Roman Catholic Church of Our Lady of Light and St Osyth

Roman Catholic Church of Our Lady of Light and St Osyth

A large Roman Catholic church in Neo-Norman style, built in 1902–3 and designed by F.W. Tasker. The walls are faced in Kentish ragstone over a brick core, with Ketton stone dressings, and the roofs are plain tiled.

The plan is cruciform, consisting of an aisled nave of four bays, crossing with tower over, transepts and an apsidal east end with ambulatory. A later sacristy is attached to the east.

The nave features round-headed windows, clerestory and a corbel band at eaves level. At the west end are square corner turrets with pyramidal stone caps. Between these stands a three-light west window set over a round-headed arch with four tiers of colonnettes, beneath which are oak plank entrance doors with elaborate hinges. The three-stage square crossing tower has wooden shutters to the bell stage and a pyramidal roof topped with an iron cross. The gabled transepts have circular windows, and the north and south doors are set within Carnarvon arches. The east end is apsidal with a narrow ambulatory wrapping around it and a three-bay sacristy with an open porch to the east.

Inside, the arcades and dressings are of Lincolnshire limestone, while the main wall surfaces are plastered and painted. The floors are of woodblock, with marble in the sanctuary. The nave rises to five bays beneath a barrel vault of Canadian redwood. At the west end is a stone organ gallery. Below this in the south-west corner is a stone vaulted former baptistery, now adapted as a confessional. The Norman-style nave arcade has circular piers with scalloped capitals and stone groin vaulting to the aisles. A high groin vaulted ceiling spans the crossing, while the transepts, like the nave, are timber barrel vaulted. The sanctuary features a seven-arched arcade with a groin-vaulted ambulatory, with the later sacristy leading off to the east. Two side chapels occupy the eastern side of the transepts: the shrine to Our Lady of Light on the north side, and the Blessed Sacrament (formerly Sacred Heart) chapel on the south side.

Neo-Norman fittings in the sanctuary include an altar and stone ambo of 1998, and a relocated font of 1909—large and square, carried on four stubby columns with an oak cover bearing iron strapwork. In the north transept chapel, a statue of Our Lady of Light is set within a neo-Norman aedicule of stone and polished marble over a neo-Norman altar with open arcading. In the south transept, an opus sectile figure of the Sacred Heart is placed within a neo-Norman arch over a plain Gothic altar. The seating consists of plain oak benches dating from around 1950, apart from two at the back of the nave, which are larger and more elaborate and date from around 1926. Oak figures of St Anthony and St Joseph, mounted on columns under canopies and appearing to date from the 1920s, stand in the nave.

Stained glass includes windows by Jones and Willis in the ambulatory depicting the Nativity, Agony in the Garden, Christ before Pilate, and Resurrection (the last signed, circa 1903), and in the aisles a window to Our Lady of Light (signed) and a window to Fr Alfred Swaby OP (both 1925).