Church Of St Mary With St Stephen And Attached Hall, Wall And Railings

Church of St Mary with St Stephen, Islington

Anglican church designed by Alexander Dick Gough and built in 1860–1, with the tower and spire completed in 1868. Eastern aisles were added to both transepts and north, south and west porches in 1883. The chancel floor was raised in 1911. The church is built of Kentish ragstone with Bath stone dressings and a Welsh slate roof.

The building comprises a chancel, transepts with east transept aisles, an aisled nave, a south-west tower and spire, and north, south and west porches. Throughout the church, sill mouldings and hoodmoulds with label stops are a consistent feature.

The sanctuary consists of one bay, lower than the choir, and contains a seven-light east window with geometrical tracery. Two-light windows to north and south have colonettes and mullions formed as circular shafts with foliage capitals and trefoiled circles to the heads. Offset angle buttresses flank the sanctuary, and a trefoiled spherical triangle sits in the chancel gable.

The east aisle of the north transept has a three-light east window and one-light window to the right, both with decorated tracery, and a canted bay window to the far right with three lights and ogee tracery under a flat arch. The south transept aisle features a three-light east window with decorated tracery, a gabled porch with a Caernarvon-arched doorway, a circular window to the gable, and diagonal buttresses. The south end of the aisle contains three lancets with cusped heads and above them a three-light window with decorated tracery. Both transept aisles have gabled roofs with valleys between aisle and transept. Each transept has a five-light window to the gable end with geometrical tracery, a trefoiled circular window to the gable, and a three-light window to the west side with decorated tracery. The south transept also has a shallow false south porch with ridged stone blocking to the doorway and a spherical triangle to the tympanum.

The nave and chancel are continuous, with one-light windows to the clerestory featuring mouchettes to the heads. An octagonal timber fleche at the crossing has pierced tracery, a slate-hung spire, and a wrought iron finial. The nave aisles contain four-light windows with alternating curvilinear and geometrical tracery between buttresses.

The tower rises through four stages. A double-chamfered south door and a pair of one-light windows with cusped heads to the west mark the lowest stage. The second stage has cross loops, and the stage above bears cast iron clock faces set in stone lozenge surrounds. The bell stage is set back and has two-light louvred openings with cusped lights and trefoils to the heads, framed by crocketed gable hoodmoulds. Offset angle buttresses and a corbel table characterise the tower's exterior. The broach spire carries symbols of the evangelists at its base, with shafted and gabled niches on top of the broaches and two tiers of lucarnes to the cardinal directions.

The narthex porch features central double-chamfered doorways to north and south, flanked by one-light windows with cusped heads, and embattled parapets. The aisles have offset buttresses between bays and plain stone coped parapets, as do the transepts and their aisles.

The mission hall to the north dates from 1878. A passage connects it to the church with doors at either end. The hall's canted east end displays a large four-light flat-arched east window with king mullion, transom, and ogee-arched heads to the lights. The roof has a hipped section to the canted sides of the east end, and herringbone stonework appears at the top of the east gable. The original porch on the south side has a segmental-arched entrance under a lean-to roof and two three-light windows with one transom and ogee heads. A chimneystack between the windows is now truncated, and another stack to the west end has been rebuilt. A two-storey extension in yellow brick and composition stone was added to the west end in 1931.

Interior

The sanctuary is framed by a pointed arch with multiple corbel shafts displaying foliage carving. Cusped blank arcading to three sides of the sanctuary features columns of different coloured marbles with foliage in the spandrels. Communion rails in marble follow a similar design. Gabled niches with crockets flank the sanctuary on north and south walls and are filled with mosaic.

The choir and nave arcades are continuous. The transepts and transept aisles have coupled pink polished granite columns, while three bays of the nave have single columns. Double-chamfered arches with hoodmoulds and crocketed niches as stops characterise the transepts and transept aisles; the nave features foliage stops instead. The nave extends beyond the arcade by four roof bays and has pointed-arched openings to either side of the gallery. The gallery is carried on a five-bay arcade of slim pink granite columns and pointed arches with blank trefoils between. A band of delicate foliage carved in high relief runs below the arcaded balustrade to the gallery.

The nave and chancel have an arch-braced collar-trussed roof with queen posts and wall shafts that alternate between long and short, with foliage corbels. An octagonal limestone pulpit on four columns displays elaborate panels carved with a mixture of geometrical and flowing tracery. Original or late 19th-century carved oak choir stalls remain partly in situ. An octagonal limestone font at the west end is carried on four marble columns and decorated with crocketed gables in panels. An organ in the north transept aisle has a coved case.

The church contains excellent stained glass. The east window dates from around 1861 and is by Lavers and Barraud. The west window, featuring the Tree of Jesse, dates from around 1870 and is by Lavers, Barraud and Westlake. The south end of the south transept aisle contains a Dorcas window in the style of the Aesthetic Movement, dating from around 1883.

Setting and Boundary

Low walls of Kentish ragstone in Ashley and Highcroft Roads are surmounted by railings with spearhead finials.