Our Lady of the Annunciation and Attached Presbytery, King's Lynn

Our Lady of the Annunciation and Attached Presbytery is a Roman Catholic church and priest's house in King's Lynn. The walls are of carrstone with Bath stone dressings and brick, with slate, lead and tiled roofs.

The church is not traditionally orientated — its liturgical east end faces west. The following description uses liturgical directions, assuming the altar to be at the east. The nave and sanctuary form a single rectangle in plan with a tower set at the north-west corner. An aisle runs along the whole north side, incorporating a porch and sacristy. The shrine and south entrance are under a single roof along part of the south side. A covered way connects the south entrance to a separate entrance from the street at the west end, leaving an open yard between it and the church. The vestry projects from the north-east end of the church and north aisle to join the presbytery. The presbytery is a rectangular range running north to south along the east end of the church and vestry, with a kitchen extension projecting from its north end.

The west front to London Road has a central pointed doorway with a wide four-light pointed window above, featuring cusped tracery at the top and a pair of small cusped windows in the gable head. To the right of the main front is a modern carrstone wall with a pointed doorway providing access to ancillary facilities added in 2010. A slender tower with a pitched tiled roof supporting a spirelet clasps the north-west corner of the nave.

The north aisle runs between the tower and the two-storey vestry at the east end of the church. A pitched-roofed porch is in the centre of the aisle. The aisle has a mixture of double and single-light windows with alternating double and single lights in the clerestory. A projecting stone marker at the east end of the clerestory indicates the position of the sanctuary. On the south side the Lady Chapel and south entrance form a lean-to against the chancel with the 2010 extension at the west end and a small open yard in the centre. The clerestory has simple pointed arched windows of two, three and four lights at the east end. At the west are three larger windows, all with hood mouldings and more deeply cut tracery: two with double lancets, one with three lancets and quatrefoils above, which are probably reused from the original church.

The vestry has a pitched roof with a single-bay flat-roofed element joining the aisle and sacristy, which is under a small catslide projection from the aisle roof. The north elevation of the vestry features pairs of simple, cusped lancets with a larger mullioned and transomed window with cusped trefoil in the gable above.

The south elevation of the presbytery is of gault brick with stone surrounds to the windows. Above the ground floor canted bay window, added in the late 19th century, is a large window containing two late 20th-century sash windows with part of the stone surround replaced. In the gable is a small lancet window. The main entrance is recessed in the space between this range and the vestry with a four-pointed arched doorway with timber door. Above is a four-light casement window under a shallow roof with curved sprockets projecting. The east wall is blind and of red brick. A single-storey kitchen extension has been added to the north end with part of the garden wall to number 95 London Road incorporated into it.

The nave and chancel are a single open space of eight bays with woodblock floor and plastered walls under a continuous open roof with an arch-braced king post structure of composite build. The two easternmost bays form the sanctuary with the rood beam from the earlier church marking the transition. Clerestory windows are set in deep reveals on both sides, the first bay of the sanctuary also featuring an internal window affording a view from the room over the vestry. The three westernmost bays of the south side contain larger traceried windows, the heads of which are partly obscured by the internal face of the wall, suggesting a different construction to the others and their possible reuse from the earlier church. The former chancel east window of the Pugin church contains stained glass by Wailes in three lancets with the Virgin flanked by St Thomas of Canterbury and St George above the monogram of the Blessed Virgin, the arms of the See of Canterbury, and the shield of St George, respectively. In the upper part are three quatrefoil windows with angels bearing relevant quotations from Scripture and a small trefoil with another monogram.

The nave is furnished with simple, plain wood open-backed benches of late 20th century throughout, with an octagonal stone font from Pugin's church at the west end. It has quatrefoil panels on each face of the bowl: a lamb and flag on the south face, a stylised cross fleury on the north. The main west door is behind a late 20th-century inner screen door with a simple piscina in the wall adjacent. Above is a late 20th-century organ gallery with two panels of Lunn's reredos mounted on the timber gallery front. A doorway to the modern extension was formed in the south wall adjacent to the gallery in 2010.

The north arcade is of five bays, four of which are pointed chamfered arches with simple hood mouldings and shield stops on octagonal stone columns with moulded capitals. The north aisle has small windows set in deep reveals with original leadwork and hopper vents, the north porch doorway with original door and a plain boarded roof on exposed purlins and principal rafters. The easternmost rafter has painted decoration to denote a small side altar behind the arcade respond. This has a gilded timber and curtained reredos. A simple piscina is in the south wall with a timber memorial plaque to the First and Second World Wars above it. Beside the door to the sacristy on the north wall is a brass memorial to Corporal Austin Lewis, killed in action in 1917. The west end of the aisle has been shortened by a late 20th-century screen with confessionals behind it. This screen protrudes partly across the westernmost bay of the arcade which is a simple arched opening in contrast to the others.

In the sanctuary an aumbry with decorative timber door and vestry door with a painted image of a Pelican in Piety in the tympanum (a relic of the original decorative scheme) are on the north wall. A sedilia with timber panelled back and blind quatrefoil tracery base matching Pugin's font and a stone piscina with simple cusped head of 1897 are on the south wall. The stone altar with three carved and painted panels on the front is of 1947 (reduced in size and moved westwards in 1969), the stone lectern is of 2011 and the tabernacle plinth 2009. Beneath the altar is the altar stone from the first Mass House in Cottons Yard, Ferry Street, consecrated in 1792 by Bishop John Douglas, the Vicar Apostolic of the London District. Above and slightly east of the altar a timber panel is set high in the roof structure, possibly part of the support for the original tester.

An arched opening in the south wall of the nave next to the chancel step leads to the Lady Chapel, which is also the Pontifical Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham. This is a narrow rectangular space with walls of carefully coursed carrstone pieces forming gentle wave-like patterns, with a false blocked opening suggested by breaks in the coursing of the north wall. A piscina is set in the south wall. The ribbed, panelled barrel-vaulted ceiling is painted in blue with gold stars and suspended from it are the nine original lamps of the 1897 scheme plus additional 20th-century ones. The image of Our Lady is incorporated in a neo-Baroque altarpiece by JA Pippet set on an extended step. Two sections of the altar rail remain, and parts of the original carved and gilded screen are incorporated into the current entrance. At the entrance to the shrine is a two-light west window with glass depicting the appearance of the Virgin at Walsingham in 1061 and the southern door to the church. This is flanked by brass memorials to the Revd William Poole (died 1867) and the Revd George Wrigglesworth (died 1900) with a painted panel above. A surviving bench from Lunn's interior scheme stands beneath the window.

The vestry, sacristy and the rooms above them have largely modern interiors except 19th-century tongue-and-groove dado panelling in the sacristy and original windows including a small, leaded, metal-framed window giving a view of the sanctuary from above the sacristy.

The internal layout of the presbytery is largely intact, but with the present front entrance passage to the stair hall and the room above part of the 1897 work. A doorway off the passage leads to the sacristy with a window opposite which was originally external. The stair hall is accessed through a half-glazed door with side lights, possibly the original front door, and contains a small, open-well stair with closed string, fielded panels, smooth soffit, stick balusters and heavy, square-section stop-chamfered pendant newel posts. It terminates with a second floor balustrade contained in a 20th-century partition with fitted cupboards with strap hinges on the landing beyond. The front room has a painted, four-pointed arched fireplace with tiles behind a blocking panel and another in the rear dining room with coved, bevelled mantle set between arched wall niches. A coffered ceiling and canted bay on the west wall are later additions, probably early 20th century. The first floor is connected to rooms above the 1897 sacristy through a former external window. There are three other fireplaces in the bedrooms, each with slightly different moulding details, and some four-panelled chamfered timber doors survive.