Roman Catholic Church of Our Lady of Perpetual Succour

Roman Catholic Church of Our Lady of Perpetual Succour

A Roman Catholic chapel of ease built in 1898 for John George Kenyon of Gillingham Hall. It was designed by FE Banham and built by FR Allen, both of Beccles.

The building is constructed of red brick with limestone dressings and a slate roof with some modern fibreglass replacement. It is rectangular on plan, aligned east-west, and consists of two campanile towers at the west end, an apsidal sanctuary at the east end, a six-bay unaisled nave, a south porch and a sacristy.

The exterior displays an Italianate Classical style. The west end is divided by prominent cornices to create a two-stage central section flanked by four-stage campanile towers. A centrepiece is formed by an open triangular pediment supported on two tiers of Tuscan pilasters. The ground floor contains a wooden door with six raised and fielded panels set within a moulded architrave, flanked by panelled Tuscan pilasters supporting a segmental pediment. The second stage contains a large oculus window with a moulded architrave and four decorative keystones. Above the window, occupying the centre of the pediment, is a plain stone cross standing on a small cantilevered pedestal. Rising above the apex of the pediment is a stone statue of the Madonna and Child, standing on a bracketed pedestal with a wider plinth, both featuring blind recessed panels. Flanking each side of the centrepiece are blind narrow bays with recessed panels to each stage. The whole central section is unified by a balustraded parapet set above a blocking course with a blind recessed panel. The two campanile towers are identical in treatment, with clasping Tuscan pilasters on all but their third stages. The first and second stages have recessed panels with thin plain pilasters carrying moulded Romanesque heads. The first stages have vertical rectangular windows with plain stone surrounds and a continuous moulded lintel, while the second stages are blind. The third stages are also blind, each with a recessed panel. The final stages are formed of open lanterns with moulded Italianate classical arches and lead-covered domes.

The walls of the seven-bay nave are divided horizontally by a prominent cornice and vertically into individual bays by two tiers of brick pilasters; those to the first stage are plain while those above have recessed panels. A flat-roofed porch with a prominent cornice and a panelled door set with a shouldered architrave projects from the first bay of the western south nave. A sacristy, also with a prominent cornice and flat roof, stands against the sixth and seventh bays. Its west wall contains a five-panelled door with a moulded surround flanked by thin plain pilasters with fluted capitals and consoles supporting a triangular pediment, flanked on the left-hand side by a vertical rectangular window with a stone surround containing a decorative keystone. The sacristy's south wall has two identical windows flanked to their right by an external stack with a tall flue rising from between voluted brackets. To the first bay of the left-hand return there is a small projecting storeroom with a small horizontal rectangular window with a six-paned casement. The remaining bays to both returns have two blind recessed panels to the lower stage: the lower one being square and the upper one rectangular. The second stage bays to both returns all contain oculus windows with moulded surrounds with four decorative keystones. The apsidal east end is blind and has identical recessed panels to the first stage and a single recessed panel to the second. Standing against the south-west corner of the apse is a Calvary cross supporting an oak sculpture of the crucified Christ. A plaque adjacent to the cross records that it was erected in 2012 in memory of Giuseppe Blanco (1951-2011), a local parishioner.

The interior is a single space with the nave having a barrel-vaulted roof and side walls comprised of a blind arcade with a continuous and moulded entablature on Tuscan pilasters with recessed arches. The apsidal sanctuary has plain panelled walls and transverse ribs to the roof, with apse walls articulated with Tuscan pilasters rising into the apse ribs. The spaces between have raised panels with concave corners. The narthex at the west end has a six-panelled entrance door with a semi-circular pedimented doorcase with dentilled ornamentation and panelled frieze. The east and west walls at this end both have six-panelled doors with segmental pediments, plain friezes and panelled recesses. Set into the wall to the right-hand side of the entrance door are two war memorial plaques: a First World War memorial to Clifford Lobban and David Wincup and a Second World War plaque to Squadron Leader John Taylor DFC and Lieutenant Robin Todhunter of the Royal Norfolk Regiment. Separating the narthex from the nave is a late 19th-century cast- and wrought-iron screen by Mr Holmes, the farrier to the Gillingham Hall estate. Attached to the north wall of the nave is an early-Victorian bronze figure of the crucified Christ known as 'The Crucifix for the Broken', re-hung here in 2016 as a memorial to Major Joseph Robert Kenyon (1883-1971). At the east end is a single-step sanctuary with a balustraded altar rail of painted wood beneath a moulded chancel arch. Extending from the east wall is an elliptical-shaped altar platform on which the High Altar and reredos stand, both of wood. Above the altar is a suspended wooden oval canopy edged with wood pennants in imitation of fabric.