Church Of St Stephen

ISLINGTON

TQ3284SW CANONBURY ROAD 635-1/54/187 (South West side) 29/09/72 Church of St Stephen

GV II

Anglican church.The original church of 1838-9, by Henry William Inwood, Edward Inwood and E.N.Clifton; it was bombed in 1940, and a new church was built in 1957 to the designs of Arthur Llewellyn Smith, incorporating the original facade to Canonbury Road and the spire, slightly reduced in height. White Suffolk brick and stone to Canonbury Road, brown brick and stone to the body of the church, roof of corrugated aluminium. East front to Canonbury Road divided into three bays by a pair of three-sided buttresses running up into octagonal turrets above the gable, the outer bays being flanked by angle buttresses terminating in pinnacles. Twin entrances in the outer bays, with segmental pointed arches under gabled hoods of 1957. At gallery level the central bay has a small flat-arched window set under an elaborately moulded pointed arch, the stonework of the turret and spire forming a decorative gable above this; the side bays have two-light pointed windows. The parapet has a central gable out of which rises an octagonal turret flanked on four sides by octagonal piers linked by flying buttresses; the first stage of the spire reads as eight gabled lucarnes with circles of openwork on alternate faces. The side arcades are of brown brick and stone, six bays with two-light pointed-arched windows between buttresses; beyond the ritual east end the church was extended in 1974 to provide a flat. The interior is a single space now oriented liturgically in the reverse of its original direction. Arcade of five-and-a-half bays consisting of octagonal columns carrying stright-sided pointed-arched vaults over narrow aisles and a vault in the form of a shallow mansard cantilevered out over the nave. Ritual east end of brick decorated with projecting bricks and a large neo-Baroque mural painting showing the martyrdom of St Stephen by Brian Thomas, c.1960, acting as a reredos under a bracketed canopy. The only part of the original church evident in the interior is the buttressed base of the spire which forms the central feature of the ritual west end; between the buttresses a three-light arcade with curvilinear tracery, ogee heads and fleur-de-lys finials, originally the reredos; above it one three-light interior window with rectilinear tracery and stained glass by Carl Edwards; organ chamber to either side behind grille-work.

Listing NGR: TQ3206284166