A modest church built in 1935 to serve a colliery village. The originally weatherboarded exterior was replaced with pebbledash in the 1950s.

Hersden is a colliery settlement and the church stands in an estate of early twentieth-century miners’ houses. Apparently a railway line used to run immediately in front of the present church site. The line was abandoned in the late 1920s or early 1930s and a site for a new church was purchased in 1933. The present church was built in 1934-5. It was originally a weatherboarded structure with an entrance on one side wall. The weatherboarding was replaced by pebbledash in 1956, when the interior was redecorated. Apparently it was originally intended to build a church hall next to the church but this was never done and the site was instead used for a single-storey presbytery, built in about 1980. Hersden became an independent parish in 1977.

Description

St Dunstan’s is a modest building, rectangular on plan, with a west porch and sacristy projections at the east end. The walls are faced with pebbledash over a red brick plinth, the hipped roof is covered in tiles and has projecting eaves on wooden brackets. The west wall is blind apart from the projecting porch with its hipped roof. The side walls each have four large rectangular windows with timber mullions and transoms, the east end has a projecting chancel between the lower sacristies and the east wall has small windows high in the wall.

The interior consists of the nave space, with a pointed arch opening into the shallow sanctuary. The nave has plastered walls, clear glazed windows and an open timber roof. The open timber benches were brought from a church in Brockley in 1954. The sanctuary fittings are all of timber and modern in character.

Heritage Details