A simple post-Vatican II church by Brian A. Rush, using modern materials to provide a spacious, flexible interior to serve the reformed liturgy. 

Catholics in this suburban area first attended Mass at a chapel of ease built in the 1950s and served by Our Lady of Lourdes. The new parish dedicated to St Jude was created in 1966, and the present church built next to the school in 1981. The building cost £163,000. The architects were Brian A. Rush & Partners and the contractor William Waver Ltd of Bromsgrove. The church was consecrated in 1987.

Description

This post-war church was designed with a plan form which responded to the revised liturgical guidance of the Second Vatican Council. The sanctuary is in the centre of the long south wall of the main church building, with an entrance block to the north and the contemporary presbytery attached to the southwest. In this description actual compass points will be used. The church is built with a steel frame and loadbearing walls, faced in a buff drag-wire brick on a soldier course plinth in dark brown bricks. Elevations are articulated by projecting buttresses and a classically-inspired brick frieze. The shallow-pitched main roof is laid with profiled metal sheeting behind low parapets and coped verges, with a shallow-hipped roof over the entrance block laid with concrete tiles and topped by an aluminium fleche. The nave and sanctuary are under one roof with a rectangular footprint, lit from the north by a prominent clerestory in the asymmetrical roof, and narrow metal windows. The church has a contemporary square entrance block to the north, set diagonally so that the entrance doors are on the northwest side, facing the driveway. The doors and flanking screen are glazed, and protected by a lead-covered flat canopy. The returns of the entrance block have full-height tripartite windows in metal frames, with tinted glass.

The interior has textured plastered walls, painted white, between brick pilasters. The sloping roof soffit is lined in varnished pine boards, laid diagonally. The floor is carpeted.  Hardwood pews are arranged around three sides of the sanctuary dais. The sanctuary has marble steps, with a carpet over the dais. Fittings include altar and ambo in stone or polished concrete, green marble tabernacle shelf and reredos, Stations of the Cross and hardwood statues.

Heritage Details