Church Of St Luke

Anglican parish church built 1872-3 by George and Henry Godwin.

Materials and Construction

Built of rock-faced, snecked Kentish ragstone with ashlar dressings sourced from the Doulting and Ham Hill Quarries in Somerset. The roofs are slate, high over the nave. Originally these were grey and purple with terracotta cresting, but this now survives only in these materials and fishscale patterns on the octagonal-roofed baptistery. Apex crosses surmount the gables.

Plan

The church comprises a long nave with wide north and south aisles, a south-west baptistry with adjacent entrance lobby, a north entrance lobby, a south-east vestry with entrance lobby, a north-east tower, and a short chancel with apsidal sanctuary.

Exterior

The tracery is largely Geometric, though lancets appear in the clerestory, tower and basement. The aisle bays are divided by buttresses with steep stepped coping and offsets. Pilaster strips run up the clerestory walls. Other details include kneelers, raised coping, a corbel table, sillbands and deep sills, and quatrefoil ventilators below the plinth.

At the south-west stands the polygonal baptistry with its tall pyramidal roof, with a gabled porch-bay adjacent. The aisle windows are three-light with trefoil tracery. At the south-east end of the nave rises a tall stack with offsets forming the decorative vestry chimney. Viewed from the south-east, the building presents a complex arrangement of steep-pitched gables and roofs—about eight separate pitches are discernible. Steps lead down to the basement, where a length of iron railing and a metal lamp standard survive.

The east end features a five-sided apse to the short chancel with similar windows, the bays separated by stepped and gabled buttresses. Visible above the chancel roof are five stepped lancets in the nave gable apex.

At the north-east stands a three-storey tower. The louvred belfry has Geometric tracery, while the tower chamber has long, unusually cusped tracery lights. A polygonal staircase tower at the north-east corner has a foliage cornice and its own gabled doorway adjacent. The tall broached spire has gabled louvred openings to each face, possibly intended for a clock on the east side.

The north elevation is similar to the south but with a mid-way porch-bay. The west front has one large window of five lights with deep Geometric tracery, plus further windows above and below. Together with the west aisle windows, this creates an asymmetrical arrangement.

Interior: General Character

The interior comprises a very wide combination of six-bay nave and aisles. The interior is of brick, currently whitewashed except for the nave arcade and clerestory, which reveal the original Kentish stock brick with red and blue relieving bricks and fine tuck pointing.

Nave Arcade

The nave arcade consists of rounded Hollington stone piers in 13th-century style supporting deeply cut foliage capitals, each featuring a different leaf, with coats of arms of individual donors. The arches have an outer chamfer moulding and two inner mouldings, with the extrados of the arch in red, white and black brick. In each spandrel stands a stone sculpture of figures of saints and clerics, heroes of the Reformation in the Protestant Evangelical tradition. On the north side from west are Jan Huss, William Tyndale, St Alban, the prophet Isaiah, and King David. On the south side from east are St Stephen, St Ignatius of Antioch, St Sebastian, Archbishop Cranmer, and Bishop Ridley. The aisle walls have a boarded dado, with rectangular panelling to the east ends of the aisles.

Roofs

The roofs are dark-stained, raftered and boarded. The nave roof trusses consist of an elaborate arrangement of three arched braces springing from minor hammer-beams to each bay of the arcade (eleven in all), standing on corbels and formed as scissors between the arches and apex, enriched by carved panels of pierced tracery. The stone corbels are enriched with carvings and are alternately set in the spandrels and over the arch-apexes of the arcade. The aisle roofs are spanned by north-south trusses on carved corbels with much chamfering and moulding to the tie beam supporting a triangular arched brace; on the east-west axis are arched braces supporting a purlin and ridge, with black metal ties. The sanctuary roof has simple arched braces supported on carved angel capitals by Boulton.

Floors

The floors are boarded under the formerly fixed positions of the nave pews, which originally housed 1,000 people but are now largely removed (a few numbered examples remain). Surviving heating grilles are visible. Encaustic tiles by Minton Hollis and Co in black, red and yellow cover the circulation areas. The chancel and sanctuary floors are marble and alabaster, installed in 1938 by J Ernest Franck, architect.

West End and Organ

Across the west end of the nave is the towering wooden organ screen by W Aumonier, with carved figures of St Michael overcoming the dragon and angels with trumpets on the pipe-shades, plus elaborate canopywork tracery. This was installed in 1920 as a memorial to the dead of the First World War. A dignified plain wooden inscription plaque with gilded lettering hangs on the wall beneath, from which hang two early chandelier-like brass lamps.

Baptistry and Font

At the south-west is the former baptistry, now an office, with an arcade entrance and fittings for brass gates (removed but reputedly in store). Displaced and now in the north nave is the very fine alabaster font: a kneeling angel with a scallop for the baptismal bowl, modelled on Thorwaldsen's Angel of Baptism in Copenhagen. It is unsigned and represents a very fine and unusual example of mid-19th-century ecclesiastical sculpture.

North-East Chapel

At the north-east are the remains of the 1929 Memorial Chapel by AB Knapp-Fisher, architect.

Pulpit and Lectern

At the north-east and south-east, either side of the chancel arch, are very fine carved marble, alabaster and Caen stone pulpit and lectern, both by Boulton. The pulpit, reached from the sanctuary on quatrefoil-enriched steps with a brass rail, has figures of saints and Martin Luther, with a fine carved architectural setting of colonnades, carved capitals, and angels in the spandrels supporting trefoiled and gabled crocketed canopies. The reading desk/lectern is a wide open-work Gothic-arched alabaster desk with multiple coloured marble columns and three figures of angels. A fourth angel supporting the lectern was formerly centrally placed within the chancel arch. Five small stained glass lancets are nearby, along with a plaque recording these and a wrought iron cross as a First World War memorial. The cross, which formerly hung within the chancel arch, is now sited on the north-west aisle wall. In the south aisle at the east end is the alabaster frame of the 1914-18 War Memorial with a brass plaque and a fixed silver figure of Christ in Glory above.

Stained Glass and Memorials

In the north aisle is a window to Mary Louise Sargent, unsigned, 1932, and a window to Thomas and Helen Benyon, signed J Pace, 242 Fulham Road. Under the organ screen are three stained glass windows of about 1880 by Ward and Hughes. In the north aisle is a stained glass window of about 1900 given by Sir N M Bhownaggree, signed Heaton, Butler and Bayne, London. A tablet to this donor is signed EE Geflowski. There is a tradition for commemorative brass plaques throughout. The remaining clear glass is a post-Second World War replacement. Some of the window masonry has been painted red.

Chancel

The chancel arch is wide, moulded and pointed with an outer billet moulding and very fine capitals of three carved demi-angels with musical instruments. Three steps lead up to the chancel, which is now empty, the choir-stalls having been removed. In the north recess is the Norman and Hill organ of 1912. The chancel is described as panelled and distempered in about 1935, as it remains now.

Sanctuary

The sanctuary, two steps up, is quite outstandingly elaborate. Alabaster altar rails with enriched brass gates are present. A five-bay arcade in marble and alabaster, trefoil-headed, gabled and crocketed, stretches the length of the apse wall. The outer bays on each side have paired sedilia. Flanking the altar on each side are paired panels with the Ten Commandments to the left and the Creed and Lord's Prayer to the right. In between are figures of the Prophets Moses and Elijah under gabled niches. In the centre is the five-part reredos of a seated Christ flanked by the four Evangelists, all under paired gabled crocketed canopies with finials. A large wooden chest is present.

Vestry

The vestry at the south-east has a fireplace and fitted cupboards.

History

This High Victorian Anglican parish church was built in 1872-3 by George Junior and Henry Godwin, surveyors to the Gunter Estate which gave the site. It was the last of three churches by these brothers in Kensington. William Corbett and Alexander McClymont, the builders who leased the surrounding Redcliffe Estate, were the patrons and trustees of the original parish and in effect the developers. They were to meet the cost, estimated at £6,000 but actually £17,000, and they were forced into bankruptcy in 1878. The builders were Hill and Sons of Islington.

The plentiful and high-quality sculpture, including the reredos, pulpit, reading desk and apse arcade—and probably the architectural sculpture also—was by Richard L Boulton of Cheltenham. The nave figures of saints and Protestant Reformers were added in 1889, a gift of Revd W Handcock, the first vicar (formerly of Cheltenham), who is commemorated in the church. In 1929-30 the chancel was "redecorated and panelled in oak...and a number of superfluous pews removed". Original stained glass in the apse was given by Robert Gunter but was removed following war damage.

This is a notable High Victorian town church within a contemporaneous setting, with considerable Protestant iconographic interest. In spite of the loss of some of the fittings and decoration from the interior, the ensemble remains of considerable interest.