Church of St Paul

Church of St Paul, Worcester

Anglican church built in 1885 by the father-and-son architects George and Arthur Street. The building is designed in an aggressive polychrome mid-13th-century style, using orange brick with black brick trim and patterning, Bath stone linings and tracery windows, and minimal stone for offsets, kneelers and copings. The roofs are tiled with cresting to the ridge of the chancel and a cockscomb ridge to the nave.

The plan comprises a 5-bay aisled and clerestoried nave, a 3-bay chancel with a lower side chapel to the south and a gabled transept to the north with vestry to the north-east. A double bell-cote sits at the east end of the nave, and a slight gabled baptistry projection rises below the west window.

The chancel features cinquefoiled lancets, with pairs of lancets to the sides. The church is entered from Spring Gardens; the north aisle has outer pointed doorways with moulded hollow-chamfered reveals in three orders and oculi over, with decorative ironwork to the doors. The clerestoreys have pairs of truncated lancets framed by roundels under wide segmental arches, where the black brick patterning is most prominent, with alternating voussoirs, blind roundels and a chequer or diaper pattern under the eaves. The organ chamber projects as a north transept with an unfinished octagonal turret at its north-east corner. The east window consists of three stepped lancets with plate tracery incorporating blind star-shapes under a relieving arch. The west window has three separate stepped lancets under a black and red brick relieving arch, with the centre light stepped up over the gable of the baptistry, lit by a spherical triangle; a plain black-edged roundel sits over the western recess. The flanking aisles have two-light-and-round windows.

Interior

The interior is heavily patterned in black and orange brick polychromy with banding in Bath stone. The 5-bay arcades have two chamfered orders, continuous except for the corbelling of the inner order at the springing level and the introduction of cut-out zigzag patterns between the orders of the arches. The roof is of braced collar-rafter type, lit by the western roundel. The baptistry has a corbelled internal gable. The chancel is raised on steps and separated by a simple iron screen. The chancel floor is patterned in tiles; to the north lie the organ chamber and the priest's door under a strangely patterned gable, and to the south two low segmental arches lead into the south Lady Chapel.

Fittings

The Lady Chapel reredos, probably by Street, is of grey marble with a central trefoiled panel flanked by two pairs of double panels, all blind, and gabled uprights at each end. The stone font has an octagonal bowl on each face of which are sunken rectangular panels alternating with arched panels; the plinth is of polished marble and the stem features polished marble half-colonettes against each of the four faces.

Stained Glass

All glass in the chancel windows is by Kempe, circa 1886; the south chapel east window is by Kempe, circa 1888; in the south aisle, glass is by Kempe, circa 1904, with the west window by Kempe and Company, 1929; the north aisle has glass all by Kempe, circa 1899, except the fourth window, which is by Camper, 1927.