Roman Catholic Church of St Thomas of Canterbury and Attached Parish Rooms

Roman Catholic Church of St Thomas of Canterbury and Attached Parish Rooms

This building began as a Literary and Mechanics' Institute Hall designed by William Pattisson in 1850. It was adapted for use as a Roman Catholic church and parish rooms in 1929–1930, with the church interior designed by J. Arnold Crush.

The walls are constructed of gault brick, red brick and blue brick with limestone and Roman cement detailing, beneath slate roofs.

The church building itself is a single rectangular structure running roughly south to north, though the liturgical arrangement places the altar at the north end. The attached parish rooms on the east side consist of a single open-plan ground floor space, with stairs to the first floor accessed through number 15 St John's Street via an opening in the dividing wall.

The principal elevation facing St John's Street is of gault brick with rusticated quoins in Roman cement. A two-stage brick plinth with stone sills forms the base. Three tall round-headed window openings, slightly recessed and placed symmetrically, are topped by round hood moulds ending in square stops with raised lozenge details. The windows are original, featuring margin lights and top-opening vents in their upper sections. The central opening's lower part contains double timber entrance doors with a transom light, accessed via two steps. The façade is crowned by a moulded cornice on console brackets and a plain parapet bearing a raised rendered panel inscribed with the date 'AD MDCCCL'.

The west and east flank walls, which abut number 11 St John's Street and the church rooms respectively, are of red brick. Each has a single round-headed blind window recess. The gabled rear is also red brick, featuring three plain round-headed window openings with stone sills above inverted relieving arches and an oculus ventilation opening in the gable head. The fenestration is original but consists of simpler sash windows in contrast to the more elaborate south elevation.

The St John's Street frontage of the church rooms is two storeys of gault brick, with a smaller plinth of blue brick and a simpler cornice, frieze and parapet that joins the church's parapet. A pair of canted bay windows rises through both storeys with sash windows and narrow side lights. At ground floor they are linked by a roof over a doorway formed in 2003 by rebuilding their lower walls. To the left stands a blocked doorway with a moulded Roman cement surround and a blocked stair window above. The rear is red brick with a small two-storey hipped-roof wing projecting and a single-storey flat-roof section with lantern light spanning from the rear of the original building to the rear boundary wall.

Within the church, the main doors on St John's Street lead through a lobby beneath the organ gallery, which rests on fluted Ionic pilasters. The gallery itself is of painted wood incorporating metal tracery panels. It terminates at the sides of the street-front windows which flank it, though marks in the window surrounds suggest it may previously have extended across them when functioning as a choir gallery. The coffered ceiling is divided into squares by flat, shallow ribs. The nave contains late twentieth-century benches of simple open-backed timber design.

The original simple timber dado panelling from the Mechanics' Institute survives on the side walls at the south (liturgical west) end. The remainder of the side walls displays taller large-framed plaster panels from 1929, which increase slightly in height towards the north (liturgical east) end to mark the sanctuary. The sanctuary contains a pedimented baldacchino supported on four fluted Corinthian columns bearing the arms of Achille Ratti, H.H. Pope Pius XI (1922–1939), raised on two carpeted steps. The altar sits on an additional step. A panel behind the altar is painted 'Altare Privilegium', part of the 1930 arrangement, though the hanging has been renewed in the late twentieth century along with the tabernacle plinth. Part of the dividing wall between sanctuary and church rooms has been removed, with the opening supported on a single steel pillar.

Panelling behind the altar incorporates two side altars with curved pediments. These are late twentieth-century replacements, as are the plaster wall panels, but the pedimented niches above them are original. Short altar rails with turned balusters and heavy rail and posts, which may be reused sections of the original curved rails, stand in front of each side altar.

The ground floor of the church rooms is a single open space incorporating a 1975 extension behind the front range, with a glass screen creating a lobby at the front. An opening connects to a staircase in number 15 St John's Street. The font standing in the lobby is from the 1872 church on Crown Place—an octagonal stone font on a moulded base with tracery decoration on all sides of the shaft and bowl. The stone surround in the floor bears the inscription 'FOR THE SOUL OF ANITA MARGARET POLE EDMUNDS 1918'.

The first floor contains a meeting room with a WC in a small rear projection. The meeting room has a coved ceiling with picture rail, skirting and fireplace, the latter retaining its original cast iron front plate.