Church Of St Paul

The Church of St Paul is a parish church built in 1910-12 on Queen's Road in King Cross. It was designed by the London architectural partnership of Sir Charles Nicholson and Hubert Corlette. Nicholson was a leading church architect of the early twentieth century, articled to the distinguished late Victorian architect J.D. Sedding in 1889. After Sedding's death in 1891, Nicholson worked as assistant to his successor Henry Wilson before establishing independent practice in 1895. The partnership with Corlette lasted from 1895 to 1914. Nicholson served as consulting architect to the cathedrals of Belfast, Lincoln, Lichfield, Llandaff, Portsmouth, Sheffield and Wells, and held positions as Diocesan Architect for Chelmsford, Portsmouth, Wakefield and Winchester.

The church is constructed in coursed sandstone with freestone dressings and a stone slate roof. It is executed in free-Perpendicular style with coped parapets.

The plan comprises a nave with aisles, a north porch and an embraced west tower, a chancel with a north chapel, a south organ chamber and vestries. An attached arcaded wall south of the vestry originally linked the church to a former Sunday School, which has since been demolished.

The three-stage west tower has diagonal buttresses and incorporates a south polygonal stair turret in its lower stage. The upper stage features octagonal clasping with intermediate polygonal buttresses carried up to an embattled parapet. A four-light west window sits above a moulded west doorway. The second stage has small square-headed west and north windows, whilst the bell stage contains two pointed openings with louvres. The nave and chancel sit beneath a single roof with large three-light clerestorey windows—six on the north side and five on the south. The aisles have five two-light windows each. The first bay of each aisle incorporates a porch with a doorway where the arch dies into the imposts, a recessed door, and statues set in niches above. The chancel features a five-light east window. The two-bay north chapel has two-light windows beneath linked hood moulds, with a shallow lean-to porch at its west end. The tall south organ chamber is embattled and has a higher octagonal south-west turret which incorporates a bellcote with ogee-headed openings fitted with louvres. The lower vestry extends south and east of the organ chamber with an embattled parapet, square-headed windows, and the date 1912 inscribed above the main south doorway. A further south doorway opens onto a five-bay arcaded walk which once connected to the former school.

The interior presents a unified space between nave and chancel, divided only by a screen. The nave arcades have octagonal piers and hollow-moulded arches without capitals, superimposed by higher arches that frame the clerestorey windows. The double-chamfered tower arch stands on chamfered responds, with similar but lower doorways in the north and south walls opening to the porches. The nave and chancel are covered by a crown-post roof with intermediate collar-beam trusses, which become richer in the sanctuary where intermediate trusses feature arched braces. The roof is boarded behind the trusses and divided into panels by thin ribs. In the sanctuary, bosses are gilded. Shallow lean-to aisle roofs are divided into plaster ceiling panels by embossed ribs and beams. In the chancel, two rounded-headed arches lead to the organ chamber, one superimposed by a similar arch to the organ loft. The sedilia and piscina have continuous chamfers. The east wall features a large blind arch framing the window, flanked by tall blind lancets. Walls are exposed freestone. The floor is stone paved with black-and-white marble diaperwork in the chancel and chapel (the latter incorporating a memorial date of 1912), and parquet floors are laid below the benches with raised floorboards beneath the churchwardens' seats.

Most of the fittings are integral with the building and contribute to its artistic completeness. The font is in Perpendicular style with carved panels around an octagonal bowl and a tall wooden canopy with buttresses and pinnacles. The benches have square-headed ends with fielded and fluted panels. The churchwardens' seats have ends with blind tracery and finials on the frontals. A polygonal wooden pulpit stands beneath a tester with brattishing and features linenfold panels. Screens divide the chancel and chapel. The chancel screen is dated 1913, has a panelled dado and open main lights with intricate tracery in the spandrels, delicately ribbed coving, a foliage-trail cornice and brattishing. The chapel screen is similar but features delicate tracery in the main lights and a simple cornice. Choir stalls are in classical style with fielded-panel backs and carved bands to the ends and frontals. A tall canopied painted wooden reredos in the chancel displays a central crucifixion flanked by figures of saints, all set in small niches with delicate carving to the canopies. The chapel reredos is panelled and painted with a Nativity scene, set beneath brattishing. At the west end of the south aisle is a war memorial dated 1914-18 with a roll of names on panels beneath blind tracery and a crucifixion, with coving and cornice; a roll call for the 1939-45 war has subsequently been added beneath. Stained-glass windows include a series in the chapel by H.W. Bryans dated 1913, an east window probably by Kempe & Co, and a west window by Hugh Easton which incorporates a view of Halifax.

The churchyard is bounded on its south and west sides by a stone wall with piers featuring gable caps and iron gates.