Honor Oak Baptist Church And Attached Walls And Railings

Honor Oak Baptist Church and Attached Walls and Railings

A Baptist church dated 1891, designed by architect George Baines with builder J Scott. The church is constructed of brick in Flemish bond with stone dressings and polished granite. Roofs are of slate with crest tiles. The building is executed in Gothic Revival style.

The exterior features a high 5-sided apse, with the 3 eastmost facets finishing in facing gables containing 2-light windows; the roof is topped with a cast-iron finial. A facing gable marks the ritual south-east vestry, which has a hipped roof to the north. The main body of the church comprises a nave of 5 bays with north and south aisles. A west porch is flanked by turrets with high mansard roofs and cast-iron finials. Between the ritual north turret and porch stands a spirelet, now missing its peak. The centre of the nave ridge is crowned by a square cupola with high mansarded roof.

A box-framed dormer occupies the eastmost bay of the north aisle. The north aisle elevation has gabled dormers in the 2nd and 4th bays, each pierced by 2-light windows; the remaining bays are lit by sexfoil roundels. All ground-floor windows are lit by double lancets, with each bay marked by setback buttresses. At the west end, the aisles angle back to form an arched join with a polygonal turret; a flat-arched door in a pointed-arch aedicule faces north on the turret. The top stage of the flanking west turrets is lit by clerestory lights and lancets in pointed-arched surrounds.

The west elevation is dominated by a pair of 2-light windows set in a super arch, its peak pierced by a quatrefoil round; the lower section of the window is occluded by the gable of the entrance. A shallow entrance porch is entered through a 2-light diaphragm arch with sub-ordered jambs and polished granite shafts. The porch gable has kneelers and clasping buttresses to its sides. Small lancets on either side light the narthex. The peak of the porch gable bears a shield inscribed with the date 1891.

To the left of the entrance is inscribed: "This stone was laid by J. Briscoe President of London Baptist Association, 22 April 1891, I. Samuel VII 12v. George Baines Architect." Below this is a further inscription: "This stone was laid by the Revd J. T. Walker, Ex-President of Baptist Union, 22 April, 1891, Psalm CXVIII, J. Scott Builder."

The interior features sexpartite wood vaulting to the shallow apse and a sub-ordered chancel arch on corbel shafts. All corbel shafts are carved with naturalistic ornament of considerable vigour. The nave arcade is carried on cast-iron columns, which were originally intended to support galleries that were never constructed; each arch consists of a pointed timber-arched truss. Arched braces span the aisles. Each nave bay is spanned by a tied hammer beam truss with a pointed wood-boarded barrel vault.

The chancel furnishings, organ, and baptistry at the ritual east end remain intact and noteworthy, as do the original benches in the easternmost bays of the nave. After 1960, the west end of the nave was given a drop ceiling and enclosure, which has not harmed the original architecture.

Attached low brick walls with regularly spaced piers and cast-iron railings form subsidiary features of the setting.