Former St Saviour'S Homes

Former St Saviour's Homes is a rescue home built between 1893 and 1897, later used as a missionary complex, designed by architects H A Prothero and G H Phillott with minor later alterations. The buildings are constructed of red brick with stone dressings and some oak framing, beneath tiled roofs.

Plan and Layout

The main building is arranged around a quadrangle with a four-sided cloister walkway. Entry is via a passageway at the centre of the north-west range, which also contains the dining hall. The chapel projects outward from the centre of the north-east range. The south-east range houses the former laundry and schoolroom block. The remainder of the main building comprises original residential accommodation, initially planned as six discrete 'cottages': two each at the south and west corners of the quadrangle and one each to the north and east. Each cottage originally had its own kitchen, living room and enclosed service yard with toolshed and water closet, plus a room for a superintendent 'sister', though the internal plan in these areas has been much altered. A separate gatehouse containing two further 'cottages' stands at the northern corner of the site.

Exterior

The main building is one-and-a-half storeys high, built in Tudor Revival style with projecting timber-framed bays, tall brick chimney stacks with corbelled caps, and stone-mullioned windows to the principal rooms. The other windows were originally timber casements with leaded glass, but most have been replaced with modern double-glazed units.

The most prominent external features are the chapel, entrance tower, dining hall, and a smaller cistern tower to the south. The chapel projects forward from the Brent Street elevation with a broad three-centred east window featuring Tudor-Gothic tracery and a niche finial above. The side elevations have square two-light clerestorey windows above blind lean-to aisles, and a shingled spirelet rises from the roof ridge. The square three-storey entrance tower stands in the middle of the north-west range, with mullioned windows to the upper floors and a canopied niche between them. Below, a four-centred archway with carved spandrels and oak doors gives access to the quadrangle (a second doorway immediately to the right has been created by enlarging an existing window). The dining hall lies to the left, lit by three four-light windows and a large projecting bay with grid-like mullion-and-transom fenestration. The cistern tower rises from the south corner of the quadrangle with a battlemented parapet and louvred openings to its upper stage. The connecting ranges and corner blocks have low raking dormers and terminate in gabled projections with covered yards between.

The central quadrangle is apparently modelled on the famous 15th-century almshouse complex at Ewelme in Oxfordshire. A cloister walkway runs around all four sides, comprising a simple timber arcade covered by a catslide extension of the main roof slope. In the centre of each range, a gabled timber-framed bay with herringbone brick infill and diamond-paned mullioned windows projects over the walkway; the north-east bay contains the west end of the chapel and is of double height and breadth. The windows and doorways within the cloister have segmental rubbed-brick heads. Some retain original timber casements and four-panelled part-glazed doors; the chapel door has ornamental ironwork and is flanked by two diamond-paned windows with timber tracery.

Chapel Interior

The most important interior is the chapel, which consists of a nave with narrow passage-aisles and a raised sanctuary, a western choir area, and an entrance lobby with a gallery above. The three-bay nave arcades have segmental arches of moulded brick on square brick piers. The square-headed clerestorey windows are set within pointed brick relieving arches; like the broad traceried east window, they now contain modern plain glass, though fragments of stained glass survive in the upper lights. The nave floor, recently relaid, is of oak blocks in a herringbone pattern; the sanctuary floor is inlaid with coloured marble, and the lobby floor is of black and white marble. The roof is arch-braced, with principals resting on small stone corbels; the western trusses are reinforced with iron ties bearing decorative sunbursts.

The two western bays of the chapel are timber-framed and contain a three-sided gallery of carved oak with choir seating below. The choir stalls sit beneath arched canopies that support the timber-framed upper walls, effectively continuing the main brick arcades. These canopies have carved crockets, frieze and cresting, and the vertical posts have engaged Gothic finials; those flanking the main entrance formerly had angel corbels supporting the gallery-front, but these have been removed. The stalls have moulded arm-rests and linenfold backs. The frontals to the stalls and west gallery are pierced with small tracery panels. The gallery, reached via a spiral stair from the lobby, formerly had raked seating but now has a flat boarded floor. Its northern arm is enclosed within a glazed timber oriel structure.

Dining Hall

The much plainer single-storey dining hall occupies the north-west range and is entered via a four-centred stone archway beneath the entrance tower, to the left of which is a stone plaque marked with the date 1893 and the letters AMDG (presumably for 'ad majorem Dei gloriam', meaning 'to the greater glory of God'). The hall is a broad L-shaped space with a modern suspended ceiling and a wood-block floor, recently relaid. On the end wall opposite the entrance is a large fireplace with a heavily-moulded timber surround. To the left is a deep half-octagonal bay, extensively glazed, with a smaller doorway giving access to the rooms behind.

Other Interiors

The remainder of the interior has been much altered and few historic features remain. The porter's lodge within the entrance tower retains part of a narrow dogleg staircase with chamfered newel-posts, leading to a large first-floor room spanned by a four-centred arch of exposed brick. A second timber staircase survives in the south-east quadrangle range, and a third in the former schoolroom area to the north. In a nearby room is a blocked fireplace with a simple Classical surround.

Around the perimeter of the site are a number of outbuildings and ancillary structures, including the remains of a series of workshops and garages. Most have been altered or partly demolished, and all appear to post-date the main building; they are not of special interest. The same is true of No. 13 Brent Street, which may have been built as a later addition to the schoolroom block.

Gatehouse

At the northern corner of the site, facing Brent Green, is a gatehouse comprising two separate 'cottages', Brent Green Lodge and Lower Lodge, under a single long hipped roof, with single-storey lean-to outbuildings at either end. In the centre is a large square carriage entrance, above which a jettied gabled bay, box-framed with herringbone brick infill, projects to front and rear. The north (street) elevation has two gabled half-dormers and a doorway to the right, to which an open brick and timber porch has recently been added; the south elevation has four half-dormers and four ground-floor windows with segmental heads. The interiors have been much altered and few historic features survive.

History

St Saviour's Homes were founded in 1893 by the Reverend William Herbert Seddon, former vicar of Painswick in Gloucestershire and honorary secretary to the Anglican evangelical association known as the Church Army. Seddon gave part of the grounds of his house, Fosters, as a site for the new buildings, which were designed by the Cheltenham architects Prothero and Phillott. St Saviour's was initially intended as a 'rescue home', presumably for the rehabilitation of 'fallen' women, but appears to have served from its opening in 1896 as a care home for the mentally disabled.

In 1926 the site was taken over by the Pillar of Fire Church, a Christian revivalist group based in New Jersey, USA. The chapel was used for evangelistic services, and the rest of the complex used as a school and bible college. Various alterations, including a new entrance on the street front, were probably carried out at this time. Missionary activity gradually tailed off in the later 20th century, and the site was sold to a new owner in 2009. Since then, extensive works have been carried out to facilitate conversion into a multi-purpose complex incorporating a synagogue, school and guest accommodation.