Roman Catholic Church of St Edmund of Canterbury and English Martyrs and associated lych gate

Roman Catholic Church of St Edmund of Canterbury and English Martyrs

This small parish church in the Decorated Gothic Revival style was built in 1911 to designs by Arthur Young. It stands alongside an associated lych gate.

The church is constructed of red brick laid in English bond with darker brick banding and ashlar stone dressings, with a pitched clay-tiled roof. The plan comprises a single-cell nave with a south porch, and a narrower square-ended chancel to the north containing confessionals and a sacristy.

The porch is timber-framed with herringbone brick nogging over a high brick and stone plinth. Where the roof of the narrower chancel meets the nave, there is no break in ridge height; instead, the transition is marked by a stone gabled bellcote containing a single bell. The west window has five lights with cusped heads under a depressed four-centred arch with hoodmould and carved stops depicting angels bearing shields. Angled buttresses stand at the west end, and a narrow light occupies the gable. A wooden crucifix is attached to the west elevation below the window. Other window openings to the nave and sacristy consist of paired or triple cusped lights under flat lintels with hoodmoulds having square stops, and single-light ogee-headed windows. The high east window of the sanctuary contains three cusped lights with a depressed four-centred arch.

Interior

The entrance porch contains oak double doors within a Tudor-arched opening with carved shields in the spandrels and the inscription "THE MASTER IS HERE AND CALLETH THEE". Within the porch are a holy water stoup and a brass memorial panel to Edith Cécile Ellis (née Duval), the late wife of the donor.

The nave has white plaster walls and an oak waggon roof with gilded decorative bosses on the ribs, typical of Young's churches. Around the coving runs a painted inscription: "Unto the King of Ages Immortal Invisible the only God be Honour Glory for ever and ever Amen (1 Tim. 1.17)". At the chancel arch stands a carved oak rood screen with delicate cusped tracery, surmounted by rood figures. Various coats of arms are attached to the coving of the rood beam. In recesses to right and left are polychrome figures of the Sacred Heart and the Madonna and Child, both original to the church and possibly by Mayer and Co. Beneath the rood figures are the inscriptions "Ecce Agnus Dei" (Behold the Lamb of God) and "Tu Dulce Lumen Patriae Carnis Negatum Sensibus" (Sweet Light of our eternal home, To fleshly sense denied, from St Bernard's hymn for the Feast of the Transfiguration, translated by Bl. J H Newman). On the sanctuary side of the screen appears a further inscription based on the second chapter of the Song of Solomon: "O Qui stas post parietem nostrum Proscipiens per cancellos, Hunc decorum domus tuae tua decores luce; Hoc propugnaculum propugnes, Modo custodes Ipse custodias, Ut semper a securibus hoc opus stet securum" (a plea to amboclasts not to destroy the screen).

The chancel also has an oak barrel vaulted roof, with a further painted inscription around its coving: "Splendor Paternae Gloriae Incomprehensa Caritas Nobis Amoris Copiam Largire Per Presentium". The altar is a large stone slab placed upon four stone pillars and encased in oak on the front, which bears the device of the Lamb. It retains its original oak reredos with rather weakly painted figures of angels and martyrs, their shields and emblems below. At the centre of the gradine, the wooden tabernacle has a brass door elaborately adorned with precious stones and decoration, with a pelican in its piety at the centre. A crucifix thought to be of ivory is placed in the recess for the monstrance throne above.

The church retains its original oak furnishings throughout, including high-backed sedile and stalls in the sanctuary, and moveable benches in the nave with panelled ends and square moulded tops. A high panelled and railed enclosure at the west end forms a baptistery area. Within this enclosure, the stone font is placed on a raised stone floor and has an octagonal bowl with wooden cover supported by a stubby column with floriated capital. Over the baptistery is a handsome brass wall monument recording the gift of Arthur Guy Ellis. In the southwest corner stands an oak Lady altar with a large semi-circular ceramic cover depicting the Annunciation in the style of Della Robbia, given in memory of Anna Stancioff, Comtesse de Grenaud and Mistress of the Robes at the Bulgarian court, by her children in May 1955. A small oak tabernacle has an enamel Agnus Dei on its door. In the northwest corner is a small pipe organ with an oak case, made by The Positive Organ Company, London NW (Catalogue no. 883), a maker that specialised in inexpensive, sturdily-built organs for smaller churches.

Most windows have clear glass set in rectangular quarries with coloured glass chevron patterning in the margins. Three stained glass windows survive: the east window shows the Holy Trinity flanked by kneeling figures of St John the Baptist and St Francis, donated in memory of Edith Cécile Ellis by her mother in 1911, signed by Ward and Hughes; on the south side of the chancel, a two-light window depicting the Annunciation dated 1931, signed A L and E C Moore, London; and the easternmost window on the south side of the nave, a narrow single-light depicting Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception, possibly circa 1950, not signed or dated.

The Lych Gate

To the south of the church, a lych gate grants access from Farm Lane. It takes the form of a double-leaf timber gate under a hipped clay-tile roof, bearing the inscription "TO DAY FOR ME / TOMORROW FOR THEE" in the same script as that decorating the porch of the church.