Parish Church Of St George

This large town church was built between 1885 and 1887 to designs by William Gibbs Bartleet. A choir vestry was added on the north side in 1890, and the tower was completed in 1902–3.

Materials and Construction

The church is built of rock-faced Kentish ragstone with limestone dressings. Internally, stone from Corsham Down and Reigate was used, with shafts from the Forest of Dean. The roofs are covered in red clay tiles.

Plan

The church comprises a nave with narthex (formerly a baptistry) and north-west porch, a south-west tower, north and south aisles, north and south transepts, a chancel, a north organ chamber and vestries, and a south chapel.

Exterior

Built in the Decorated style of the early 14th century, the church's most prominent feature is its south-west tower. This rises in four stages with angle buttresses and terminates in an embattled parapet with pinnacles at the corners and in the middle of each side. On the north part of the west face is a polygonal turret extending up into the second stage with a demi-octagonal capping. The third storey contains the clock. The belfry level has twin two-light windows with transoms and straight-headed crocketed gables over each opening.

A narthex spans the west end of the nave, with a gabled head in the centre. The west wall of the nave contains a very large window filled with a circle of intricate flowing tracery. The nave clerestory has pairs of two-light windows in each bay with flowing tracery, while the lean-to aisles have three-light windows with varied Decorated tracery. The south porch has a richly moulded arch with shafts and panel tracery above.

The transepts have large north and south windows with a transom, each with different tracery designs, both based on circles. At the east end, the chancel has a low parapet pierced with trefoils, a five-sided apse, and crocketed pinnacles at the angles of the apse. The main chancel windows are of three lights with rich flowing tracery, and there are circular clerestory lights to the north and south walls. The south chapel has a semi-circular apse and a series of one-light cusped windows. On the north side of the chancel is a complex assemblage of structures for the organ chamber and vestries.

Interior

The walls are plastered and whitened, and the originally bare stone surfaces have also been painted. The nave consists of four bays plus the width of the transepts. There are arcades to the aisles of four bays north and three bays south (reduced by a bay by the presence of the tower). The arcades have hoods over the arches, which have an outer moulded order and an inner chamfered one. The piers are quatrefoil with rolls in the re-entrant angles and have moulded capitals and bases. The arches to the transepts are similar but larger; the chancel arch is similar but its responds rise from corbels.

At the west end of the nave is a triple-arched opening to the narthex, now glazed off to create a meeting room; the openings to the tower are also glazed in to form an office space. At the east end of the chancel, the walls below the windows have arcading with shafts, cusped heads, and straight-sided crocketed gables over.

The nave roof has hammerbeams, and the chancel roof is keel-shaped. The chancel roof retains its coloured decoration with the IHC monogram, harps, and other emblems in red, green, and gold embellishing the rectangular panels. The roof of the apse is painted blue and peppered with gold stars. The nave floor has tile patterns in red, cream, and brown.

Principal Fixtures

The oldest feature is a much-damaged square 12th or 13th century font with the common design of shallow arches on each face. It had originally been in the old church, was taken out around 1801, and returned in 1876. The font in use today is a conventional octagonal Victorian one. In the apse of the Lady chapel is a piscina with credence shelf that also came from the previous church.

Extensive amounts of the Victorian pewing and stalls remain. The pulpit is polygonal, has open sides, and stands on a stone base of 1906.

There is Victorian stained glass in a number of windows, notably the large west window and that in the south wall of the south transept. Much was lost in the Second World War, and extensive replacement took place from around 1960. The artist was Thomas Freeth (died 1994), an art teacher at Beckenham Art School. His first work was the west window in the former baptistry, and his designs fill the apse windows and thirteen other windows throughout the church. It is in a powerful modern idiom in the vein of John Piper and Patrick Reyntiens. The colours are rich and have a kaleidoscopic effect.

A large number of monuments were resited from the old church. None is a major work, but together they make up an unusually fine collection of consistently good work. They range in date from the mid-16th century (for example, the remains of a tomb chest to Sir Humphrey Style, died 1552) to the mid-19th century.

Subsidiary Features

A timber lychgate (separately listed at Grade II) stands to the south of the church and contains, in part, medieval timbers said to date back to the 13th century. To the south-east of the churchyard and walled off from it are the three Rawlins Almshouses (also separately listed at Grade II). Originally built in 1694, they were rebuilt in 1881.

Historical Context

The rapid expansion of Beckenham in the late 19th century—from 6,700 people in 1871 to about 16,000 in 1883—led to a call to rebuild the parish church on a grander scale. Moves to do so began in 1883, and the foundation stone was laid in May 1885. The builders were the major contracting firm of Cornish and Gaymer of North Walsham in Norfolk.

The architect was William Gibbs Bartleet (1829–1906). He was born in Handsworth (later part of Birmingham) and was articled to a London architect, John Walker, until 1850. He then spent some time in an architect's office in Chichester. He was in independent practice by 1860. In 1891 he took his son into partnership.

The new church was built on a generous scale with elaborate detail based on sources in the early 14th century. Not only was it ambitious architecturally but it was also richly decorated. Some of this survives, notably the coloured decoration on the chancel ceiling and the tiled flooring of the nave, but the painted Crucifixion scene and foliage decoration on the east wall of the nave has been lost. Other losses are the low stone screen at the entrance to the chancel, while overpainting of the freestone surfaces internally is much to be regretted. Bomb damage in July 1944 cost the church much of its stained glass, but an ambitious scheme of replacement from around 1960 has provided the church with an important collection of modern work.