St Saviour's Church and Institute

St Saviour's Church and Institute is a grade II listed building in brown Crowborough brick with stone dressings, completed in 1925 and designed in the pared-down Gothic manner characteristic of Sir Edward Maufe, influenced by contemporary Scandinavian church design such as Ivar Tengbom's Högalidskyrkan in Stockholm, with strong affinities to contemporary British work by Charles Holden and Giles Gilbert Scott.

The building occupies a corner site at the junction of Old Oak Road and Armstrong Road. It comprises two functional levels: a two-storey institute on the ground floor, with the worship space above. The foundation stone, dated 22 April 1924, is set on the east façade; the building's rainwater-heads bear the completion date of 1925 along with the RADD monogram.

The exterior displays the institute building as a low podium with simple mullion-and-transom windows, flat roofs and stepped, ziggurat-like massing, particularly emphatic around the main east doorway on Old Oak Road. This entrance, like the side entrance on Armstrong Road to the north, is a segmental brick arch with splayed sides and sturdy oak doors. Rising from the podium is the sheer rectangular mass of the church. Its east front, behind and above the main entrance, has a tall four-light window with reticulated Gothic tracery of stylised form, framed by shallow pilaster-buttresses and a low-pitched gable. The flank walls are of sheer brick with slender two-light windows. Transept-like projections, taller than the institute but lower than the church, contain the Lady chapel and vestry. Canted walls mark the transition to the narrower chancel, whose blind end wall features a simple cross in relief.

Access is via the main doorway from Old Oak Road, which opens into an entrance hall. The foundation stone from the original Oxford Street church is re-set above. A corresponding archway with decorative half-height metal gates leads through to the main hall; small octagonal windows on either side provide light to the WCs. Twin flights of stone stairs ascend via several small landings and switch-backs to the church entrance. Over the lintel is inscribed VENITE EXULTEMUS DOMINO (from Psalm 95). The doors themselves are covered with studded blue leather and have small cross-in-oval windows.

The church interior is a single tall volume approximately 60 feet long. Its design reflects an order of service whose principal medium was visual rather than auditory; the recurrent solar and stellar symbolism refers to the same fact. The internal walls are of whitewashed brick with tall, deeply recessed windows and a wood-block floor slightly raked from east to west to give the clearest view for the entire congregation. The north and south windows are of translucent white glass to minimise glare. Above is a polygonal wagon roof, painted deep blue with wave motifs picked out in gold on the trusses, from which hang reflective light-fittings in the form of IHS-monogrammed golden sunbursts. Above the entrance is a gallery for overflow accommodation and projection apparatus, its plaster front bearing a triple wave motif. The west window contains glass by an unknown artist, given in memory of Dame Frances Maxwell-Lyte (died 1925): figures of saints with angels above and scenes of the Crucifixion, Annunciation and Resurrection below.

Beneath the gallery is a polychromatic marble font, brought from the Oxford Street church and inscribed in memory of Henry George Ginner Ayshford (died 1893), secretary of the National Deaf and Dumb Teetotal Society.

A double archway to the right of the chancel steps opens into the Lady chapel, which has a low rib-vaulted ceiling and small mullioned windows containing Flemish-style glass by Martin Travers depicting the Annunciation, Nativity and Pietà, the latter paired with the arms of Henry de Pereira, Bishop of Croydon and one-time chairman of the RADD. The altar is set in a shallow pointed recess containing a Della Robbia-style roundel of the Virgin and Child. A corresponding doorway to the left leads to the vestry, which retains its oak cupboards and doors and a trefoil-shaped stone sink.

The transition from broad nave to narrower chancel is formed by canted sections of wall and is marked at ground level by a flight of four steps rising between twin polygonal ambones (pulpits) with oak balustrades—one for the preacher and one for use where necessary by a sign-language interpreter. These can be illuminated by spot-lights concealed in the walls. In front are the blue-and-gold communion rails, originally in the sanctuary, and on either side are oak clergy stalls, moveable but clearly made for the church, including two double seats with high shaped backs that match the form of the reredos. The ceiling over the short sanctuary is painted with golden stars; behind, in place of a window, is a shallow arched recess containing a very tall reredos in blue and gold, bearing a large crucifix against a drapery background and crowned with three stars and a shaped gable containing a sunburst.

The institute hall occupies the space immediately beneath the church. It has a sloping ceiling corresponding to the church's raked floor. At the far end is a raised proscenium-arch stage with a dressing room to the left; in the corridor wall here are two stone heads from the Oxford Street church. Other spaces include a kitchen communicating with the hall via a serving hatch, an office and a top-lit billiard room. The interiors were altered in the 1980s and 1990s with the addition of wood-veneer panelling, a bar enclosure and various other modern fittings.

The plan comprises a broad aisleless nave with a narrower raised chancel and short sanctuary. To the north is the Lady chapel, and to the south the vestry. The main entrance from Old Oak Road opens into a small entrance hall, from which twin stairs with WCs beneath lead up to the church. The space beneath the nave forms the institute's main hall, which has a raised stage with dressing rooms and offices to the west, a kitchen and a side entrance lobby to the north and a billiard room to the south.

Immediately to the south is the former chaplain's house, a two-storey building with a central arched doorway and heavily remodelled fenestration. This building, though part of the original construction, is too altered to be of special interest and is excluded from the listing. Likewise excluded is the modern yellow-brick Syrian Orthodox church on Armstrong Road, built on part of the rear yard to St Saviour's.