Church Of St Thomas Of Canterbury

Church of St Thomas of Canterbury

This is a parish church built between 1881 and 1887, designed by the architect E C Lee. The building is constructed of brick, faced with random split flint, pebbles and stone fragments, with stone dressings and handmade clay tile roofs.

The church comprises a nave and rectangular choir, both with side aisles, and a tower containing the north door positioned at the north-west corner. The nave has 6 bays plus a tribunal, the aisles have 7 bays, and the choir and its aisles have 4 bays.

The north elevation features a projecting tower with angle buttresses and a gabled ground floor porch. The porch entrance has a pointed arch decorated with keeled rolls and leaf and fruit enrichment, with a boarded door of 2 leaves fitted with iron strap hinges and wrought-iron gates bearing the architect's name stamped into the lower rail of the decorative tympanum. Above this is a blind arcade of 5 lancets with trefoiled heads, surmounted by a crenellated parapet with corner stair turrets topped with spirelets. The principal octagonal spire is shingled and features traceried lucarnes at its base; the spirelets are also shingled. The nave and aisle bays each have 2 lancet clerestory windows with linking hood mould and moulded parapet. The aisle windows consist of 4 grouped lancets with trefoil heads forming a rectangular unit, separated by buttresses of rounded section decorated with a stone band and lower linking band. At the nave-choir junction, a flying buttress continues to the roof apex with a pierced buttress and bellcote. The choir bays are narrower than the nave, each with a single clerestory lancet window and linking hood mould, and the parapet features blind trefoils. The aisle windows are single lancets with cinquefoil tracery, with a central elaborated buttress similar to those of the nave. The east end features a similar buttress, with gabling on both.

The south elevation runs west to east, similar in character to the north side. At the east end is a transept vestry and organ chamber with gabled buttresses, a tall narrow lancet window and paired lancet roof vents. A door to the east is sheltered by a lean-to porch with a segmental head and moulded surround, the inner doorway having a flattened ogee head. Three semi-basement windows with pointed arches sit in rectangular surrounds. To the west of the vestry, the south elevation is partly obscured by a 20th-century foyer and church hall. The buttresses feature rounded bases with decorative stone banding.

The east elevation displays tall buttressed nave walls with high triple lancets, their sills level with those of the clerestory. Above them is a sexfoiled roundel containing a figure of Christ the King. The north aisle wall has a traceried window with 2 round-headed trefoiled lights and a cinquefoil roundel above. The south aisle wall has a trefoiled lancet window, with two low stone bands crossing the facade. Behind on the south side, the organ vestry and porch are visible.

The west elevation is the most elaborate. The nave is flanked by stair towers with conical caps and slit vents. Between these towers are 4 grouped lancet windows under a moulded pointed arch, with an exterior walkway connecting doorways from the stair towers. A trefoiled vent sits in the gable above. At ground floor level is a triple arched canopy, with the outer arch blind and the central entrance featuring a corbelled canopy rising from a simple shaft. The doorway mouldings are enriched with nail-head decoration, and the tympanum contains a figure of Christ in Majesty, beneath which is a panel depicting the wise and foolish virgins. Flanking the central doorway are figures of the four evangelists, each standing under castellated canopies on drums with their appropriate symbols below on splays. Two relief panels flank this group—on the north side the martyrdom of St Thomas à Becket, and on the south side the scourging of King Henry II at Becket's tomb, both now defaced. The doorway is fitted with a boarded 2-leaf door with iron strap hinges. The south aisle wall is gabled with an upper lancet window and a ground floor pointed arched doorway with a 2-leaf boarded door and iron strap hinges. The north aisle wall forms a straight link to the tower and has blind decorative parapet panels, paired upper lancet windows and 2 separate lancets below. The projecting ground floor porch has a boarded door and a foundation stone dated 1881. The tower at the north end has similar elevations on each face to the north side, but lacks a ground floor doorway and blind arcade. The west elevation has a central trefoiled lancet window at mid-height with a shield, and a low double stone band stretches across the whole elevation; the buttresses are rounded at their bases.

Internally, the nave arcade comprises round piers with round capitals; alternate piers have attached colonnettes. The arches are pointed with complex mouldings. The clerestory windows have wall shafts supporting a deep arched-braced roof with laterally braced crown-posts and in-pitch side purlins. Common rafters of seven cants form a boarded ceiling. The aisle windows have splayed sides with linking wall moulding and semicircular rear-arches. The aisle roofs are asymmetric lean-to structures with outer deep arched braces and collars with side purlin. Inner wall posts support collars with braces having pierced spandrels. The west end of the nave features a blind trefoiled wall arcade and a central wooden interior door porch. The tribunal is set upon its own arch. Adjacent is an alabaster font with 12 engaged lower shafts and a wrought-iron canopy with crane. At the east end of the nave is a wrought-iron choir screen and gates on an alabaster wall decorated with nail-head ornament. An alabaster pulpit features a trefoil pierced blind arcade. The choir is elevated from the nave, with arcade piers of laterally coupled shafts and a waggon-vaulted roof with sun-burst and metal floral bosses. A tall Crucifixion reredos is flanked by wrought-iron parclose screens. On the south side are round-arched sedilia and an organ accessible through wrought-iron gates from the south aisle. On the north side is a niche with a compound trefoil and 2-centred arch. Stained glass appears in many windows: the west window depicts the martyrdom of St Thomas, the north aisle contains Old Testament figures, and the south aisle features saints. A brass in the west end of the north aisle commemorates Johanes Parker, dated 1673, from the earlier chapel of St Thomas. It includes a shield of arms and a depiction of St George and the Dragon.

The church was built to replace a chapel of 1835 on the same site, which became a parish church in 1873 when Brentwood achieved independence from South Weald. Even earlier was the chapel of St Thomas, now a ruin in the High Street, said to have been first built around 1221. The architect E C Lee also designed the nearby Church of St Paul at Bentley Common, completed in 1878.