Church Of St Hilda, Crofton Park

This parish church was built between 1905 and 1908 to designs by FH Greenaway and JE Newberry in an Arts and Crafts Gothic manner.

Materials and Construction

The church is constructed of brown Crowborough brick with Chilmark stone dressings and has Welsh slate roofs. The interior was originally built of exposed yellow washed brick with Corsham Bathstone dressings, though it has since been painted, probably over limewash.

Layout

The church comprises a five-bay nave with broad aisles leading to a long chancel in the High Church manner. A shallow north transept, serving as the Lady Chapel, opens onto the chancel. A large south tower occupies the position of an intended south transept. A southwest gabled porch occupies a full bay, and there is a crypt beneath the chancel.

Exterior

The monumental east end and tower, set on the corner of the site, overlook Brockley Road. The robust square tower has polygonal battered buttress turrets and an octagonal base intended for a turret or spire, with flush chequerwork brick and limestone panels and horizontal stone bands. The south face has three ground floor windows under recessed brick arches between brick buttress shafts, linked by a deep stone cill. The lower stage is enriched by flush stone bands, above which is a tall tripartite window. The bell chamber has narrow louvred lights with traceried heads.

The east end has battered angle buttresses linked at the head to the main building by a stone saddle. A shallow east window is set high on the elevation between tall facetted shafts that run the full height of the building. Above it is a carved stone niche containing the figure of St Hilda by Albert H Hodge, beneath a gable cross. To each side, and set below the level of the east window, are narrow lancets under ogee stone heads with tall finials.

The nave is strongly horizontal under deep swept eaves without a clerestorey, bringing the roofline into scale with the neighbouring houses. Three triangular louvred roof lights are set at the junction of the nave and aisles. The nave is divided into five bays, with large windows each under a broad semicircular brick arch with a narrow tile hood. Each window has five lights of panel tracery in an early 20th-century interpretation of a traditional form, with blind panels to each side and a continuous stone cill. They are set between battered brick buttresses with stone dressings at cill level. Under the easternmost window on the south side is an entrance set back under a shallow stone arch. The westernmost bay is filled by a buttressed gabled porch with a pair of doors on the east side and a window of similar profile to the nave windows on the south and west.

In contrast with the tall, enriched east face, the west elevation is relatively sparse with brick battered buttresses with minimal stone dressings. The west window has panel tracery under a slightly pointed arch. Aisle windows are shallow under broad semicircular arches and similar to the nave windows. Rainwater heads are dated 1908.

Interior

The nave arcade has tall simple octagonal arches with chamfers which die into the piers, between narrow shafts which rise to the wall plate. The aisles are wide and lead to the north transept and the base of the tower to the south. The chancel arch is similarly treated and frames a wide but long chancel that was laid out in Anglo-Catholic tradition, with steps rising to the chancel and again to the sanctuary. The chancel was enclosed by low stone screens to each side which have been reduced, and the gates removed.

The chancel windows are small but have long deep sloping cills, said to reduce glare from the morning sun and allow for a tall reredos in a timber frame under a shallow canopy and faced with fabric by William Morris, some of which survives. The chancel floor is of Portland stone and green Westmorland slate; the sanctuary floor and steps are of Sicilian marble and green slate.

Oak choir stalls by JE Newberry have carved front panels. The pulpit, also in oak, is set against the north chancel arch. The aisles and the north transept have some plain dado panelling. The south wall of the nave has a cusped arcaded timber dado.

The font, situated at the west end, is octagonal with facetted run-out shafts on a plain octagonal stepped base and has a plain octagonal honey-coloured alabaster bowl. The nave, aisle and transept floors are of woodblock, parquet and large red tiles. The nave roof is scissor-braced with side wind-braces, aisle roofs have simple trusses, and the chancel roof is boarded with canted ribs.

Internal doors are of oak, generally segmental-headed, and some have small square-paned leaded glazing. Windows have square leaded lights, mostly with clear glass, and cast iron fittings. The chancel stained glass is by Henry Holliday. The organ loft is set above the south side of the chancel over a narrow ambulatory, with the organ in the north transept.

Fittings include oak and aluminium altar cross and candlesticks designed by Newberry and made by the Artificers' Guild. The nave is seated with chairs which were installed in 1910. The crypt, the first part of the church to be built in 1905, housed vestries and a chapel and was refurbished in the 1970s.

Apart from the porch, which retains the original brick and stone finishes, all internal brickwork and most stonework has been limewashed in the 1950s and painted in the 1970s. Flat-roofed offices and meeting rooms, which are removable, have been inserted into the western two bays of the aisles.

Historical Context

The church has an unusual dedication to St Hilda. It was designed by FH Greenaway and JE Newberry and built between 1905 and 1908 on a corner site adjacent to a mission church, now the church hall. The church hall was designed by Newberry in an Arts and Crafts manner and built between 1899 and 1900. An illustration from the Builder in March 1908 shows both buildings, although the design for the church tower was subsequently altered and the flèche omitted. After the offer of a generous donation, the tower was commissioned by the parish committee, but its height was determined by its position on the footings of the already planned south transept.

St Hilda's was the first of a group of churches built by the partnership for the Diocese of Southwark and is probably the most notable church by Greenaway and Newberry, inspiring the later St Martin's, Dagenham by Newberry and Fowler of 1932. The church is an example of Arts and Crafts ideas imposed on a Gothic form, producing a building which is a rich synthesis of later 19th-century secular and church design, inspired by a wide range of architects and seminal buildings such as the demolished St Agnes Kennington of 1874-77 by GG Scott Junior. It is considered to be one of the best Edwardian churches in London, interpreting traditional form and detail in an innovative manner.

FH Greenaway (1869-1935) was articled to Sir Aston Webb, JE Newberry (1862-1950) to Edward Hide. They went into partnership in 1904. The work of both architects reflects the rich diversity in later 19th-century church architecture. Other early 20th-century church work by Greenaway and Newberry includes the church hall at St Faith, Herne Hill in 1907, the enlargement of the medieval church of St Nicholas, Plumpstead in 1907-08, All Saints Hampton in 1908 but completed later, St Peter Haydon's Road, Wimbledon in 1911-12 but incomplete, and St John the Baptist Sutton in 1915. After Greenaway retired in 1927, Newberry entered into partnership with CW Fowler and retired in 1946.