Former Church Of St Saviour

Former Church of St Saviour, Aberdeen Park, Islington

This former Anglican church, now an arts centre, was built in 1865–66 to the design of William White. It is constructed of red brick laid in English bond with blue brick and stone dressings, and a tiled roof. The building is in the Neo-Gothic style.

The plan consists of a three-bay chancel with north and south aisles and north vestries, north and south transepts, a nave of two-and-a-half bays, and an octagonal tower and spire to the crossing. The east end features angle buttresses with stepped offsets and stepped gables rising to inset pinnacles. The five-light east window has intersecting tracery of stone with a brick hoodmould. The first bay of the chancel has two-light north and south windows with plate tracery in stone on brick mullions. The north aisle extends for three bays; its second and third bays have a higher roof. The north vestries, a later addition, have twin gables and an entrance in the east wall with a Caernarvon arch beneath a small gable. The south aisle extends only to the second and third chancel bays and contains two lancets and a circular window. A coved brick parapet runs along the south aisle. The clerestory windows are shaped as spherical triangles. A squinch connects the chancel aisles to the transepts.

The north transept has angle buttresses and two-light windows with brick mullions. An external stack rises through the apex of the gable, which is decorated with blue-brick diaper work. The south transept contains a four-light window with Y-tracery and a three-light window with cinqfoil in its gable. The south aisle has two pairs of lancets with trefoiled heads and quatrefoil over, beneath a single hoodmould, plus one set of three lancets treated identically. Its clerestory displays two pairs of lancets with trefoiled heads and sexfoil over. A south-west porch has angle buttresses and a pointed-arched entrance with a corbelled inner order; the inner arch features wave and hollow mouldings. The gable is stone-coped.

The north side matches the south in its aisle and clerestory windows, and has a gabled porch with a deep pointed-arched entrance with hollow chamfer and hoodmould. Original doors with decorative hinges remain. The west window comprises two pairs of lancets flanking a broad mullion of stone banded with brick and pierced with blank quatrefoils, with a rose window above, all beneath a hoodmould. Two bell openings pierce the gable, which displays blue-brick diaper work. Octagonal turrets flank the gable to either side; their west faces carry buttresses with multiple offsets and stepped pinnacles flanking the gables. The tower is square in plan from the parapet to the chancel ridge, then becomes octagonal. The transition from square to octagon is achieved through buttresses and broaches to the non-cardinal faces. The east, north and south faces of the octagon contain two-light windows with quatrefoil over; the mullions are brick and the tracery is stone. A brick cove runs beneath the overhanging eaves. Lead gargoyles ornament the north and south faces. The octagonal spire has a slight bell-camber and a wrought-iron fleche.

Interior

The single-bay sanctuary has canted sides and a timber vaulted roof decorated with stencil patterns, except for two sections over the east window which are painted with angels. North and south windows have embrasures and deep stepped splays, framed by pointed moulded arches. The choir extends for two bays with an open arcade to either side; the north aisle serves as the organ chamber. The arcade has an elaborately moulded inner order characteristic of the church. To the south are two clerestory windows with embrasures and deep stepped splays, framed by pointed moulded arches. To the north runs an arcade of two sets of three pointed brick arches with an inner order carried on stone colonettes. The timber roof employs an adaptation of hammer-beam construction rising from wall shafts.

Painted decoration in the sanctuary and choir dates from around 1895 and consists of stylised flowers generally in lozenge patterns, taking their cue from decorative brickwork in the spandrels of the north and south arcades of the choir. The reredos is of painted stone divided into three by columns with ogee-profile canopies and crocketed gables; the panels depict the Crucifixion in mosaic, the two outer panels dating from 1914. Two-bay sedilia on the south side sit beneath a hoodmould. The chancel floor is decorated with encaustic tiles, renewed in 1990.

The crossing opens to a vault just under the roof. The first stage is decorated with lozenge patterns in red, yellow and black brick, the next with diaper patterns in the same materials and two engaged colonettes running up each side. The octagonal timber rib vault is carried on double squinches.

The nave extends for two-and-a-half bays. The arch to the crossing has a double inner order with moulded inner arches carried on twin brick colonettes. The surface above the arch is decorated with brickwork in lozenge and other patterns. The nave arcade features square piers with corner mouldings and arches with double mouldings to the edges and a central recess to the soffit. Spandrels display lozenge brickwork. Clerestory windows have stepped splay. The north and south aisle windows have chamfered reveals; the easternmost pairs have embrasures to outer sides only with a column substituted between them. A king-post roof with arched braces covers the nave. The encaustic-tiled floor was renewed in 1990. A polygonal pulpit of grey and pink granite and alabaster, probably original and by William White, features a short column shaft with foliage capital and an open flat-arched arcade. An octagonal font on a short column shaft has a wooden cover decorated with enlarged crockets.

The east window, dating from 1865 and designed by N.H.J. Westlake, was made by Lavers and Barraud.