Presbytery To Church Of St Mary

Presbytery to Church of St Mary

This presbytery stands on the corner of Bourne Street and Graham Terrace in Westminster. Originally a 19th-century public house called the Pineapple, it was remodelled in 1922 by the architect Harry Stuart Goodhart-Rendel to serve as a presbytery for the adjoining Church of St Mary the Virgin.

The building is constructed of brown brick on a stone plinth at ground level, with slate-hung upper floors and a slate roof with brick stacks. The main structure has three storeys beneath a generous attic contained within a high mansard roof. A lower two-storey brick wing extends to the north-west.

The principal entrance front, facing Bourne Street, is nearly symmetrical with a three-bay centrepiece rising to a broad mansarded gable, flanked by single-bay recessed wings. The ground-floor brickwork features a raised cornice and string course that breaks upwards around the central doorway. At the street corner, the ground floor is canted to form a quarter-octagon with pilasters at the angles, and the upper floors are jettied out sharply above. The solid timber front door has a nine-pane glazed panel above. Windows are timber casements with side-hung lights of six or eight small panes, arranged singly, in pairs, or in threes. The first floor is emphasised by taller cross-casement windows with square top-hung upper lights. The attic gable displays a Gothick Venetian window with four opening lights and a pointed-arch tympanum over the central pair, its curved glazing bars forming intersecting tracery.

The Graham Terrace elevation is less formal, with three cross-casement windows set off-centre on the ground and first floors, four smaller windows on the second floor, and two flat-roofed dormers flanking a tall stack at attic level. The two-storey north-west wing is entirely of brown brick with cross-casement ground-floor windows and paired lights above, beneath a high parapet containing a large raised panel. The windowless return elevation features stepped buttresses between which the walls display a diaper pattern in red brick headers.

The interior plan may reflect the building's origins as a public house. The entrance on Bourne Street leads to a narrow hallway with a large kitchen to the right, a smaller room to the left, and the main staircase to the rear. Beside the staircase is a small service lift. A draught lobby inside the front door contains a small square overlight in a deep splayed embrasure. A glazed door from the hall to the kitchen displays two etched-glass panels, each showing a pineapple in a chalice surrounded by decorative borders. One ground-floor room contains a small fireplace with a square timber surround holding blue and white tiles depicting Biblical scenes.

The first floor is dominated by an L-shaped library at the outer corner, lit by tall cross-casement windows and furnished with fitted bookcases with glazed fronts. A large marble fireplace features an arched marble surround with carved console brackets supporting the mantelpiece and a cast-iron grate beneath. A smaller tiled fireplace similar to that on the floor below also survives here. Another large first-floor room contains a fireplace with a square timber surround, console brackets, and grate. The upper rooms retain a series of smaller fireplaces: one of blue-tiled type with the grate removed, one with a square timber surround bearing a sun motif, and another with a square surround and an elaborate cast-iron grate decorated with columns, urns, and floral ornament. The principal attic room is lit by the Venetian window in the main gable, whose arched reveal is supported on two freestanding octagonal colonettes.

The Church of St Mary the Virgin was originally built in 1873-4 by R.J. Withers. In 1924-5, shortly after completing the presbytery conversion, Goodhart-Rendel made further alterations to the church itself, adding an entrance porch, corridor, and side chapel.