Scandinavian Seamen's Church (Gustaf Adolfs Kyrka)

Scandinavian Seamen's Church (Gustaf Adolfs Kyrka)

A centrally planned church built in red brick with a tiled and copper-sheathed roof, occupying a corner site with a minister's house attached to the south-east.

The front elevation facing Park Lane comprises seven bays of two and three storeys with basements. A three-storey stair tower forms the central bay, divided by sill string courses carried around three sides of the building. The stair tower features pointed-arched windows and trefoiled arcading at the top, surmounted by a lead-covered pagoda-like spire with wooden bargeboards to lucarnes at mid-point. To the right of the stair tower, three bays of three storeys have differing roof levels, with the central bay rising above its flanking bays and ending in a crowstepped gable. The ground floor contains four segmental-arched windows; the floor above has pointed windows; and the side bays above these have quatrefoil windows. The central bay of the three-bay section displays three-stepped lancet windows in the gable. Rising above the gable to the rear is a centrally placed octagonal lantern with four gablets beneath a concrete-tiled roof, featuring small roof dormers near its summit topped with a lead finial and cross. The dormers and gablets are finished with Scandinavian carvings, creating a complex arrangement of differing roof lines across the whole building. To the left of the stair tower stands a single-storey modern entrance porch, beyond which is the two-storey minister's house with modern segmental-arched windows and cross-axial chimney stacks. The left return, a 1960s extension of the minister's house, is finished with a crowstepped gable and contains blind pointed-arched windows, blind occuli and a blind quatrefoil.

The rear elevation shows the minister's house projecting forward to the right of a narrow two-storey connecting range between the church and minister's house. The church projects forward and, except for the absence of a stair tower, the use of a four-stepped lancet window in the central gable, and the addition of a small modern balcony, closely resembles the front elevation. A stepped return at the right corner contains a blocked former doorway to the mission. The Cornhill elevation comprises three bays. The right bay is two storeys topped by a crowstepped gable; the central bay rises almost to the eaves height of the central lantern and is finished with a crowstepped gable; the left bay is relatively plain and two storeys high. Ground-floor windows are segmental-arched, with a narrow lancet to the left bay. A pointed-arched window appears in the right bay, and a single lancet occupies the gable above three small square windows. The Park Lane and Cornhill corner is canted, two storeys high with stepped lancets beneath a crowstepped gable, inscribed with the words 'GUSTAF ADOLFS KYRKA' at mid-height.

The basement level houses the mission, now modernised with bedrooms, toilet facilities, showers and a communal area. Original pillars with brick corbels remain in place, and evidence of blocked openings is visible elsewhere. The former main floor of the church now serves as the principal community meeting room with a kitchen installed in the former chancel recess. Part of its western end has been walled off and converted into a television room, and a former apartment has become an office. Four plain iron columns support an inserted mezzanine floor above. The former gallery level has been converted to the floor of the church through the introduction of the mezzanine. The church is housed within the octagonal lantern and lit by large transept windows, small trefoil and quatrefoil windows, and large dormer windows. The organ occupies part of the former western gallery. The font is positioned to the south of the shallow chancel, and the present altar is a modern pine construction. The capitals of the piers supporting pointed arches are partly gilded. Some original bench pews have been painted and reused in the reordered church. To the rear of the organ is a small room, formerly used as a vestry and student accommodation, which has had later subdivisions added.

The connecting range between the church and the minister's house contains modernised living accommodation, and the minister's house itself has modernised accommodation on two floors with a basement below.