St Stephen's Church Hall

St Stephen's Church Hall

A detached church hall standing within the boundary wall of the Church of St Stephen, built in 1908 to a design by EA Pearce.

The building is constructed in Luton purple brick with Portland stone detailing, under a slate roof with timber windows. It is single storey, broadly rectangular in plan and oriented north-east to south-west, with the principal elevation facing north-east. The interior comprises a double-height main hall with secondary ground floor rooms to the west and south, and a mezzanine floor above an additional ground floor room at the north-east end.

The exterior is designed in a free-style with Arts and Crafts influences, employing purple brick and contrasting Portland stone. The principal north-east elevation features a single-storey, three-bay entrance block with a gabled double-height hall set behind it. The outer bays contain studded timber double-doors beneath round-headed stone arches and springers, set within small gables with stone dressings. The central bay has three high-set casement windows with leaded lights. Above runs a wide stone drip mould beneath a brick parapet. The main gable of the hall is set back behind the parapet and has four horizontal stone string courses, the lowest intersecting a wide Diocletian window. The outer edges of the gable are supported by brick buttresses topped with square rebated stone capitals. At the apex is a central arrow-slit breather.

The north-west elevation divides into two sections. The north-east section has four casement windows set between projecting buttresses topped with chamfered stone coping. The tall windows have four panes with the upper two being small hopper windows. The roof above has stone parapets to each end gable and a steeply-pitched timber cupola on the ridge towards the south-west end. The south-west section projects under a flat roof and at its north-east end has studded timber double-doors beneath a stone segmental arch. The brickwork above displays diapering in darker bricks and is surmounted by a stone pediment with central niche and inset carved figurehead. The remainder of this section is relatively plain with timber casement windows, behind which the ridge of a pitched roof rises above the south-west section of the hall.

The south-west elevation has twin gables with horizontal stone string courses. Both gables contain three timber casement windows, the central one being taller, standing above a stone moulded cill. The rainwater hoppers are tulip-shaped cast iron. The south-east elevation is of similar character to the south-west.

Inside, the double-height hall spans four bays with segmental-arched timber trusses with steel ties, resting on shaped corbels. Internal walls are painted brick, and windows to the main hall are recessed beneath segmental arches. At the south-west end a former stage has a late-twentieth-century glazed partition at its front. To the south-west and west of the main hall, multi-panelled glazed doors with leaded lights provide access to classrooms. Other doors are multi-panelled timber. Fireplaces have been boarded over, though their ovolo surrounds remain visible. At the north-east end of the hall, a late-twentieth-century mezzanine floor with access stair have been added above a classroom below.