Church Of St Philip Neri And Attached Presbytery

Church of St Philip Neri and attached presbytery, Chesterfield Road South, Mansfield

A Roman Catholic church and attached presbytery, completed in 1925 and designed by Charles A Easdon of London. The building is constructed in brick with ashlar dressings and a Roman tile roof.

The church comprises a chancel with apse and side chapels, a nave with clerestorey, aisles, a north chapel and baptistry. The east end features a blind apse with pilaster buttresses and a copper dome, flanked by square side chapels with plain parapets and single round-headed east windows. The chancel itself has square corner buttresses with caps and round-arched windows set high on each side wall. A square bell turret with cornice and blocking course rises from the east gable, topped with a Celtic cross, with a single round-arched opening below.

The nave extends across 5 bays and is supported by concave ramped buttresses. A clerestorey with 5 round-arched windows on each side lights the interior. The west gable is pedimented and contains a central round-arched niche with keystone and imposts, housing a figure. Flanking this niche are round-arched windows with aprons. The central doorway is substantial, featuring double flanking shafts, a cornice and double doors, with a semicircular hood and relief carving in the tympanum. The aisles have plain parapets and single round windows in their west ends, with no side windows. The south aisle connects to the presbytery via a flat-roofed corridor with a door and two windows. The north aisle contains a projecting chapel with three flat-headed windows, flanked by large pedimented gables, each with a round window. The segmental curved west end of the north aisle has three flat-headed windows with stone surrounds.

The attached presbytery to the south is a two-storey, three-bay structure with a hipped plain tile roof and two side wall stacks and a single ridge stack. The central bay projects and features rusticated brick pilasters. On each floor, a 12-pane sash is flanked by single 8-pane sashes, all with keystones. To the left are two small windows. To the right is an entrance bay with a round-arched margin-glazed window above and a painted stone doorcase with cornice below. Further right is a projecting hipped bay containing two 12-pane sashes and a 3-light window below. The garden front displays two 12-pane sashes on each floor with keystones, flanked on either side by canted two-storey bay windows, each containing three 12-pane sashes per floor.

The interior is plastered and painted. The chancel is defined by a moulded round arch with square marble piers, pedestals and moulded caps, and features a barrel vault with cross panelling. Single moulded round arches on each side lead to the side chapels, with round-headed windows above them. The apse has panelled walls with paintings and Corinthian pilasters, and a mosaic-panelled dome. The side chapels contain two-bay blind arcades with wall paintings and wooden screens featuring pedimented central openings. The nave has five-bay arcades with Ionic columns and moulded round arches, with a clerestorey sill band and a panelled barrel vault with moulded wooden ribs on corbels. At the west end is a panelled semicircular gallery containing the organ, beneath which stands a wooden porch with pairs of glazed doors. The aisles have moulded cornices and span beams on brackets. The south aisle features a 12-bay arcade with moulded arches, containing five doors, with a double door to the vestry and an arch to the side chapel at the east end. The north aisle has three large round arches at the east end; the central arch contains a solid tympanum and round-headed niche with a figure, flanked by shouldered doorways, the right one fitted with a wrought-iron gate. The eastern arch leads to the chapel of St Ann, with moulded wall panels and an irregular groin vault. The western arch features a wrought-iron screen opening to the baptistry, which has panelled walls and a groin vault. Further west is a four-bay blind arcade.

Fittings include a fluted alabaster font on four volutes arranged as a cross, a marble altar with suspended canopy, and marble and alabaster balustraded altar rails with wrought-iron gates serving the apse and side chapels. A folding panelled pulpit and lectern, panelled choir stalls and plain benches complete the interior furnishings.