Church of St Andrew with attached walls to south-east

Church of St Andrew with attached walls to south-east

Church built in 1931–32 to the designs of Giles Gilbert Scott.

The church is constructed in brown brick laid in English garden-wall bond with stone dressings and a roof covering of Lombardic tiles.

The plan consists of a long parallelogram with a wide nave and narrow north-east and south-west aisle passages. A tower projects to the south-east, with the chancel to the north-west. The Lady Chapel is positioned at the north end of the north-east front, and the vestries at the north end of the south-west front.

Exterior

The church presents an austere, monumental quality both inside and out. The massive south-east tower has shallow crenellations and set-back buttresses with gablets but no offsets. The double-height, pointed-arched portal, five bricks deep, is pierced by three lancets grouped under a pointed arch. These lancets have diamond leaded lights with simple moulded brick surrounds and a stone sill, as do all the windows. The entrance, reached via four steps, comprises studded double-leaf plank doors with fillets and diagonal strap hinges, set in a square-headed, moulded stone architrave with blocked jambs. The highest stage of the tower is pierced on all sides by narrow square-headed openings with louvre slats—nine on the front and eight on the other sides. At ground-floor level, there is a group of three square-headed windows on the south-west and north-east sides of the tower, and the north-east side also has small windows lighting the staircase. The long north-east and south-west sides are divided into five bays by prominent sloping buttresses with tumbled-in brickwork and gablets that project above the roof of the nave. The aisles, under lean-to roofs, are blind, whilst each bay of the clerestory is lit by a series of eight narrow arched windows. In the fourth bay on the north-east side is a single-leaf door similar to that in the tower but with a simpler stone architrave. The single-storey Lady Chapel, projecting from the fifth bay, has a hipped roof with bonnet tiles and is lit on two sides by a group of four square-headed windows. On the south-west side, the vestries project in similar form from the chancel.

Interior

The interior is plastered and has a ribbed timber roof. It is dominated by six prominent transverse arches of reinforced concrete which rise to a shallow point, creating a wide nave with arcades of semicircular arches, all plain and without mouldings. The piers of the front two arches are fully articulated to define the chancel, whilst the other piers almost disappear into the arcade, forming shallow pilasters. The narrow aisle passageways are unlit by any windows, a feature typical of Scott's churches, as is the absence of a liturgical east window. The clerestory windows have semicircular brick arches and pronounced raking sills.

The timber choir stalls, pews, altar rails and pulpit have a coherent design, some embellished with carved panels featuring cusped and foliated motifs. The studded plank and batten doors retain their strap hinges and upright handles. On the rear wall behind the altar is a dossel with a delicate, gilded canopy, and the choir seats face each other across the chancel. On the north-east side of the chancel, a late 20th-century organ is encased in the decorative timber panelling from the original organ in the gallery; on the south-west side is the pulpit with carved panels resting on a moulded stone plinth.

In the Lady Chapel, the stained glass window to the left of the altar depicts the Annunciation with a medallion showing a hospital nursing scene, whilst that to the right depicts the Feeding of the Five Thousand with a medallion showing a scene of ball-bearing manufacture (a local industry). Both windows have brick mullions, a chamfered timber lintel and stone sill. The arch leading to the Lady Chapel has been glazed.

The baptistry in the tower contains a polygonal, moulded stone font and stained glass windows similar to those in the Lady Chapel. That on the south-west side depicts the Baptism of Christ by St John the Baptist with a medallion showing the baptism of a child; that on the north-east side depicts the Resurrection. The gallery above is now empty after the organ was removed.

The two bays at the south-east end of the nave, separated by a glazed partition, were converted in 2010 to provide meeting and catering facilities in the aisle passages. The fixed pews were removed in these bays but have been reused for church furniture and also incorporated into the screens in front of the aisle passages.

Attached to the front corners of the tower are low brick walls which incorporate three pairs of gate piers with flat stone caps. The original timber gates have been replaced with metal ones.