Church Of St Peter

St Peter's Church is a late 19th-century Anglican church designed by F. H. Pownall with later additions by Bowes A. Paice and Maurice B. Adams. The clergy houses at the west end are listed separately under a different entry.

Construction and Materials

The church is built of stock brick with polychromatic brick and stone detail and stone dressings. The roofs are slate, except for the baptistery which has tiles. Inside, red brick with tuck pointing is combined with black brick and stone dressings.

Plan and Setting

The church has a very unusual plan. Its west end faces Wapping Lane but is screened by the clergy houses, which were originally linked at upper level. A passageway runs between the houses with entrances reached by steps from the passage. This leads to a small courtyard in front of the church's west end.

The main body consists of a clerestoried nave with lean-to north and south aisles and transepts. The organ chamber occupies the north transept. A two-storey sacristy stands at the northeast corner. The clerestoried chancel has a south chancel chapel. On the south side are a gabled mortuary chapel and a southwest baptistery with an unfinished tower above.

The church's setting has been altered by World War II bomb damage. The north side, originally attached to other buildings, is now visible across a green space. The London Docks, from which the east window was once visible, have been infilled.

Exterior

The exterior is characterised by bold plate tracery and geometric windows, blue brick polychromatic detail, and toothed and Lombardic brick corbelling.

The chancel has north and south buttresses rising as stone pinnacles flanking the gable, which features stepped brick decoration. A large wheel window is recessed under a slightly pointed arch in the east wall, with two trefoil-headed lancets below.

The northeast sacristy has a corbelled parapet decorated with blue brick diapering above a moulded stringcourse. Its east end has a segmental-headed doorway with a two-light overlight and a square-headed two-light mullioned window alongside. The upper storey contains two two-light windows with plate tracery and blind stone panels below the sills.

The southeast chapel has a three-light plate-traceried east window and four bold, high-set quatrefoil south windows in round-headed recesses with splayed sills. The south transept features a large cinquefoil window above a pair of lancets and quatrefoils in the gables. The north wall of the north transept is blind.

Tall trefoil-headed clerestory lancets run along the north and south sides of the nave and the south aisle; the north aisle is blind. The southwest baptistery with its unfinished tower is built of red brick with a peaked tiled roof.

The west end of the church has a stock brick gable from the Pownall phase. The red brick west end wall breaks forward from the gable and contains a moulded west end doorway flanked by one-light trefoil-headed windows, with two very large two-light plate-traceried windows above.

The separately listed clergy houses at the west end are stock brick with red and cream brick and stone detail.

Interior

The interior is bold and richly decorated with both brick and stone bands and diapers, as well as with furnishings, most of which date from the 20th century. The floor is laid with patterned encaustic tiles and woodblock.

The chancel arch has two plain orders of two-centred arches, the inner order resting on stone shafts on long stone corbels. Similar arches lead into the transepts. A painted iron chancel screen sits on a low, coped, ashlar stone wall. The screen and rood beam were planned in 1880 in memory of Father Lowder but not executed until around 1925.

The three-bay north and south arcades, with two plain orders of two-centred arches, rest on cylindrical piers. The capitals are uncarved blocks of stone except for one on the south side, which is carved with waterleaf.

The nave roof is a tie beam, A-frame king post with scissor-bracing in the apex and short straight posts under the tie. These rest on timber wall posts on stone shafts that divide the clerestory into bays. Intermediate trusses omit the tie and king post. The nave roof is plastered behind the rafters.

The chancel has a panelled barrel ceiling painted with stripes and stencil patterns and a ceilure over the sanctuary. The cross ribs of the ceiling are carried on stone wall shafts on deep stone corbels. A two-bay arcade leads to the south chapel, with an octagonal pier whose capital is carved with angels.

Fixtures and Fittings

The southeast chapel has a metal screen to the transept and a metal parclose to the chancel. A 1950s gilded oak reredos by Lawrence King features vertical panels and posts supporting a deep cornice. The east wall is also panelled and gilded. A trefoil-headed piscina is set in the south wall.

The choir stalls have shouldered ends with poppyhead finials, with the backs of the second tier pierced with quatrefoils. The walls of the southeast chapel are panelled with a brattished cornice, the panels incorporating paintings. The chapel has a crested timber reredos with paintings under a frieze of cusped quatrefoils.

The tower and baptistery has a brick vaulted roof with stone ribs and a grand ashlar staircase with a carved angel newel leading to the unbuilt west gallery. The font has a plain octagonal bowl on an octagonal stem decorated with shafts. An elaborate timber font cover features ogee-headed niches containing carved figures of saints below a tall conical top crowned with the pelican in her piety. The font shafts and cover were painted in the 1950s.

A massive font crane with three decorative iron brackets is supported by a classical stone structure across the tower staircase. The 1949 iron gates into the baptistery, which use ironwork salvaged from the bomb-damaged church, were designed by Romilly Craze and made by Fred Sage and Co.

The nave benches have Y-shaped ends.

The former mortuary chapel originally had a doorway to the west, now converted into a round-headed window. It is now entered from a plain square-headed doorway from the south aisle. The 1960s trussed roof was inserted following damp problems, corbelled off a wallplate on brackets. The east wall is decorated with 1880s kneeling angels on either side of a tripartite reredos with smaller angels in the side panels. The north wall is decorated with censing angels painted on canvas.

A cylindrical timber pulpit with columns and a moulded cornice originated from St Barnabas, Jericho. There is also a plain three-sided pulpit, not currently used, from the ritualist All Saints, Margaret Street, in Westminster.

The Lady Chapel has a post-war triptych reredos with the central panel painted with Our Lady of Wapping by Trevor Griffin, dated 1948. The Virgin is shown in front of a realistic backdrop of dockside buildings.

The stained glass is mostly post-war by M. E. Aldrich Rope in traditional Gothic style with vivid colours and incorporating local detail. The east window with Our Lady of Walsingham in the centre includes lights showing the towers of various London churches. The east window in the southeast chapel includes background detail of dockers from different periods. The four south windows of the southeast chapel commemorate priests of this church. The Hardman windows in the nave are post-war.

History

The Church of St Peter, Wapping Lane was built in three stages following a long campaign for public donations from 1860. In 1865-6 the main body of the church was built to designs by F. H. Pownall; the work was not completed until 1939 and the top of the tower and west gallery were never built. In the 1880s, a congregation member, Bowes A. Paice, built a pair of clergy houses (1881-3) adjoining the west end. At around the same time work began on the designs of Maurice B. Adams, the editor of Building News, for a baptistery, southwest tower and mortuary chapel at the west end, which were built in 1884-94. The third phase of building came after the war and involved repair to the bomb-damaged church and reconstruction of the more northerly of the two houses that had been destroyed by bombing.

The Church of St Peter, Wapping Lane was constructed and served by the clergyman Charles Fuge Lowder and the Society of the Holy Cross in response to the high population density and acute social welfare problems of the East End in the 19th century. From 1856, Lowder, first as a curate of St George-in-the-East and then as vicar of St Peter's Wapping Lane, initiated a mission—the first of its kind—to minister to the poor in the East End. It provided social welfare to the area, including schools, adult evening classes and hostels for homeless girls. This was coupled with elaborate rituals, street processions and outdoor preaching led by Lowder from St Peter's Church.

After initial suspicion of Lowder's high-church leanings, which resulted in riots in St George-in-the-East in 1859, local residents became sympathetic to the aims of St Peter's Church, impressed by Lowder's dedication to the poor during cholera outbreaks. The church was notable for its large congregations, and a survey in 1902-3 recorded numbers at over a thousand.

St Peter's was the object of a national controversy in 1869 and 1877-8 where Lowder's ritualistic practices were challenged under church worship legislation. The charges were dismissed and Lowder's ministry at St Peter's contributed to the acceptance of High Church ritual within the Church of England.

Significance

The Church of St Peter, Wapping Lane is of exceptional architectural and historic interest as the church purpose-built for the first High Church mission to the East End poor. Its location, architecture and fittings articulate the aims of Anglo-Catholic evangelism: to offer the poor a vision of the beauty of holiness coupled with a programme of social welfare. The church was built with acute sensitivity to its surroundings, including the wheel window which was positioned in the east end gable so as to be visible above the dock wall.

The church is also highly significant in the rise of Anglo-Catholicism in the second half of the 19th century. The building bears witness to the liturgy and theology of the influential churchman 'Father' Charles Lowder, with its ornate east end and exuberant use of polychromy. This unique historic significance is reflected in the architecture of the Church of St Peter, which is of high quality in its own right.