Church Of St Mark

Church of St Mark, Sheffield

Parish church on St Mark's Crescent, Broomhill. The west tower and porch date from 1868-71 and were designed by W H Crossland. After war damage, the church was rebuilt in 1961-3 to designs by George G Pace, who had restored the remains of the Victorian tower in 1955 and continued to add interior fittings until 1967.

The structure uses a reinforced concrete frame with cavity walls externally of rubble stone and internally of plastered brick, with artificial stone lintels and transoms. Some original fabric survives to plinth level. The main space features a queen post truss roof covered in thick, rough, random slates with two high triangular dormers. Lower roofs are covered in copper and asphalt. The plan is irregular and polygonal, described by Pace as resembling an extended hexagon.

The main entrance is positioned at the north-west corner on the site of the original church entrance, opening on to a broad cross passage. From here, doors lead to cloakrooms, churchwardens' room and priest's vestry in the ground stage of the tower and the former south porch. To the east is a large common room with kitchen, choir vestry, and a long narthex leading to the main church, with a south chapel on its right. The body of the church has an organic shape interrupted by two concrete trusses. An angled north aisle creates a broad, asymmetrical feel and incorporates the choir in front of the organ and to the side of the sanctuary area. The sanctuary projects into the single worship space and is set slightly asymmetrically, though the forward altar is placed on the line of the central aisle. Windows are long narrow pierced openings in Pace's characteristic style, a reworking of Arts and Crafts idiom with references to Le Corbusier's Notre Dame du Haut at Ronchamp.

The Victorian tower comprises two stages and features a plinth, string courses, gabled angle buttress, corbel table, and traceried parapet with four octagonal pinnacles topped with spires. The first stage has a three-light pointed arch window with hoodmould to the west, and above it three chamfered flat-headed windows. The south side has three similar windows. The second stage has on each side a pair of traceried two-light pointed arch bell openings with crocketed double gables. On three sides beneath the bell openings is a clock. The octagonal spire is set back with a single tier of gabled lucernes. Crockets were removed in 1955-6. The angle-buttressed south porch has a coped gable with cross and a moulded doorway with triple shafts. The door is blocked and has three small 20th-century windows. Double entrance doors on the north side have small rectangular panels of glazing with leaded lights to the side, all under a joggled segmental arched lintel.

The interior contains a particularly fine and complete set of fittings by Pace. The organ, painted white, pews, lectern and choir stalls are all of timber by Pace, forming a resonant, spiky group. The pulpit is in Derbyshire fossil stone. A metal altar rail with timber rail leads to the single step to the forward altar, flanked by tall candlesticks. The font has an elaborate corona hanging, cover and candlesticks. Hanging metal lights illuminate the interior. The east end has glass by Harry Stammers illustrating the Te Deum; the west end features abstract glass designed by John Piper and made by Patrick Reyntiens. The side chapel has coloured glass in lead cames, an ambry light, and altar rails by Pace. Hall and smaller rooms have good timber doors by Pace with expressed peg patterns. The new church was consecrated in 1963.

St Mark's is Pace's major church for the Diocese of Sheffield, to which he was appointed surveyor in 1949, and arguably his most important town church. It represents his third design for the building—a second, larger version was widely exhibited. The church is one of Pace's first advanced essays in liturgical planning, and one of his first to adopt an organic, asymmetrical form. It demonstrates the interface between traditional English pragmatism and the already established convention of modernism. The quality of workmanship in both construction and in the woodwork and glass is exceptional for its date.