Church Of St Giles

The Church of St Giles is a Grade II* listed church located on Camberwell Church Street in Southwark. Built between 1842 and 1844 by architects Scott & Moffat, it features coursed grey Kentish ragstone with white ashlar dressings and a copper roof. The church is designed in the Middle Pointed style and has a cruciform plan, with plate tracery and a prominent broached spire rising over the crossing between the nave, a long chancel, and gabled transepts.

The exterior includes a nave with a clerestory and lower aisles consisting of five bays, each with gabled entrance porches in the second bay from the end on both sides. The chancel has three bays, and the windows on the north and south sides are pointed double lancets set beneath a foil between stepped buttresses. The outer corners feature stepped angle buttresses. The heavily detailed tower has two stages, with the lower stage displaying blank arcading and the upper stage featuring paired, two-light bell openings, topped by an octagonal spire.

Inside, the church has an arch-braced roof, a lierne vault at the crossing, and very high tower arches. The nave is supported by alternately round and octagonal piers with foliated capitals. The chancel retains 14th-century sedilia and piscina from the former church. The south transept serves as the Lady Chapel, while the north transept is used as an organ chamber.

The stained glass includes a large east window by Ward & Nixon, designed by Ruskin and Oldfield, and remains in the chancel by Lavers & Barraud. The transepts feature glass by Comper, which replaced two Morris windows that were destroyed during the war, and the west window by Ward & Nixon incorporates some 13th-century pieces. The undercroft consists of five barrel-vaulted brick aisles. This church was built to replace a medieval church that was destroyed by fire in 1841.