A suburban brick church of 1960 in a sober, round-arched style. It consists chiefly of a long, uninterrupted nave and sanctuary, and whilst the building does not have any major architectural ambitions, it has a clear, light interior of modest distinction.

A church-cum-hall was opened in 1937.  The present church was designed in 1959 and the foundation stone laid on 7 October 1960. The former building was then incorporated into the school as a hall. The presbytery was built in 1961 and, like the church, was designed by T. G. B. Scott. The sanctuary was reordered by Jim Keegan in 2010.

Description

The church is faced with red-brown brick with a tiled roof and is designed in a plain, stripped down round-arched style without any nod to the modern architecture being increasingly adopted for Catholic churches about 1960. The church is aisleless, apart from a Lady Chapel at the northeast. The entrance front has a plain, sheer wall and a low, northwest tower under a shallow, copper-covered pyramid roof. Along the side walls are eight pairs of tall, round-arched windows. Over the entrance (in the tower base) is a statue of St Bernadette by Michael Clark.

Beyond the narthex area the church stretches out as a long, plain vessel with bare concrete brick walls and covered by a segmental-shaped ceiling. This simplicity is only broken by three arches to the Lady Chapel on the north side.

Fixtures and fittings: all the sculpture at the church is by Michael Clark, and is described perhaps rather unkindly as ‘feeble’ in The Buildings of England (the first of the Stations is shown above). On either side of the sanctuary is a roundel window with glass by Jane Gray (south window signed) representing the grotto at Lourdes.

Heritage Details