Church at Fairfield Hospital is a Grade II listed building in the Central Bedfordshire local planning authority area, England. First listed on 14 November 1997. Church.

Church at Fairfield Hospital

WRENN ID
little-wall-poplar
Grade
II
Local Planning Authority
Central Bedfordshire
Constituency
Hitchin MP: Alistair Strathern (Lab)
Country
England
Date first listed
14 November 1997
Type
Church
OS grid reference
TL 204 353
Coordinates
52.00313, -0.24728
Source
Historic England listing

Also on this page: flood risk · radon risk · weather exposure · detailed attributes ↓

Description

The Church at Fairfield Hospital, built between 1878 and 1879 by George Fowler Jones, serves the mental hospital. It is constructed of yellow brick, with ashlar and red brick dressings, and features slate roofs. The building showcases an Early English style, characterized by a plinth, flush string courses, and coped gables adorned with crosses. The windows are mostly plain pointed arches, primarily in pairs with simple tracery.

The church includes a chancel with a vestry and organ chamber, a southwest tower, a nave with a west porch, and additional vestries. The apsidal chancel has three windows, while the lean-to vestry and organ chamber feature pairs of narrow flat-headed windows. The nave consists of eight bays, each side having seven windows set in recessed panels, separated by buttresses. The northwest bay contains a rebated pointed arched doorway with shafts and a door featuring a fanlight, topped with a diaper-work panel. The southwest bay houses a square bell tower with four stages, a similar doorway, string courses, and a pyramidal roof. The second stage has single slit lights, the third stage has triple slit lights on each side, and a clock is positioned above them to the south and west. The bell stage features double pointed-arched openings on each side.

At the west end, there is a central gabled porch with doorways similar to those at the north and south entrances, flanked by small square vestries with hipped roofs and a slit light on each side. Above the porch, two windows are set in the main gable, topped by a roundel.

Inside, the chancel is rendered and features a roll-moulded arch on corbels, a sill band, and a linked hood mould. The groin vault and apse are matchboarded, with ribs supported by angel corbels. The chancel contains three stained glass windows by Moore of London, with the central window dating to around 1918. To the north, there is a pointed arched opening that leads to the organ, and to the south, a pointed arched doorway. The nave has a hammerbeam roof resting on ashlar corbels, and at the southeast end, there is a panelled wooden internal porch. The west end features a rebated pointed arched doorway, with similar doorways on the north and south sides. Notable fittings include the original wrought iron altar rail, a traceried octagonal wooden pulpit, and a quatrefoil font on a round stem.

Local climate

Church at Fairfield Hospital sits in a drier-than-average part of the UK, with an average of 700 mm of rain a year. This makes it drier than 90% of listed buildings in the UK. Its exposure to wind-driven rain is lower than that of 79% of listed buildings.

It experiences an average of 35 freeze-thaw cycles a year, more than 55% of listed buildings. Of these, 16 follow at least 1 mm of rain in the preceding 48 hours. Average temperatures at this location have risen by 0.3°C per decade since 1991.

Averages for 1991–2020; temperature trend 1991–2025. Figures describe the wider area (a grid cell of roughly 10 km), not the individual site. Contains modified Copernicus Climate Change Service information 2026.

More on this building

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