A 1960s church of striking design, one of the best of many built in the diocese from designs by Reynolds & Scott.

In 1916 Canon Croft, parish priest of St Hugh’s Church, Lincoln, purchased the plot of land at the junction of Boultham Park Road and Skellingthorpe Road, then tennis courts and allotments. Boultham Hall was purchased by the Council in 1929 and Mass was said in an upstairs room there. In 1948 a storage hut was bought from Reeves Haulage near Bardney and was erected on the site to serve as a Mass centre. This was subsequently enlarged and, in 1958, Mass was said in the new school hall. On 2 May 1966 Bishop Ellis laid the foundation stone of the new church of St Peter and St Paul, which opened the following year. The cost was around £80,000; almost double the cost of Our Lady of Lincoln Church, completed three years earlier. The narthex was remodelled in 2001 by John Halton Design Ltd., who also modified the sanctuary floor and canopy over the tabernacle in 2008.

Description

The altar faces northwest but for the purposes of this description all references to compass points will assume an east-facing altar. Fan shaped plan designed to seat 450. The roof is a steel space frame made up of inverted steel framed pyramids. The main structural frame of the building is  probably also steel (though it may be concrete). Externally the walls are faced in brick. The west side has a large shallow-gabled projection, lower than the main church, and a much lower projecting porch across the front of this. The porch or narthex has a taller gabled central entrance flanked by walls, slightly set back and treated as banded rustication. Set within these are four small square windows. In its present form it is as remodelled in 2001 by John Halton Design Ltd. Prior to these changes the doors had been to either side rather than in the centre, as at present. The whole of the wall of the projecting element above is glazed, divided by two major mullions and a transom and divided again my minor mullions in the arrangement of 6-7-6 lights across the front. The windows above the transom continue as a clerestory along the north and south sides of  the projecting element. The main body of the church has to the south side a monopitch roof rising from east to west with three groups of immensely tall windows, their sill rising from west to east. On the corresponding north elevation the same arrangement of windows is interrupted by the shallow-gabled Lady Chapel which projects as a rectangular structure the full width of the main church. This too has immensely tall windows, divided in a more irregular manner and with more solid elements. The sanctuary has a very shallow east projection, glazed at the narrow sides and brick on the east face which on plan comes to a shallow point. A southwest tower was intended but was never built.

Heritage Details