Church Of St Paul

Church of St Paul, Gedling Church Street, Carlton

This parish church was built in two phases, in 1885 and 1891, to designs by W. A. Coombs for the 4th Earl of Carnarvon. It is constructed in red brick with gabled, hipped and conical slate roofs in the Romanesque Basilica style, featuring ashlar and yellow terra-cotta dressings.

The exterior displays a chamfered plinth, pilasters, string courses, lintel bands, moulded and cogged eaves, and coped gables. Rainwater heads are dated 1884 and 1891. The windows throughout are leaded double and triple round-headed lancets with round shafts.

The plan comprises a nave with clerestory, north and south aisles, north and south porches, an apsidal baptistry, organ chamber, vestry, chancel, and apsidal sanctuary. The nave has a coped east gable with a cross. The clerestory contains 6 double lancets on each side. The west end features a moulded round window and an ornamented gable with a shouldered gabled bell turret containing a niche with a figure. This is flanked by single square buttresses, each with a shafted dummy turret topped by a pyramid roof. The left buttress has a bell on a bracket with a copper hood. The north and south aisles each have 6 lancets.

The north and south porches are similar in design, with a pair of doors in round-headed openings to the west and 2 round windows in each side. The apsidal baptistry has 5 lancets flanked by single lancets under lean-to roofs. The square organ chamber has to the north a 5-bay blind arcade containing 2 lancets, and to the east a similar arcade with a single lancet. The square choir vestry has a hipped porch with a round window and door in its west return angle, a lancet to the south, and a lean-to porch with a door and round window. The east side has 3 lancets. The chancel has 2 round windows on each side above, and the apsidal sanctuary contains 5 lancets separated by half-round pilasters.

The interior shows a nave with a cogged and dentillated sill band and moulded clerestory lintel band. The roof is a moulded queen post design on timber and brick corbels. The arcade comprises 6 bays with round ashlar piers and polychrome round brick arches with hood moulds. The west end features a moulded round arch flanked by single smaller arches. The aisles have moulded window openings and lean-to roofs on corbels. The north aisle contains a round-arched organ opening at its east end. The south aisle has a panelled wood enclosure with a triptych and broken pediment forming a chapel and vestry, added in 1896 and altered in 1953.

The chancel arch is polychrome with shaft responds. The chancel has a balustraded marble screen wall of 1912 with central half-round steps, lintel and sill bands, and a barrel-vaulted king post roof. The north side contains an archway with the organ, and the south side has a similar arch containing a 2-bay arcade. The domed sanctuary has a round-headed aumbry to the north and a round-headed double sedilia to the south. Above are 5 windows, 3 of which contain stained glass of 1933 and 1947.

Fittings include a square font on a clustered round stem, a carved wood altar and gradine, and panelled oak stalls and desks carved by Eric Gill in 1903. A scrolled brass lectern stands on bracketed marble steps and a stand. Nineteenth-century benches and a chamfered oak pulpit of the 20th century are also present. War memorial tablets dating to around 1920 are included among the memorials.