All Saints Pastoral Centre, Including Chapel

All Saints Pastoral Centre, including Chapel

A pastoral centre on Shenley Lane, West London Colney, begun in 1899 as an Anglican convent. The main building was designed by Leonard Stokes, while the chapel was begun in 1927 by Sir Ninian Comper and completed in 1964 by his son Sebastian Comper, following the original designs.

The main building is constructed of red and mauve brick with stone and brick horizontal banding, with a stone slate roof. It is executed in a free neo-Tudor style, comprising two storeys with attics. A large square entrance tower stands near the centre of the elevation, rising to three storeys, with chamfered and buttressed angle bastions and a broad battlemented parapet. The tower features a stone-carved centrepiece crowned by wide eaves and a figured stone frieze above the door depicting the nativity. The first and second floor window bands have concave heads, while the door itself is flanked by a carved arch and spandrels.

The flanking wings are roughly symmetrical, each containing six windows, with a slightly lower four-window range on the left. At the right end stands a single-storey hall with seven lancets and an oriel bay. All windows are stone-dressed Tudor style casements, mullioned and transomed on the ground floor and mullioned on the upper floor, with 2 to 5 lights. Hipped attic dormers appear in pairs and fours. The hall features Perpendicular style windows separated by heavy buttresses rising through the eaves.

Behind the front elevation lies a large square cloistered court. The ground floor windows here have semicircular traceried heads, while the upper floor features shallow canted oriels on alternate bays, their parapets carried through the eaves. Hipped dormers and buttressed ground floor walls throughout, with continuous drip moulds. The rear elevation is symmetrical, with projecting gabled end pavilions. A wide traceried semicircular recess marks the central door, flanked by end walls with battlemented stair towers. An Italian campanile-style chimney treatment appears on the far angle of the service court to the left, featuring wide eaves and stone blank recesses beneath them.

The chapel projects from the left front, constructed in light mauve brick with stone dressings. Its outline resembles Kings College Chapel, Cambridge. Six pointed-arch windows in a mixture of Early English and Perpendicular styles are set between buttresses rising to crocketed finials. A seven-light east window is surmounted by a gable and crocketed niche. Three bays on the east, together with a single-storey north aisle, were completed by Sir Ninian Comper.

The chapel interior combines Gothic and Renaissance detail in white paint. A six-bay ribbed quadripartite vault spans the space. A Lady Chapel on the southeast connects to the chancel by continuous moulded arches. Above the altar stands a gilded wood baldacchino of four Corinthian columns supporting an open crocketed ogee canopy. Choir stalls feature Tuscan colonnades in Gothic style panelling. At the east end, a gilded and traceried organ is carried on a Tuscan gallery. A Tree of Jesse glass fills the east window.

The interior of the great hall at the north end of the main building displays a seven-bay arch-braced collar roof. On the west wall stand two bolection-moulded fireplaces flanking a moulded stone archway leading to the kitchen. A single-storey loggia at the north end of the building connects with the adjacent Voluntary Mission Movement building.