Cliff Town Congregational Church And Memorial Hall

This Congregational church was built in 1865 to designs by architect W. A. Dixon. A north aisle and porch were added in 1887, and balconies to the north and south aisles in 1897. The church is constructed of Kentish ragstone with Bath stone dressings and has concrete tile roofs, with slates on the spire. The Memorial Hall, added in 1925, is built of ashlar masonry with a tiled roof.

Plan

The church has a west entrance porch, nave and aisles to north and south, both with raised balconies with storage rooms underneath. A tower stands at the south-west corner. At the east end is a two-and-a-half-storey range, with a further projecting two-storey wing attached at its south end. The Memorial Hall sits within the L-shape formed by these two elements.

The Memorial Hall is rectangular and two storeys high, with an entrance lobby at the north end. Its roof is pitched and half-hipped to the south.

Exterior of the Church

The church is designed in a Gothic, Early English style. The west end presents an irregular range of ten overlapping gables, beneath which are six doors, four of them double. Three gables front the single-storey porch. Behind this can be seen the trefoil-decorated tops of the pair of buttresses from the original west front. Between these buttresses and above the porch is a rose window set within a pointed arch with blank tracery in its head. The buttresses originally flanked three lancet windows, which still survive inside the porch.

The porch has a central double door with an ogee arch over a moulded arch and colonnettes with foliated capitals. This is flanked by twin lancet windows with trefoil heads, and hood moulds with foliated stops.

To the south is a four-stage buttressed tower. The first stage has double doors under a trefoil-headed arch and the second a trefoil-headed lancet. The fourth stage is octagonal with louvred trefoil-headed lancets with hood moulds over, above which rises an octagonal spire.

The south elevation has four gables over twin trefoil-headed lancet windows which light the balcony, beneath which are four rectangular mullioned windows. To the east is the end gable of the east range, with an irregular arrangement of rectangular windows, and east of this the back projecting wing with large square windows in the first storey.

The north elevation also has four gables with twin lancets beneath, but the windows at ground floor level are more decorative than those in the south elevation, with a regular pattern of two pairs of trefoil-headed lancets between four mullioned windows. The style and arrangement of windows and a door in the north gable of the east wing is irregular and also more decorative than the south.

Exterior of the Memorial Hall

Only the north elevation of the Memorial Hall is completely visible. It has a two-storey central section with double doors flanked by narrow windows, with a continuous hood mould over. On either side of the windows are buttresses and two flat-roofed single-storey sections. One of the buttresses carries a carved stone commemorative plaque with the inscription "To the Glory of God Cliff Town Memorial Hall. This hall was erected in loving memory of the men of Cliff Town who laid down their lives in the Great War 1914-1918".

Interior of the Church

The porch is divided into three parts. Two side lobbies give access to the main body of the nave under the gallery at the west end. The church is divided into nave, aisles and balconies by arcades—the inner with pointed arches, the outer with ogee arches. Both have piers with foliate capitals. Above the point of each arch in the nave are circular clerestory windows.

Centrally placed at the east end is a carved wooden pulpit with carved panelled screen behind. The steps up either side of the pulpit have wrought iron banisters. Above the pulpit and screen the organ pipes rise the full height of the nave.

The nave roof has tie beams supported on braces springing from corbels, and decoratively pierced angle struts and rafters cut so that three trefoil shapes are formed in the spaces between them. All windows contain some stained glass, the most elaborate reserved for the rose window and those in the south and north elevations above the balconies.

Beyond the east end, the three-storey cross wing contains offices and meeting rooms. To the south on the ground floor is a half-height wood-panelled committee room. To the north of that are two vestries, followed by a parlour which contains a modern disabled access ramp, followed by a hall and staircase. The ground floor of the projecting south-east wing contains a kitchen and two storerooms; above these is a room containing three stained glass windows. Above the vestry and parlour is a large meeting room which has two fireplaces with decorative cast iron surrounds and grates, a further meeting room and a smaller room now used as a Sunday School room.

There are a number of staircases giving access to different levels, all with decoratively wrought iron banisters. All joinery and doors appear original.

Interior of the Memorial Hall

The hall is reached through a lobby containing plain single-panelled doors. Both lobby and hall have a wooden parquet floor, and the walls are panelled to head height. At the south end is a stage, with panelling behind. The ceiling at west and east ends forms a wide pointed arch, and between these two the ceiling begins to arch, then rises straight up into a long line of windows set just below the flat ceiling. Attached to the wall panelling are a number of cast iron plaques, each carrying a number of names of those who died in the First World War.

Subsidiary Features

At the west end, defining the boundary with the street, is a low ragstone wall with three entrances and eight square piers with shoulders, surmounted by a cube with a quatrefoil on four sides.

History

The planned estate of Cliff Town was built on land leased by the railway developer between the railway line and the cliff-top, with the intention of capitalising on the arrival of the railway in Southend in 1856. The development was built between 1859 and 1861, and by the mid-1860s appeared to be an ideal location for a new Congregational church, needed to replace the existing overcrowded chapel on the High Street. In May 1865 the foundation stone of the new church on Nelson Street was laid; five months later the church was open. The stained glass rose window in the east elevation was presented by Thomas Dowsett, the first Mayor of Southend, in 1892. Dowsett had been instrumental in the building of the new church.

The membership of the church continued to expand, and by 1887 further accommodation was needed. Funds were raised to add a north aisle, and to build a lecture hall and Sunday School rooms. By 1897 the church was once more suffering from overcrowding, and balconies were added to the north and south aisles. A new organ was built, and the old organ moved to a new church in Prittlewell. A final phase of building was completed in 1925, with the opening of the Memorial Hall behind the church, commemorating the dead of the First World War.

Historic Ordnance Survey maps demonstrate the expansion of the church between 1875 and 1897 to fill the whole plot. The 1897 map also shows a school on a separate plot behind the church, now occupied by the Memorial Hall. It also indicates that the porch that now fronts the entrance was built at the same time as the north aisle. An early print reproduced on the cover of The History of Cliff Town Congregational Church, Southend-on-Sea by John R. Hodgkins shows the church as it was when first built, without porch or north aisle.

The church was designed by W. A. Dixon, an architect with two Grade II listed churches to his credit. It forms a complete architectural and decorative ensemble with a completely furnished interior, and with surviving offices and meeting rooms. It is of historical interest, reflecting the expansion of Congregationalism, its social and liturgical context, as well as the growth in popularity of seaside towns through the 19th century. Its elaborate composition has considerable townscape value in the Cliff Town estate. It makes a significant contribution to the conservation area and has group value with the Grade II listed terrace, Nos. 1-15 Nelson Street.