Swedish Seamen's Mission

Swedish Seamen's Mission

Seamen's mission and church built between 1964 and 1966 by architects Bent Jörgen Jörgensen with Elkington Smithers. The building incorporates a church dating from 1930, designed by Wigglesworth and Marshall Mackenzie.

The frontage building and hall are constructed with a reinforced concrete frame clad in yellow stock brick, topped with a steel-framed roof covered in slates with timber joists. Copper is extensively used throughout both exterior and interior for cills, coping, flashings and fittings. The carriageway entrance bay features slate slab facing and a copper and asphalt roof. Windows are double-glazed with central pivot operation and teak frames. The main entrance consists of copper-clad timber within a dalle de verre coloured glass wall. The 1930s church at the rear is of stock brick with a tiled roof, and its principal interior spaces are defined by polished Nabrežina limestone.

The building sits on a long, narrow plot. The three-and-a-half storey frontage building has a compact rectangular plan, with a carriageway entrance bay and small car park to the north. The ground floor contains an entrance hall with through access to the main hall via a servery and kitchen, and to a suite of administrative rooms and games room. The first floor houses a library and self-contained flat. Upper storeys contain hostel accommodation and a flat with shared kitchen and bathroom. Former living and dining rooms to the south have been converted into guest rooms, and four attic bedrooms have been created from former storage and washing facilities. A basement with separate internal and external access is also present.

A hall with a north aisle connects the frontage building to the church and provides access to a loggia with integral bell tower. The church is a single space with organ loft access and rear parsonage (excluded from the listing).

The street frontage comprises four bays with an additional carriageway bay to the north. The ground floor features an exposed concrete edge beam and columns with infill of adze-finished slate slabs and large casement windows. Double copper-clad entrance doors with handles are set within the dalle de verre coloured glass wall. Yellow stock brick clads the upper floors. The first floor has external pre-cast concrete mullions to a large library window, with copper signage above featuring an anchor and fish motif above slab-serif lettering. The second floor has widely-spaced square windows with a slate mansard roof. A metal up-and-over door to the carriageway bay may be a replacement. Upper storeys have small windows set into adze-finished slate panels, with a copper-clad mansard roof.

The hall has a flat roof with continuous clerestory lighting over a blind north aisle and loggia to the south. An exposed, white-painted reinforced concrete frame to the south incorporates full-height, double-glazed windows with chunky oak mullions. The loggia and bell tower are white-painted reinforced concrete with dressed slate tiles and a copper weathercock to the steeple. Quarry tiles cover the loggia. The church is stock brick with a cement coved eaves band and tiled roof. It comprises four bays, originally with flanking porches to the south (the west porch is a replacement, the east porch removed). Tall round-headed window openings have red brick and tile dressings with impost. Multi-paned windows contain flat metal glazing bars and textured craft glass dating to 1964-66. The north elevation windows were blocked with stock brick in 1964-66.

The double-height entrance hall has panelled oak, plastered and stock brick walls with copper wall light fittings. A quarter-turn principal staircase has teak handrails and a concrete wall with exposed aggregate. An internal window with continuous teak mullions is cantilevered over the entrance hall, supplying borrowed light to the library. Floors to the entrance hall, stairs and landing are polished Nabrežina limestone; those of the hall, games room and offices are teak block. Principal doors are oak with vertical stiles fixed with handmade square-headed nails and brass handles. The servery is a low-ceilinged space with oak panelling, copper wall light fittings and suspended ceiling panels of sheet copper. The servery bar is teak boarding with hardwood top (covered with Formica-like material); the adjoining kitchen has fitted units, quarry tiles and a prismatic glass tiled window with a small casement. The first-floor library is finished in plain oak panelling with flush window frames, brass fittings and pine fitted bookshelves. The half-landing staircase to upper floors has oak treads, risers and broad balustrades. Upper rooms are simply finished with plastered walls and ceilings, oak-veneered flush doors and built-in cupboards. A fair-faced stock brick chimneypiece in the former living rooms provides heating.

The recreation hall has a high ceiling of dark stained boarding above square, white-painted concrete columns. It is lit by clerestory windows and full-height mullioned windows in the south wall. A large stock brick hearth adjoins the east wall with copper pendant and wall light fittings. A sliding folding door allows the hall to open into the adjoining church. The church interior is a single space lit from the south, with altar, font and organ loft at the far end. The 1964-66 work included exposing and grit-blasting the stock brick walls of the 1930 structure and adding a flat ceiling of closely-spaced, blue painted timber beams with dark stained boarding. Suspended from the ceiling are three pairs of elaborate cruciform light fittings of bronze and black stove enamel. The altar is Nabrežina limestone with a polished black granite top; the hexagonal font is the same grey limestone with a recessed base of black granite and copper bowl. A Nabrežina stone plaque affixed to the font bears an engraving of the Swedish warship Wasa. Radiator covers are of hammered copper. The stairs to the organ loft and organ case are from the original 1930 build.