Church Of St Thomas And Attached Halls And Walls

Church of St Thomas and Attached Halls and Walls

Anglican church dated 1888 on many rainwater heads and completed in 1889. Designed by Ewan Christian and built by Dove Brothers. Additions and alterations were made in 1901 and 1904, the latter by Edward Street. The church hall dates from approximately 1880. The building is constructed of red brick set in English bond with stone dressings and a slate roof, executed in the Gothic style.

The church comprises a chancel and nave under a single roof, north and south aisles under their own pitched roofs, a narthex and baptistery, vestry, church halls, and a bellcote. All windows to the church are lancets with chamfered reveals. The east window has three stepped lights under a continuous hoodmould. The south side of the chancel has one window. The south aisle features a canted apse with four windows and seven windows on its south face, six arranged in pairs between buttresses. A gabled south porch with a pointed-arched entrance having an inner order, hoodmould and wrought-iron gates adjoins this aisle, with a cornice of bricks set at an angle. The north aisle has five windows set between buttresses and, at its east end, a single-storey porch range with a pointed-arched entrance and one flat-arched three-light window with parapet above.

An apsidal baptistery and narthex are present, the baptistery having five windows and the narthex three windows to each side under a lean-to roof. Pointed-arched entrances with inner orders under hoodmoulds are positioned to either end. Three gables rise above the west end, with a four-light window where the two central lancets are higher, and two-light windows to the aisles, all with double-chamfered reveals and grouped under hoodmoulds.

A small hall at the south-west corner is now roofless, featuring a pointed-arched entrance under a hoodmould to the left and a flat-arched window to the right with three lights and one transom. Single-light windows with one transom appear on either side, with a stone-coped parapet. A timber bellcote at the junction of chancel and nave has a pyramidal roof. The church hall at the south-east corner has pointed-arched windows of three lights with geometrical tracery in the east and west gabled ends.

The interior is generally of brick, though the brick is painted in the chancel and baptistery, as are the columns of the nave. The chancel and nave stand under one roof. The east window is flanked by columns engaged at shaft rings. Sedilia under pointed arches and divided by a column occupy the south side of the chancel. Arches flank either side of the chancel, with the organ in that to the north and that to the south filled with a parclose screen. Choir stalls have been removed. Patterned encaustic tiles cover the chancel floor. A low wall divides the chancel from the nave with an iron screen above supplied by Wippells in 1920 and a pendent rood of 1922 supplied by Burnes and Oates above it.

The pulpit is square in plan and carried out from the low wall on two columns. The nave comprises three bays, with Purbeck marble columns with roll-moulded capitals carrying pointed arches of moulded brick with an inner order and a hoodmould running continuously from the chancel over the arcade and then over the three-bay arcade of the baptistery. A boarded roof over nave and chancel is deeply coved above the wall plate and then pointed-arched in section, with corbelled ribs and dormers at the junction of chancel and nave.

A south chapel has a low wall and iron screen, probably of approximately 1920, with a segmental-arched entrance in the south wall of the south aisle. Windows have moulded sill bands and deep embrasures, with a pointed-arched entrance to the west end. At the east end of the north aisle is a pointed arch to the organ chamber and two pointed-arched entrances, that to the porch under a segmental arch, and a pointed-arched entrance to the west end.

A circular font in the baptistery rests on a green marble base and is surrounded by pink marble columns with an original wooden and wrought-iron cover. The east window is by C.E. Kempe. Six lights in the south chapel and five in the baptistery are by Clayton and Bell.

Boundary walls of red brick with plinth and coping of black brick extend approximately 25 metres parallel to the north aisle, approximately 25 metres in Monsell Road, and approximately 40 metres in St Thomas's Road. Three pairs of gate piers in St Thomas's Road and one in Monsell Road are square in plan with one course of stone and stone coping and finials, though these are now much decayed.