Roman Catholic Church of St Anthony

Roman Catholic Church of St Anthony

A Roman Catholic church built in 1959-60, designed by Adrian Gilbert Scott. The building is constructed of narrow buff bricks with Portland-stone dressings, and features Lombardic-tile and copper roof coverings.

The church is aligned east-west alongside Portway and sits within lawned grounds with a car parking area in front of the west end. It follows a cruciform plan with a nave and flanking processional aisles, a crossing tower, transepts, and a polygonal apse at the west (ritual east) end.

Externally, St Anthony's is a large church with light buff, almost grey-coloured brickwork. Most windows are round-headed with quoined Portland-stone surrounds, Geometric-style cusped tracery, and diamond-patterned leaded glazing. The west end features a giant parabolic arch with a deeply recessed entrance containing double doors within a Portland-stone doorcase styled as a miniature frontispiece, with smaller flanking doors in the side walls. Above the main entrance is a tall round-headed window containing two trefoil-arched lancets with an octofoil above. The two sides of the arch rise as pinnacles topped with copper-clad spirelets, flanking a gablet with a 2-light mullioned window containing leaded glazing.

The nave has a pitched roof with lean-to processional aisles attached on each side, their roofs showing half-hips at the west end. These aisles continue across the nave's junction with the crossing tower and across half of the west walls of the transepts. They are lit by smaller versions of the west window and trefoil-arched lights, with low projections on each side containing confessionals lit by small narrow square-headed windows.

The transepts have hipped roofs and are lit by three windows each, with the central window on each side being taller. An octagonal crossing tower rises above and behind the transepts, topped with a polygonal copper-clad roof set behind a parapet and surmounted by a cross finial. The upper sections of the tower's four angled corners are stepped back slightly behind a parapet, forming a small balcony-style area accessed by a doorway flanked by paired louvred belfry windows, all set within integral Portland-stone surrounds.

To the east of the tower is a 5-sided apse with a windowless east end and windows of two sizes on the remaining sides in the same style as those to the nave and transepts. A low hipped-roofed, L-shaped sacristy range is attached to the north transept and north side of the apse, lit by wide 8-light and 12-light square-headed metal windows on the north and east sides respectively, with replaced uPVC windows on the west side. Attached to the north-west corner of the sacristy range at an awkward angle is a presbytery of reddish-brown brick, constructed prior to the church in 1953; both the presbytery and attached parish hall are excluded from the listing.

Internally, the church features marble and tile floors and a high dado of Hornton stone throughout, except in the sacristy range. The narthex contains the former baptistery at the north end, now separated by a later partly-glazed timber screen and used as a shop. A stone dog-leg stair at the south end of the narthex with an elegant bronzed-metal balustrade leads to the west gallery above, which has pew bench seating.

Three sets of double-doors lead from the narthex into the main body of the church, which is a tall space featuring Scott's characteristic soaring camel-vaulted arches of three sizes rendered as parabolas. Those to the crossing are the largest, followed by the 3-bay nave arcade, with the smallest arches serving the processional aisles. The church's original pendant lighting scheme and fixed pews survive. The Stations of the Cross, carved from limewood, are inset into the Hornton-stone dado in the processional aisles.

The processional aisles terminate in the transepts where further parabolic-arched recesses in the east walls contain marble altars to St Anthony and the Holy Family, flanked by neo-Baroque painted reredoses from Italy. The sanctuary has a painted ceiling and marble floor, accessed by a short flight of steps incorporating the coats of arms of Lisbon and Padua, cities associated with St Anthony. The altar rails in front of the sanctuary have been removed.

An integral Hornton-stone wall pulpit on the north side of the sanctuary arch is accessed via a stone spiral stair off the sacristy corridor and is adorned with carvings symbolising the Evangelists. A lectern and font are of the same stone and marble as the main altar, which stands beneath a large dark-green and white marble baldacchino with a barrel-vaulted tessarae ceiling supported by columns with partly-gilded capitals.

The sacristy corridor is top-lit by square skylights and has been partly modernised, though some rooms retain original built-in cupboards and drawers.