Former Whitelands College Chapel

Former Whitelands College Chapel

This chapel, built between 1928 and 1930 by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, originally served the adjacent Whitelands College teacher training institution. The college buildings were converted to residential apartments in 2005, and the chapel is now a standalone structure on Scott Avenue.

The chapel is constructed in red brick with stone dressings and tiled roofs, designed in Byzantine style with a cruciform plan. The exterior is notably austere, featuring few window openings and no buttresses. Its principal architectural quality lies in the careful use of brickwork to articulate the elevations. A channelled section runs along the brick base of the north, west and south sides, evoking a rusticated plinth. Each transept and the east end has a triplet of round-headed lights set beneath a lunette within a stone surround and arch of gauged bricks. A course of vertical bricks runs across the north, south and east elevations, meeting the transept and east end windows at the impost of each lunette arch. The nave has three round-headed windows on each elevation. The west end features a brick porch with prominent stone dressings, two stone urns and a classical stone doorway surround. A pentice connects the chapel entrance to the former college building. A circular staircase turret stands to the north-west, and a single-storey vestry extends from the south transept.

The low square crossing tower rises in two stages, the second containing a row of five wide rectangular lights above two courses of vertical brickwork and stone dressings. Further courses of vertical bricks create the impression of a moulded cornice beneath the tower's low pyramidal roof. The tower profile mirrors that of the college building to the south, to which it is axially aligned.

The interior's most striking feature is the vast crossing, its scale emphasized by tall, unadorned rounded arches and a blind clerestory with ten round-headed lights on each side. Above these are five rectangular windows admitting daylight. The crossing has a square coffered timber ceiling painted in bright colours; the nave has a simple king post roof, also brightly painted.

Wood panelling approximately six feet high lines the nave and transepts, displaying a simple classical repeated motif of paired pilasters and a pediment. Wooden benches face inwards in collegiate style—two rows in the transepts and single rows along both nave walls. Of particular historic interest is a very plain memorial to Winifred Mercier in the south transept panelling, a simple wooden plaque. Fifteen William Morris and Company windows have been removed; the remaining windows are either clear or simple coloured glass.

At the west end stands a gallery supported by wooden columns with capitals carved with angels and acanthus leaves, and attractive carving along the entablature. The gallery contains the wooden skeleton of the organ, its pipes having been removed. Beneath the gallery are two stalls, each with a back-screen of four arched bays, dividing the chapel from the ante-chapel. The two principals' stalls have pedimented canopies on pairs of colonnettes with angel capitals. This ensemble demonstrates high-quality craftsmanship and design consistent with the chapel's architecture, forming an important component of the interior.

Whitelands College had relocated from King's Road, Chelsea. Scott incorporated stained glass and a reredos by William Morris and Company from the old college chapel, modifying the pointed arch glass to round arch to suit the new design. In 2005 the stained glass and reredos were removed and re-sited in Parkstead House (formerly Manresa House), the new home of Whitelands College in Wandsworth.

Whitelands College was a significant institution in the development of education during the 19th and early 20th centuries. When Winifred Mercier became principal in 1918, the college was the oldest and most prestigious Anglican teacher training college and had recently begun admitting nonconformist students. Under Mercier it expanded and led developments in educational policy. Mercier was heavily involved in commissioning and designing the new Putney buildings, constructed on land donated by the Church of England, and personally selected the fireplace tiles for student bedrooms. Reflecting both Mercier's professional progressiveness and Scott's architectural philosophy, the college and chapel are consciously modern, rejecting the legacy of Victorian institutional architecture. The chapel's austere design owes little to any particular Christian denomination's traditions; instead it evokes early Christian basilicas of the Roman period, evident in the low tower, limited windows and use of brick.

The buildings were opened by Queen Mary in June 1931, marking the increased status of teacher training institutions—a development in which Winifred Mercier and Whitelands College played a significant role.