Church Of St Paul

Church of St Paul

This Grade II* listed church stands on Augustus Road in Wimbledon Park. Built between 1888 and 1896 to designs by Somers Clarke and J.T. Micklethwaite, it represents a significant late 19th-century ecclesiastical building. The stained glass and internal fittings, by C.E. Kempe or his studio, were added between 1892 and 1914.

The church is constructed in red brick with a tile roof and stone dressings. It comprises a continuous nave and chancel, a north aisle and Lady Chapel, a south aisle, with an organ chamber and vestry behind. The north aisle extends for five bays, divided by brick stepped buttresses with stone offsets and copings. Four four-light windows with cusped Decorated tracery sit under simple stone hoodmoulds with plain stops, set in brick soldier arches. The walls are finished with stone quoins and topped by a brick parapet with stone coping, with a continuous moulded brick band returning to the west front.

The north porch forms part of the main building, set against the buttresses. It features a pitched roof with moulded stone parapet. The entrance has brick reveals below a multiple moulded brick arch, with a continuous inner moulded stone arch above. Three vertical slit openings sit above this. The doors are oak with brattished transoms and elaborate iron furniture. The inner doorway has a moulded arch with roses and oak leaf stops, a brattished lintel, and glazed oak doors with iron fittings.

The south front is similar in treatment and now connects to the parish rooms. The Lady Chapel occupies two bays with a single sanctuary window. At the south-east angle sits a single-storey vestry against a two-bay chancel with a pair of three-light windows. A slender facetted copper fleche on a louvred timber bell chamber rises between the nave and chancel. An exterior bell hangs over the south aisle.

The west front contains a six-light window with cusped tracery, treated as an aisle window, with a two-light cusped opening above. Flanking three-light aisle windows are treated as chancel windows and contain glass formerly in the chancel. Tall nave buttresses with stone offsets support the structure, with angle buttresses to the aisles. The plain east end features a seven-light window set between offset buttresses, with a small single opening above.

The interior features a four-bay arcade of slender octagonal piers in Ham Hill Cornish stone, with a further reduced bay at the west end, possibly intended as the base of a tower. A continuous wagon roof spans the nave and chancel. The chancel and sanctuary ceilings are stencilled to an original design by the studio of Kempe in 1920-21. An oak rood screen with rood cross dates to the 1890s by Kempe, with further colouring added in 1957. Choir stalls from the 1890s support a coloured and gilded reredos of 1907 (recoloured 1938). Chancel panelling from 1920-21 is also by Kempe.

The pulpit with sounding board, created by Kempe in 1898, was originally set against the screen but has been resited against the north arcade. It now carries a later figure above it.

The Lady Chapel contains a reredos in the form of a triptych, with a credence table and central kneeler, all created in 1923 by Kempe and Co. to replace an earlier, more modest altar. The font is possibly by Kempe, with an octagonal marble base on embellished shafts with quatrefoil panels. A later canopy with traceried panels may also be by Kempe. A lectern dates to 1907. Pews designed in the 1930s by Henry Cornford in Arts and Crafts style were installed between the 1930s and 1960s.

All ten stained glass windows are by Kempe or his studio. The west window, depicting the Virgin Mary, dates to 1898. The flanking aisle windows are from the 1890s and were originally in the chancel before being resited in 1949. The east window shows the Crucifixion and Ascension, dated 1893 and bearing Kempe's triple wheatsheaf signature alongside the initials ATE for Alfred Tombleson, his designer and later manager. The south chancel window is also by Kempe. North chancel windows, installed after 1913, depict the Fall and Expulsion of Adam and Eve. The south aisle window dates to 1898. In the Lady Chapel, the east window is from 1901 and the west window (shepherds' window) from 1908, signed by Walter Tower with his tower and wheatsheaf signature. The organ, installed in 1892, was built by W. Hill and Son.