Church Of St Mark

Church of St Mark is a church built before 1899 by J L Pearson in a Neo-Perpendicular style, although it was later finished in a truncated manner. The main structure is of knapped flint with Bath stone accents, including struts, quoins, weathering bands, cornices, and dressings. The chancel is of red brick with tiled roofs. The Pearson design incorporates a nave with north and south aisles, and a south porch. A later addition, the chancel with a north vestry, does not conform to Pearson’s original plans. The west front features two deep stepped buttresses that rise to octagonal piers, topped with traceried coronets and pinnacles. A tall west window incorporates Perpendicular-style tracery, above which there is panelling of stone and knapped flint in a chequer-board pattern. West windows on the aisles also display Neo-Perpendicular tracery. Stepped diagonal buttresses define the corners of the aisles. The south side includes a two-story porch with a parvis chamber above; the double archway is surrounded by a hollow-chamfered arch with moulded spandrels and topped by three niches containing ogee hoods with pinnacles and crockets, into which three statues are inset. The north side has an archway, likely intended to link the church to an unbuilt free-standing tower, now bricked up below, with keying for walls and roof still visible. The chancel, of red brick, has two roof levels and a more domestic appearance in its fenestration. Inside, the church has four-bay arcades with roll- and keel-moulded arches and quatrefoil keel-moulded piers. Similar arches lead from the aisles into proposed transeptal chapels, of which the one on the south is only partly built. A plain pointed chancel arch leads into the chancel, which itself has a rafter roof. The other roofs are of collar-purlin type, with moulded braces on lowered corbels and moulded purlins. Fittings include a late 19th-century Perpendicular-style pulpit. A particularly elaborate High Victorian Gothic stone font has a bowl on a wide stem, surrounded by pink marble columns supporting pointed arches with cusping and pink marble shafts to a moulded band. All carving is in a stiff-leaf style, and the font and seating were brought from St John, Chipping Barnet, by William Butterfield. All other fittings date from the late 19th or early 20th century.