Church Of St Luke

Church of St Luke, Kidderpore Avenue, Camden

Church built 1897–99 designed by Basil Champneys at the expense of Sarah Benedict Brown (d.1902). The building sits on falling land and was raised over a church hall, with a later attached hall added to the south side around 1910. Constructed in red brick with stone dressings and Roman tile roofs.

The style is late Gothic, mixing Decorated, Perpendicular and Flamboyant motifs, influenced by the churches of Bodley and G.G. Scott junior.

The exterior comprises a 5-bay nave with clerestory and lean-to aisles. The west front is dominated by a tall gable to the nave featuring a 7-light traceried window, with projecting porches to north and south that have crenellated parapets and a stair turret on the south side. The porch entrances and west window have enriched canopies with crockets. The clerestory contains tall 3-light traceried windows arranged in pairs. The north aisle has square 2-light windows and flying buttresses, with the basement hall beneath the church entered from this side. The south side accommodates the attached hall of circa 1910 in matching style, consisting of 3 transverse gables with 3-light traceried windows to the south and square-headed windows with separate entrances facing east and west. A southern transept is attached to the choir for the organ, featuring a gable window and hexagonal crenellated turret at the south-east corner crowned by a lead-covered wooden fleche for a bell. The high chancel has 4-light traceried windows on north and south sides and a 7-light east window with a cross inscribed within the tracery.

The interior was formerly of red brick but is now painted throughout. The nave has a fine arcade of 5 bays with octagonal piers with dying mouldings and no capitals, articulated by wall shafts rising through spandrels to the roof plate. An open-timbered king post roof covers the nave, while the chancel is boarded with no chancel arch. Heavy open-timbered aisle roofs are present. A small west gallery is carried on 3 open arches across the end of the nave, with baptistry and font (given by Champneys) beneath. The choir contains high-backed stalls finished with cornice and fretwork decoration, and a large organ case on the liturgical south side. The altar rails and a broad carved open-fronted timber pulpit on a stone base form part of a carefully conceived set of chancel furniture. Tripartite stepped sedilia of unpainted stone are well carved. A broad reredos of stone (now painted) without images is present. The four chancel windows were made by Powells. Original pews remain. A Great War memorial oak screen in 2 parts stands at the west end behind the pews, now positioned slightly forward.

The attached hall on the south side was divided from the aisle by a wall circa 1950 designed by Harold Dicksee. The hall has a central arcade with octagonal stone piers and boarded timber roofs. It may have been built to serve students from the former Westfield College, now King's College.

This little-altered late Victorian church was built for Evangelical worship, with most of the fittings designed by its architect.