St Vedasts Rectory

This is a four-storey house built in 1959 by Stephen Dykes Bower, constructed from yellow brick with red brick arches, concrete floors, and a flat lead roof. The design is Neo-classical in style. The street elevation features a rusticated brick base with basement windows and ground-floor windows, flanked by a lunette and an arch-headed double door leading to the courtyard. The first floor has four bays with low-relief arches on stone pilasters, topped with a capping band. Above, a stone open pediment features a circular blind opening and forms the parapet at the third floor. The courtyard elevation includes a covered passageway with circular windows and a first-floor balcony supported by console brackets with an 1800-style iron balustrade. The second floor has French windows, and the third floor features blank stuccoed walls with teak trellis, an openwork pier, and a teak companion ladder leading to a roof garden. An upper gallery connects the Rectory to the Church Hall, supported by a single pier and featuring a timber superstructure with a dentil cornice and sash windows. The courtyard includes a fountain with a red brick open pediment, an arch of tiles, a stone lunette with radial fluting and a bronze lion’s head mask, and a stone head on a granite bracket by Epstein.

Inside, the main timber staircase has a mahogany wreathed handrail, knob newel finials and tear-shaped drops. The first-floor living room features a raised platform with a balustrade and curved wall, displaying a 1959 mural by Hans Feibusch depicting Jacob and angels. A painted timber chimneypiece is also present. The third-floor study has fitted bookshelves, including some acting as room dividers, and three French windows opening onto the roof garden.

This house represents a rare domestic work by a traditional church architect, demonstrating equal quality to the work of Raymond Erith, and featuring a clever contrast to the adjacent Wren church, which Dykes Bower also restored, evoking a style of around 1800 without conflict. There was no previous rectory on this site.