Catholic Church of Our Lady and St John the Evangelist with attached Presbytery, Sudbury

The Catholic Church of Our Lady and St John the Evangelist is a Roman Catholic church built in 1893 to designs by Leonard Stokes, with an attached presbytery of earlier date. Both structures are constructed of red brick with bands and dressings of limestone, and the roofs are covered in Welsh slate.

The building is not traditionally oriented; descriptions that follow use liturgical compass points, with the altar positioned in the liturgical east. The church comprises a nave and chancel, with a tower, porch and narthex on the liturgical north side. The presbytery and parish office interconnect with the church, while the hall and ancillary accommodation occupy the lower garden storey.

The principal elevation faces onto The Croft and consists of the liturgical west front. The presbytery stands back from the street behind the tower and the west wall of the nave.

The west front of the nave is a single bay wide, centred on a large window with late free-style gothic tracery that rises to a cusped cross at its apex. The Flemish bond brickwork is differentiated by limestone bands at the sill and springing point of the window, with gathered emphasis towards the suggestion of a gable around the parapet.

The tower rises in three stages with limestone bands and dressings. The ground floor contains a porch with a two-light window on the return elevation. The entrance facing The Croft is through a splayed and panelled ogee archway, above which are sculptural niches containing terracotta statues of Christ in Majesty flanked by Our Lady and St John. The upper stage of the tower features highly considered stone detailing: subtle vertical elements rise upwards through repeated horizontal bands laid with diminishing intervals, while the weather mouldings around the corners and embrasures of the parapet are curved, hinting at the influence of the aesthetic movement. An octagonal lead-covered bell cupola topped with a needle-like fleche rises through the top of the tower.

The south elevation of the nave has projecting eaves and three tall lancet windows. A two-light traceried window appears on the south wall of the chancel. A projecting enclosure with a sloping roof carries a stair down to the undercroft with rectangular windows following the line of the stair.

The east elevation faces the garden and features two large multi-pane casement windows with segmental arches at undercroft level. Above this is an expanse of plain brickwork, differentiated by a pattern in darker brick showing the silhouette of a cross on Calvary.

The north elevation of the nave and chancel, visible only from the garden, features a lancet window and a two-light traceried window respectively. A tall porch shelters a bell above the undercroft door.

The presbytery is connected to the tower and the liturgical north side of the church. It is constructed of red brick laid in Flemish bond with a single band of gault brick at the height of the upper lintels. The roof is hipped and covered in Welsh slate. It rises two storeys above a tall basement that connects to the rear garden, and is two bays wide. The principal feature of the front elevation facing The Croft is a classically detailed wooden porch with leaded side windows.

The rear elevation faces the garden. A domestic upper window on the left is directly above the ecclesiastical masonry that once formed the east window of the Lady chapel. Next to this window is a stone plaque bearing the inscription: 'AND YOU SHALL BE HATED BY ALL MEN FOR MY NAME'S SAKE. MATT. X. 22'. At garden level there is a long lean-to conservatory. All but one of the five domestic window openings has been replaced with later glazing; the lower right-hand window retains its original two-over-two timber frame.

The porch beneath the tower has a coffered pine ceiling and a stone stoup set into the wall beside the doorway. On the liturgical south side a blocked arch formerly connected into the body of the nave. The space once occupied by the Lady chapel now contains a 1981 staircase which wraps around a confessional as it rises to the gallery.

Within the sanctuary, the north and south walls have been panelled in the later 20th century but retain two original elements: an aumbry for holy oil on the south side and a stone piscina on the north. The altar, ambo, presidential chair and tabernacle plinth are all designed by Donald Simpson and date to 1993, made of Cumberland slate and carved and gilded with liturgical symbols. A matching font appears in the nave.

The un-aisled nave is four bays long and lies three steps below the level of the sanctuary, separated from it by a chancel arch. There is no fixed seating or stained glass. The windows are simple leaded lancets set within broader arched reveals. The two western bays of the nave are taken up by the raked gallery, which cuts across the west window. The front of the gallery reuses the former altar rails as a balustrade. On the south side of the nave a staircase lit by cusped single-light rectangular windows leads down to the parish hall below.

The parish hall and other ancillary spaces at basement level have been adapted in the later 20th or early 21st century.

The presbytery is now interconnected with the church and serves in part as parish office and sacristy. The original domestic plan survives around the staircase and in the first floor rooms. Some elements of 19th century joinery survive in the stick balusters, handrail and steps of the staircase, internal doors, and windows.