Roman Catholic Church of St Edmund King and Martyr, including the former private chapel to the rear of the adjoining presbytery (now the Blessed Sacrament Chapel)

Roman Catholic Church of St Edmund King and Martyr

This is a Roman Catholic parish church built in 1836–1837 to designs by Charles Day of Worcester. It incorporates a former private chapel, now the Blessed Sacrament Chapel, which was built in 1761–1762 at the rear of the adjoining presbytery (originally a mission house). This earlier chapel was illegal at the time of its construction but was rededicated and internally connected to the church in 1979. The listing includes the chapel but excludes the adjoining presbytery's former gallery, which is now a parish office and listed separately (NHLE 1142308).

The church is constructed of red brick with Ketton stone dressings to the entrance portico. The roof is concealed behind a stone-coped parapet. The building is rectangular in plan, aligned north to south, though the description uses conventional liturgical orientation with the altar at the east end.

The exterior displays Greek Revival styling, loosely based on the Athenian Treasury at Delphi. It is a tall single-storey structure with a three-bay street frontage. Stone steps rise to an imposing entrance portico in antis, featuring tall fluted Ionic columns and plain pilasters supporting a plain entablature with a triangular pediment. This pediment is surmounted by a replacement stone cross from 1921. The central doorway has tall panelled double doors, while the two flanking bays contain multi-pane windows, all set within tooled entablatures with moulded cornices. The left-hand return has a blind window in an identical architrave.

The side returns are of plain red brick with a stone cornice band. Above this band are five clerestory windows in recessed reveals with plain and coloured glazing featuring diamond-shaped quarries set within diagonal lead lattice. The glass is believed to have come from Willow Lane Chapel in Norwich during the 1980s when that building was converted to offices.

The apsidal Blessed Sacrament Chapel extends from the rear of the adjoining presbytery and has two tall six-over-six sashes (one unhorned and one horned), a cogged cornice, and a slate roof.

The interior begins with a vestibule having a stone-flagged floor. On either side are dog-leg with winder stone staircases with iron balustrades rising to the choir gallery. At each end, opposite the staircases, are four-panel doors that originally gave access to the main body of the church (the left-hand door is now obscured by a universal access toilet). On the south side is a half-glazed door to the adjoining presbytery.

The vestibule contains commemorative monuments including a marble memorial to the Hon Charles Petre (died 1854) with a bas relief of the Raising of Lazarus, signed by R Brown of 58 Great Russell Street, London; a round-headed plaque to Anne Frances Rushbrooke (died 1906); and a marble First World War memorial from 1927 with an additional panel for Second World War dead.

The surround to the central doorway to the nave was created around 1959 and is a composite piece assembled from an Adam-style marble chimneypiece from Rushbrooke Hall, Suffolk (demolished in 1961). The supports are outward-facing terms from the mid-17th century and of Dutch origin, while the frieze is slightly earlier, possibly Tuscan, and bears the arms of the Farnese and della Rovere families. The half-glazed double-doors within this surround have square-pane glazing to the top half and two raised and fielded panels to the bottom, with mouldings enriched with an egg and dart motif.

The main body of the church has a pilastered interior that was remodelled in 1877. It features a west choir gallery and a short sanctuary set behind an in antis screen of two Ionic columns with flanking pilasters supporting a deep cornice to a glazed and deeply coved panelled ceiling with rosettes. The paint scheme dates from 2014 and includes marbling and stencilling informed by historical precedent.

The nave retains its original timber box pews arranged in four banks, each bearing Roman numerals. The walls display plaster painted Stations of the Cross from 1925 by Messrs Vanpoulle of London (replacing an earlier painted set installed in 1876) above shallow round-headed recesses.

At the east end, the iron communion rails, sanctuary steps, and mahogany pulpit are original to the church. The marble altar at the top of the sanctuary steps dates from 2014 but incorporates the base slab, mensa, columns, and relics from a 1965 altar. A limed oak columnar ambo placed on the sanctuary steps also dates from 2014. In the apse is a painting on copper depicting the Ascension by Robert Park of Preston from 1876, restored in 2021 by GH Pettit.

The apse is flanked by four-panel doors with flat hoods supported by heavy console brackets leading to the original sacristy on the left-hand side and parish library on the right-hand side.

On the west end of the north side is a marble Lady altar surmounted by a Carrara marble statue of Our Lady. The altar was given in 1920 by Henry Francis Harvey in memory of his son, Lieutenant Harry Thomas Harvey, killed at Ypres in 1917. The statue was given by George Gery Milner-Gibson-Callum in memory of his mother, Susannah Arethusa. Parish priest Fr Houghton (1954–69) recorded that the statue originated from the workshop of neoclassical sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen. The altar reredos comprise two repurposed doorcases from around 1735 from Rushbrooke Hall, each with a lugged architrave framed by two Corinthian columns supporting an entablature with decorative frieze, modillion cornice, and triangular pediment. The fascia bears the inscription "SALVE PORTA CAELI" (Hail the Gates of Heaven) in painted gold letters.

Opposite the Lady altar, on the south side of the church, a tall triangular-pedimented doorcase from Rushbrooke Hall frames the entrance to the Blessed Sacrament Chapel. This eighteenth-century doorway consists of a lugged architrave flanked by engaged fluted columns with stiff-leaf capitals standing on tall panelled pedestals. The columns support an entablature with a plain architrave bearing the inscription "ECCE OSTIUM OVIUM" (Behold the Gate of the Sheepfold) in painted gold lettering, along with a decorative frieze and dentil and modillion cornice and pediment. A hanging sanctuary lamp in the doorway was a gift from Irish drovers in 1875.

The Blessed Sacrament Chapel retains its original Lombard frieze and panelled gallery front, though the panelled wainscoting and raised floor were inserted in 2012 during restoration and redecoration, when the tabernacle and altar were also repositioned. Two early-21st-century half-glazed doors at the rear of the chapel lead to the confessional (left-hand side) and sacristy (right-hand side), neither of which retains historic fixtures and fittings of note.

The church's contemporary crypt comprises three aisles formed by segmental-headed brick arcades.