Herne Hill Baptist Church

TQ3274 636-1/14/418

SOUTHWARK HALF MOON LANE (South side) Herne Hill Baptist Church

II

Baptist church, church hall and offices. 1889 and 1904-1906. By a local architect, J. William Stevens. Church hall, 1889, to the rear of the church (1904-1906) facing Winterbrook Road, and classrooms, 1905.

MATERIALS: red brick in Flemish bond and stone dressings; gable-facing roof parapeted: round-arched, two-light windows flanking round-arched entrance porch; wheel window to gable; cupola to centre of ridge. "Lombardic" style. Main church of red brick in Flemish bond, with stone and terracotta dressings. STYLE: the Church designed in a Nonconformist Art Nouveau-cum-Gothic Revival style.

PLAN: five-bay nave with south aisle containing offices; offices also to ritual east; south-west tower of octagonal plan of three stages; entrance range of one bay, gable facing, flanked by two-storey, crenellated gallery stair towers, square in plan.

EXTERIOR: ritual west elevation: shallow entrance bay in which is set a pair of flat-arched entrances set in round-arched, gabled recesses; crenellated parapet angles back to segmental-arched entrances to either side. All openings on ritual west front have brick and stone voussoirs alternating. Above a three-light round-arched window with quatrefoil tracery head; one round-arched light to either side. Sill bands and springing bands to upper-floor windows continue across the tower. Tower entered by gabled aedicule; scattered fenestration above with a variety of features and decorative features executed in brick and terracotta. Cupola of tower with metal-covered ogee roof. Entrance to offices in south aisle between second and third ranges: flat-arched with traceried overlight and set in a gabled aedicule; second entrance to rear. The windows to this aisle are mullioned and transomed. Strip buttresses with gabled capstones. Clerestory: each bay marked by three-light window, each light round-arched, the jambs rebated. Simple block corbel table. Octagonal clasping buttresses to clerestory terminate in pepper pots above corbel table. Wall spurs connect the south aisle and clerestory buttresses, pierced by roundel, forming flying buttresses of an unusual kind.

INTERIOR: the nave has been floored over, to form two meeting halls; the arched braced and hammerbeam roof, however, is intact and exposed to view; timber panelled roof. Glass in abstract geometric and floral patterns.

(The Architect: 15 September 1905: 168).

Listing NGR: TQ3223874305