Church Of The Immaculate Conception And St Joseph

Church of the Immaculate Conception and St Joseph

A Roman Catholic church built between 1859 and 1861, designed by architect Henry Clutton (1819-93). The building stands on St John's Street in Hertford, on a site immediately south of the historic location of St Mary's Priory, which was founded by Ralph de Limesi, a knight of William I, and dissolved in 1536.

The church is constructed in 13th-century Gothic style with French influence. The main materials are flint with yellow brick bands and stone quoins, with stone dressings throughout. The north wall is rendered in yellow brick in Flemish bond. The roof is clay-tiled with a polygonal hipped east end. A distinctive fleche rises above the roof with a square tile-hung base set diagonally and a lead covering with roll lattice patterning to the spire. Below this sits a bell-cote with four arched openings and corner pinnacles.

The plan consists of a hall with a four-bay nave, a short polygonal sanctuary, a north aisle, and a lean-to entry porch at the west end with a south door.

On the principal south elevation, a doorway at the left is set beneath a pointed arch with dripmould supported on colonnettes. Four widely spaced simple lancet windows with plain chamfered reveals and stone quoins are set in the elevation, each with a yellow brick band above the head. The wall is divided horizontally by a projecting stone coping with cavetto moulding, a brick band, and a mid-height brick band on the plinth. A projecting buttress marks the division between the nave and sanctuary, featuring stone quoins, offsets and a cap supported on small foliated brackets. The polygonal sanctuary has one lancet window in each face.

The north aisle, roofed separately, has a flint-faced east gable with yellow brick bands and a stone-coped parapet. A rose window with traceried inner circle and five outer segments is prominently placed. The north elevation is built of brick with three lancet windows featuring stone impost blocks and rubbed brick heads.

The west end displays twin stone-coped gables, each with lancet windows surmounted by circles.

The interior of the four-bay nave is divided from the aisles by octagonal chamfered columns with leaf and ball volutes, square abacus with cavetto moulding, and arcading with square cut intrados. A shallow west gallery is supported on these columns. The roof is open rafter with struts and braces. The sanctuary arch is chamfered and raised on chamfered corbelled colonnettes with carved foliated volute caps. The sanctuary floor is raised four steps above the nave and features deep-set lancet windows above a sill band. The roof has moulded and gilded ribs with an original decorative scheme of gold stars on a blue ground, which was restored in 1995.

Around the walls is a series of late 19th-century wall paintings depicting apostles and saints within arcaded surrounds. These were revealed in damaged condition and covered over after being recorded in 1994-95, with the intention of repainting replicas.

The windows contain late 19th-century stained glass by Ion Pace of Clayton and Bell in the lancet windows. Additional stained glass by Nathaniel Westlake was installed around 1898-99, including west aisle window figures of Saint Hugh of Lincoln and St Patrick with a roundel of St Gertrude above, and three lancets in the north aisle depicting St John the Baptist, the Sacred Heart and St Thomas of Canterbury, all richly painted figures with pinnacle surrounds.

The red veined marble altar features colonnettes and is accompanied by a plain reredos, reconstructed from panels of an elaborate high altar and reredos that were dismantled in the early 1970s.

A stone pulpit, erected in memoriam of Jacob Montague Mason in 1892, is raised on six shafts with bell caps and roll bases. The frontal features attached colonnettes of pink marble, trefoil-headed niches with carved figures, a foliated cornice and moulded toprail.

The font comprises eight sandstone colonnettes supporting an octagonal basin with incised quatrefoils.

The north chapel contains an elaborate curved stone altar and reredos erected in memory of Agnes Bancroft (died 20 January 1897). The frontal panel is carved with an Annunciation and flanked by red veined marble colonnettes. The reredos is arcaded and traceried with canopies surmounted by pinnacles and poppy heads, breaking forward at the centre and raised on colonnettes above a statue of the Virgin and Child. A side altar in memory of Patrick and Mary Roland features a carved Pietà frontal panel and a traceried canopied reredos with a figure of St Joseph. Above the east end, a rose window contains stained glass depicting the Virgin Mary and Angels.

Architecturally, Henry Clutton was a partner of the renowned architect William Burges, with whom he won the Lille Cathedral Competition in 1853. Clutton converted to Roman Catholicism in 1856 and subsequently designed several ecclesiastical buildings, including St Francis of Assisi in Notting Hill, St Mary in Woburn, and St Michael in Apsley Heath.