Church Of St Stephen

The Church of St Stephen is an Anglican church constructed in phases between 1838 and 1974. The original church was designed by Henry William Inwood, Edward Inwood and E.N.Clifton. It was severely damaged by bombing in 1940, and subsequently rebuilt in 1957 to designs by Arthur Llewellyn Smith. The new church incorporates the original facade facing Canonbury Road and the spire, although the spire’s height was slightly reduced.

The church’s exterior is a combination of white Suffolk brick and stone on the Canonbury Road facade, brown brick and stone for the rest of the building, and a corrugated aluminium roof. The Canonbury Road front is divided into three bays by a pair of three-sided buttresses rising into octagonal turrets above the gable, with flanking angle buttresses culminating in pinnacles. Twin entrances are set within segmental pointed arches beneath gabled hoods, dating from 1957. At gallery level, within the central bay, is a small flat-arched window set under an elaborately moulded pointed arch, with decorative stonework and a gable rising from the turret and spire. The side bays contain two-light pointed windows. The parapet features a central gable from which an octagonal turret rises, flanked on four sides by piers connected by flying buttresses. The spire's first stage appears as eight gabled lucarnes with alternating faces of openwork. The side arcades are of brown brick and stone, featuring six bays with two-light pointed-arched windows between buttresses. A flat-roofed addition extended the church further east in 1974.

The interior is a single space, now oriented liturgically in the reverse of its original direction. It features five-and-a-half bays with octagonal columns supporting straight-sided pointed-arched vaults over narrow aisles, and a shallow mansard vault cantilevered over the nave. The ritual east end of brick is decorated with projecting bricks and a large neo-Baroque mural painting by Brian Thomas, dating from around 1960, depicting the martyrdom of St Stephen and functioning as a reredos beneath a bracketed canopy. The base of the original spire's buttresses forms a central feature of the ritual west end, with a three-light arcade with curvilinear tracery, ogee heads and fleur-de-lys finials, originally a reredos. Above this is a three-light interior window with rectilinear tracery and stained glass by Carl Edwards. Organ chambers are located to either side, concealed behind grille-work.