary is a tall round-headed altar recess. The high altar and side altars are probably original and the same may be true of some other sanctuary fittings.

Heritage Details