Church Of St Mary

BALHAM HIGH ROAD SW12 1. 5033 Church of St Mary TQ 2873 15/7 II 2. Built about 1806 as a proprietory chapel, enlarged 1824 by James Arding and Son and the chancel by Arthur Cawston added after 1881. The liturgical west front by W Newton Dunn circa 1904 now governs the exterior. It is in modified "Wrenaissance" style, of hale gault bricks with rich stone dressings, the rest of the exterior being of yellow stocks with the roof of slate. The west front comprises a pedimented temple front between towers, the whole reading as a rusticated podium and an upper stage, each articulated by a pilaster order: Ionic (and blocked) below, Corinthian above. At the podium stage the mouth of the temple is screened by the elliptical wall of the baptistery which is pierced with tall round-arched windows. The lines of the baptistery pilasters continue as battreses to the drum stage of the hemispherical dome. The great lunette window framed by the upper stage of the temple front reads as a respond to this dome. The podium stage of each flanking tower is pierced by double doors within a surround of order and entablature. The lines of this surround continue into the upper stage where a segmental-pedimented aedicule frames the tall round-arched window this motif being repeated on the return. Eaon tower has a richly carved attic with squat obelisk finials at the angles. The north-west tower supports a complex spire in English Baroque manner comprising clock stage, 2 octagonal stages and a finial feature with reverse-scroll buttresses. The north and south elevations of the nave and north and south transepts are pierced by 2 tiers of windows, the lower with gauged cambered arches, the upper with gauged round-headed arches.

Listing NGR: TQ2836273128