Church Of Holy Innocents

Church of Holy Innocents

Built 1875–77 to designs by Arthur William Blomfield, this church was constructed to serve the rapidly developing district between the parish church of St Mary, Hornsey and Christ Church, Crouch End. A parochial district was carved out of St Mary's parish in 1877. The church was entirely free-seated from the outset.

The church is constructed largely of stock brick with red brick detailing, stone mullions and tracery for windows, and some tower details in stone. The roofs are tiled, and the interior features exposed brick arches with timber roof and screen to the south chapel.

The plan comprises a nave with five bays, liturgical north and south aisles, one north and two south porches, and a small west projection. A chancel with north chapel and vestries is complemented by a southeast tower with a ground floor chamber leading into a small south transept cum porch.

The exterior displays stock brick with red brick detailing in a plain early 13th-century style, creating a strong and austere effect characteristic of Blomfield's earlier work. Plate tracery windows have stone mullions and arches picked out in simple polychrome brickwork. A tall tower towards the road at the liturgical east end features a polygonal stair turret and pyramidal cap, with diaper brickwork on the middle stage and bell stage windows with layers of recessed arches. The three-light liturgical east window is surmounted by a foiled wheel window. The liturgical west window and clerestory windows are simpler, each with three stepped lancets, the central one divided with simple plate tracery. Clerestory windows are set under gabled dormers. The north vestries are single-storey with gables. A modern timber porch with disabled access has been added to the middle of the south nave wall.

The interior is spacious, with nave arcades of four bays plus an additional passage space at the west end. Cylindrical piers feature stiff-leaf capitals, exposed brick arches, and moulded bases on high square plinths. Brick heads crown the rere-arches of aisle windows. The chancel arch is of brick on short corbelled shafts. The chancel east window has stone dressing to the head of the rere-arch and jamb shafts with shaft rings. An enclosed organ chamber occupies the west bay of the nave; further enclosure of the west end dating to circa 1973–4 has recently been removed. The roof employs trefoil-shaped trusses on corbels, boarded behind.

The principal fixtures include some open benches and simple choir stalls with Gothic tracery panelled fronts, relocated to the west end of the church. A polygonal stone font stands in the church, with a disused font basin outside. A marble reredos of five panels features a central panel with a trefoiled arch under a gable in early Decorated style, containing a late 19th-century painting of Christ enthroned on a rainbow. The outer four panels bear cruder 20th-century paintings of the Evangelists and Christological miracles, dedicated as a memorial for the 1914–18 war. The north chapel chancel screen is in a very late Arts and Crafts Gothic style, with an inscription commemorating the 50th anniversary of the church in 1927, a curious glass pent roof and infill. An encaustic tiled floor in a geometric pattern occupies the chancel. Late 19th- and early 20th-century glass includes the east window of three lights commemorating Peter Robinson of the department store; a north aisle northeast window with a single light of a female figure on a Morris-style foliage background; and a north chapel east window of three lights depicting Faith, Hope and Charity as female figures in Arts and Crafts Gothic niches, with Hope being especially attractive.

A brick boundary wall along Tottenham Lane with pilaster buttresses, some larger with pyramidal stone caps, appears to be contemporary with the church and serves as a subsidiary feature of note.