Church of St. Matthew

This Anglican church was built in 1883-4 to designs by architect Alfred Jowers in the Geometrical Gothic style.

Materials

The building is constructed of mixed red and stock brick laid in English bond with red sandstone dressings externally. Inside, the arcade pillars are of limestone, except for the pillar bearing the double arch separating the Lady Chapel from the chancel, which is marble.

Plan

The church comprises a five-bay nave with north and south aisles, a single-bay chancel with polygonal apse, an organ chamber and vestry on the south side, and a baptistery (now the Lady Chapel) also with a polygonal apse on the north side. A tower was intended at the north-west corner, partly engaged with the north aisle, but lack of funds meant construction did not progress beyond the first stage.

Exterior

The west front is gable-ended with red brick diaper patterns and a cross-shaped saddle stone. The west window has a large arch with herringbone brick coursing containing a rose window and two pointed arched lights with trefoil heads and quatrefoils above. Below this window are six lancets. There are two gabled entrances: the northern one in the only completed stage of the tower, and the southern one opening into the south aisle. Both have elaborate ironmongery to the doors.

The five-bay aisles have clerestories with paired lancets. The aisles themselves have wide arched windows with three lancets, the central one taller than the others, and buttresses between the bays. The north side has an external wooden bellcote adjoining the tower and a polygonal-ended vestry at the east end. The south aisle is similar but has a gabled Lady Chapel at the east end with a gabled arch containing three trefoiled lancets. The single-bay chancel is lower in height and has nine trefoiled lancets.

Interior

The nave roof has arch-braces and tie-beams along with angled queen posts and additional curved braces. The underside is diagonally boarded. The arcade is supported on limestone columns.

Baptistery and War Memorial Screen

A First World War memorial screen designed by Reginald Hallward (1858-1948) runs across the nave at the west end, bisecting the westernmost bay with returns to the responds of the nave arcades, enclosing a baptistery-cum-lobby area. It is a simple design with four-centred openings, the glazing a mixture of clear glass and coloured quarries with decorative leadwork and painted inscriptions listing the names of the fallen.

The screen demarcates a baptistery area with an octagonal font in the centre against the west wall of the nave, set on plinths of grey Devonshire marble surrounded by a mosaic pavement with a design incorporating Stars of David and quatrefoils with the Divine Monogram. It is surrounded by wrought iron railings running around the outer edge rising to about waist height.

The font itself is made of cream-coloured Italian marble. The bowl has an ogee profile and blind tracery rising from eight attached colonettes with coloured marble shafts and foliate capitals, more blind tracery and foliate decoration on the stem, and a wooden cover with decorative ironwork. The designer and date are unknown, although it presumably post-dates 1896 when Douglass installed an altar in the baptistery and turned it into the Lady Chapel. The original font survives, stored on the sill of the north window of the stump of the uncompleted tower.

Nave and Aisles

The nave and aisles are seated throughout with plain wooden pews and floored in timber planking in the seating areas and coloured tiles flanked by decorative iron grilles in the passage aisles. There is an interesting wall tablet in the north aisle to Leo Edwards, 2nd Lieutenant, 1st Norfolks, killed in action on the Western Front on 8 June 1916: bronze, edged by a wreath of laurel leaves.

A fine pulpit on the north side and vicar's stall on the south side of the chancel arch were given by Osborn Jenkyn, churchwarden from 1879 to 1888. Built of grey and red marble, the pulpit has white hemispherical projections and a large, flat wooden tester. Jenkyn also gave the brass eagle lectern by the chancel steps. Decalogue boards survive on the chancel arch.

Lady Chapel

The panelling in the Lady Chapel was installed in 1906 and is much simpler than that in the chancel. It was altered to incorporate an opening for a reliquary during the period when the church was used by a Polish Catholic congregation. Apart from the communion rails, which appear to be identical to those in the sanctuary (perhaps suggesting they are catalogue items), this part of the building has been cleared of original fittings and has also been carpeted throughout.

Vestry

The vestry has a framed roof and built-in cupboards, all apparently original.

Chancel

The chancel, approached up two steps, has a fine geometrically patterned black and white marble floor. The organ and case were originally by August Gern (who was foreman of Cavaillé-Coll, a French organ builder) and the instrument was installed in 1884. It was rebuilt by Brindley and Foster in 1912 when it was enlarged to three manuals. It was overhauled and converted to electro-pneumatic action by A. Noterman in 1962 and improved in 1998 by Heritage Pipe Organs. The organ is not listed by the British Institute of Organ Studies. The pipework is housed in a splendid case with a heavy cornice, three pipe towers and much cusped, traceried and pierced decoration above, which faces into the chancel and is part of a unified scheme along with the stalls. A simpler, probably later front faces into the south aisle.

Sanctuary

Two steps lead up to the sanctuary which has communion rails identical to those in the Lady Chapel. The reredos was carved by a Munich craftsman from Russian oak with a representation of Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper, and was gifted by churchwarden Mr J. Turner on Easter Day 1889. There is an exact copy in St John's Church in Blackpool; the two were publicly exhibited before being installed.

Elaborate canopied choir stalls and panelling in the chancel and apse were designed by T.W. Cutler of Bloomsbury and installed between 1892 and 1896, the work being done by Messrs Robinson of Kingston-upon-Thames. They are in a flamboyant Gothic style with blind arcading, crocketed ogee heads and full-height figurines of angels.

Stained Glass

The church contains a fine and complete collection of late-19th and early-20th century stained glass.

The four-light west window showing the Calling of St Matthew and the Feast of St Matthew is reputedly by Edward Frampton (1870-1923).

Two windows in the north aisle by Hallward (the first and second from the west) depict the Beatitudes (an allegory of peace with Cupid, a serpent and other subjects), commemorating Lieutenant Charles Albert Bolter, killed near Bailleul 12 April 1918, and the Building of the Temple, commemorating Osborn and Elizabeth Jenkyn, of 1924.

Three windows by Hallward in the three west bays of the south aisle include one commemorating Leonard Eales Forman, Flight Officer, Royal Navy, killed 16 August 1917, largely of coloured geometrical patterns with elaborate leading and small figures in the upper part; a second commemorates Cecil Martin Sankey, MC, 2nd Lieutenant 'The Buffs', killed flying 15 May 1918, similar in style with differences only in the figures at the top; the third shows Jesus and His parents but was partially obscured by a store for audio-visual equipment at the time of inspection.

Earlier windows in the aisles are part of an incomplete scheme depicting the Judean Ministry (north aisle: the Entry into Jerusalem, the Raising of Lazarus and the Temptation in the Wilderness) and Galilean Ministry (south aisle: the Stilling of the Storm and the Feeding of the 5,000) of Our Lord. The dates and designer of these windows are unknown, but they are of good quality.

The six lancet lights at head height behind the font depict subjects from the childhood of Jesus or involving Jesus and children. Again, the date and designer are unknown.

The windows in the clerestory are all clear-glazed.

There is good glass in the chancel apse: that in the three windows behind the reredos depicts the Resurrection and the Ascension; in the three on the north side the Nativity with Magi and Shepherds; on the south side the Crucifixion. The date and designer of the glass in the apse is unknown but the Nativity and Crucifixion are clearly by a different hand to the three lights behind the reredos and executed in deep colours.

The windows in the Lady Chapel show episodes from the New Testament. The large three-light window contains glass imitating the style of about the 1520s, depicting the Expulsion of the Money-Changers.