Church Of St Mary And Church Hall

The Church of St Mary, with its attached Church Hall, is an Anglican church constructed between 1929 and 1930, designed by E.F. Reynolds. It is built of red brick in a Flemish stretcher bond, with decorative brickwork, tile arches, and dressings of Hollington stone. The roof is clad in Roman tiles and supported by reinforced concrete arch roof trusses.

The church’s plan features a 7-bay nave with passage aisles and a clerestory, a west narthex and gallery, and a cruciform east end incorporating a chancel and transeptal chapels. It is designed in a Byzantine/Romanesque style.

The exterior of the 7-bay nave showcases tall passage aisles with round-headed lancet windows and pilasters, and a clerestory with paired small round-headed windows and buttresses. The east end is characterized by a tall chancel with broad clasping buttresses, small gables, and narrow round-headed windows high in the walls. The large east window is set high within a wide buttress. The west end features diaper brickwork in the frieze and a portal with three doorways having round arches. The central door is recessed with stone shafts and capitals; the arches have herringbone brick tympana with stone panels, with carving in the centre. Flanking bays contain smaller round-headed windows, clasping buttresses, and diaper brickwork in the parapet.

The interior has white plastered walls. The nave is long and tall, with a 7-bay arcade of unmoulded round arches supported by stone imposts. The clerestory features small round-headed windows, three between each of the reinforced concrete segmental arches supporting the panelled roof with painted ribs. A gallery at the west end has wooden lattice balustrades above round-headed doorways. The passage aisles have round arches with stone imposts. The east wall of the chancel features a plain round-headed panel, a small window above, and flanking buttresses with a stone string-course serving as a cill for the clerestory windows on the north and south walls. The roof in the chancel is similar to that of the nave. A stone screen with thin polygonal columns and Byzantine capitals separates the chancel, with an arched frieze carved above the central bay; this colonnade continues along the north and south walls of the chancel. Original furnishings remain, including the altar, choir stalls, reading desks, a stone pulpit, a lecturn, a font, seating, the organ, and stained glass.

A Church Hall is attached to the north side by a 3-bay brick arcaded cloister. The north-east end of the hall has a rendered gable, the central section is brick with a raised gable and flanking piers, and a segmental arch doorway. A stone tablet above the doorway is inscribed “St Marys Church Hall AD 1929.”