Our Lady and St Walstan RC Church

Our Lady and St Walstan Roman Catholic Church

A Roman Catholic church built between 1834 and 1841, designed by J.C. Buckler for the Jerningham family of Costessey Hall. The building is constructed of red brick laid in Flemish bond, with a pantiled nave and concrete tiled chancel.

The church comprises a nave and chancel with a 21st-century polygonal west porch. The large preaching nave contains seven bays with stepped side buttresses separating tall single lancet windows. Angle buttresses flank the west end, which features triple stepped lancets above a single-storey porch. A double stone bellcote sits on a brick plinth at the east nave gable; its upper stage with bells has been lost. The lower two-bay chancel has single lancets to north and south, separated by stepped side buttresses, and three stepped lancets to the east end.

The interior contains a stone west gallery that doubles as an organ loft, consisting of three double-chamfered arches on circular columns and responds. The central spandrels feature stiff-leaf roundels. A string course and plain parapet run along the gallery, which is decorated with two stiff-leaf sculpture roundels and a hanging shield bearing a crowned M and W. A stone staircase with panelled balustrade occupies the south-west corner; the opposite north-west corner is partly filled in. The nave has a panelled dado below the windows and a roof of principals, secondary rafters and ridge piece. The chancel arch is chamfered with a roll-moulded hoodmould. The chancel dado is panelled and raised for the reredos, with cresting fully carved only along the east wall.

A circular font with arcade of trefoils in arches decorates the bowl, a gift from Buckler. Stations of the Cross are painted in oil on canvas within timber frames. Numbered benches made for the church have ends topped with roundels carved with a rose and letters spelling 'ihu' for Jesu and 'Mercy' in Gothic script. The east chancel lancets contain glass by James Grant from 1841; the centre light was probably replaced by Joseph Grant around 1860. One south and one north chancel lancet also contain glass by James Grant from 1841. Below each lancet sits a square Cossey red brick with a recessed cross.

Buckler was commissioned around 1826 by the Jerningham family to remodel Costessey Hall and began this church in 1834 with limited architectural experience beyond remodelling the chancel at Adderbury, Oxfordshire. Construction took seven years. During this period, Buckler was working with Pugin on remodelling Oxburgh Hall and building its chapel, exposing him to Pugin's advanced architectural ideas and the contemporary stylistic debate between Gothic and Classical approaches. The church reflects awareness of these currents, particularly the move away from Nonconformist design within Catholic circles.

The building employs First Pointed Gothic style, relying on lancet windows separated by stepped buttresses—entirely new for East Anglia and unprecedented for Roman Catholic churches in England at that time. The well-defined chancel of two bays, separated on the interior by a pointed moulded chancel arch, was equally innovative in this context. The west end retains a stone gallery with three bold pointed arches. The chancel contains five important early stained glass windows by the Grant Brothers.