Church Of St Mary The Virgin

The Church of St Mary the Virgin, Tottenham, was built in 1886-7 to designs by John Edward Knight Cutts. It was constructed of red Suffolk brick with Bath stone dressings and has slate roofs, in the Early English Gothic Revival style. The church was established as a mission from Marlborough College to serve the rapidly expanding population of Tottenham, which had grown from 13,000 people in 1861 to around 70,000 by 1885.

The building has a complex plan comprising a nave with north and south aisles, chancel, north chapel with round apse, southeast transept serving as organ chamber with vestry beyond, a small northeast porch, northwest and southwest porches with a baptistery between them, and a west meeting room.

Exterior

The principal elevation faces north towards Lansdowne Road. This shows the five-bay nave with its lean-to aisle, the separately gabled round-apsed north chapel, the chancel roof (slightly lower than the nave), and the complex western structures including the north porch leading to the baptistery and the gable of the meeting room. Square corner buttresses at the west end of the nave rise as turrets with slit openings at the top, crowned by small pyramidal stone spirelets. Similar turrets stand at the east end of the nave.

The west wall features pairs of tall narrow windows with circular openings above them, flanking an even taller central window set in a raised projection. This projection rises to form an octagonal bell turret which begins in brick and transitions to a stone bell-stage with small single-light openings on each face, capped by a stone spirelet.

The aisle bays are divided by buttresses with offsets, each bay containing two small lancet windows. The nave clerestory has three tall lancets per bay with flat pilasters marking the divisions. The north chapel has a single-light bellcote and a series of lancet windows.

The chancel terminates in a three-sided apse, each side having three graded lancets. The east face, aligned with the chapel east end, bears the foundation stone recording its laying on 8 May 1886 by the Duchess of Albany.

The south elevation resembles the north side except that in place of the chapel there is a large transept housing the organ chamber, with a small vestry to its east having its own doorway under a shouldered lintel. At the east end of the south aisle a doorway corresponds to the small northeast porch.

Interior

The interior walls have plastered and whitened dados below sill level in the aisles and chapel, with exposed red brick or extensive wall paintings elsewhere. The five-bay arcade to the nave has moulded red brick arches springing from round stone piers with reeded and fluted capitals and moulded bases. Three arches on either side of the chancel have moulded arches with octagonal piers, moulded capitals and bases. At the west end, three similar arches separate the nave from the baptistery, though the central arch is higher and wider than those flanking it. The nave roof has tie-beams and crown posts.

Wall Paintings

St Mary's contains an extensive series of wall paintings by Heaton, Butler and Bayne, executed over a long period extending into the early 20th century. In the nave, the main scheme on the north and south spandrels, painted between 1888 and 1911, depicts Old and New Testament Types and Anti-types in quattrocento style with figures standing under arches. Over the arcade to the baptistery is the Presentation, which was almost complete when the church opened in 1887. Over the chancel arch is a Crucifixion scene dating from shortly after the opening. Further paintings in the chancel continue the biblical narrative: the Annunciation and Nativity were nearly finished at the church's opening. In the baptistry is a picture of Christ and the Children. The roof of the chapel apse was decorated with biblical scenes over a number of years in the Edwardian period.

Principal Fixtures

The most impressive feature is the alabaster reredos designed by John Edward Knight Cutts in 1908 and carved by Harry Hems of Exeter. It was given in memory of the first vicar, E Noel Smith, who died in 1908. The main panels show the Crucifixion and Entombment flanked by numerous saints. To the north of the sanctuary is the tomb chest and effigy of Noel Smith. The figure is of alabaster and the chest of stone, also sculpted by Hems.

The circular font is a fine piece with an alabaster bowl and base and a Purbeck marble stem. The bowl is carved with large quatrefoils containing foliage and a dove descending. Between the nave and chancel is a First World War memorial timber screen of 1921 with wide, open lights and a loft on top. The square timber pulpit with traceried sides standing on legs was brought from Marlborough College.

The stalls have pierced, traceried fronts and backs. The nave and south aisle seating has good, restrained detail with open backs and kneeling boards but no enclosing ends. Benches have been removed from the north aisle, much of the south aisle and the east part of the nave. The Stations of the Cross came from St Paul, Dock Street, in Whitechapel, which closed in 1990. There is extensive stained glass by Heaton, Butler and Bayne. The east lancet in the chapel was given by J E K and J P Cutts in 1887, as the inscription records.

Historical Context

In 1885, the archdeacon of Middlesex remarked that he knew of no place in England that had increased in population as much as Tottenham. The need for church accommodation was pressing, and St Mary's was one of several, usually Anglo-Catholic, churches in London established with assistance from a public school—in this case, Marlborough College. The Marlborough mission originated after a visit by the bishop of Bedford, William Walsham How, to the college, when masters and boys agreed to provide £150 a year for the maintenance of a missionary clergyman in Tottenham. Around 1882 they raised £1,800 for a permanent church site to replace a temporary iron church. The foundation stone was laid on 8 May 1886 and consecration took place on 28 April 1887. The builder was J Holloway of Lavender Hill, and the clerk of works was W J Llewellyn Wilson. An extensive scheme of painting was evidently intended from the outset.

The architect, John Edward Knight Cutts (1847-1938), was articled to the well-known and prolific church architect Ewan Christian from 1865 to 1870, after which he established an independent practice. His younger brother, John Priston (1854-1935), was articled to him in 1877, remained as an assistant and became a partner around 1890. Cutts senior was diocesan surveyor for St Albans from 1881 to 1887. The firm developed a busy church architecture practice in and around London, specialising in generously proportioned economical buildings, often of red brick as here, to meet the great demand for new churches in the area at the end of the 19th century.