Church Of St Mary

The Church of St Mary is a parish church and community centre built in 1808 by William Atkinson for Thomas Willan. It encases an earlier chapel, probably dating from the 17th century, which itself replaced or incorporated a medieval church or chapel. The building was enlarged in 1958 by NF Cachemaille-Day and refurbished in 2009–10 for combined use as a church and community centre.

The early 19th-century Gothic church is faced in gault brick with stone and probably Roman cement dressings, and has a pitched slate roof. This remodelling overlays the earlier church, which was built in red-brown brick. The 1958 church is faced externally and internally in buff brick, with concrete slab roofs beneath a shallow-pitched superstructure.

Plan and Form

The 19th-century and earlier church forms a single-cell structure in two bays. It originally had a west entrance, but the west wall was largely removed in 1958. A crypt exists beneath. The 1958 church is a rectilinear building with a south-west tower presenting a reduced interpretation of a Perpendicular church. Lower vestries lie to the north, with entrances beneath the tower and to the south and north. The interior is a single space supported on two arcades of attenuated shafts.

Exterior

The east end is distinguished by a deep gable parapet flanked by cusped finials on tall, square bases. The east window has three lights beneath an ogee hoodmould with stops in Roman cement. The side windows of the 19th-century chapel are of two lights with simple Y-tracery.

The 1958 nave is marked externally by full-height pilasters framing three bays of horizontal windows at clerestorey level. A narrow, full-height window has been inserted in each lateral wall as part of the 2009–10 remedial work. The front elevation is dominated by a tall tower with inset vertical glazed panels in the upper stages above the entrance, which is set in a slender rectilinear concrete frame. Above the entrance is a cast concrete figure of the Virgin and Child (1958) by Kathleen Parbury. Similar frames enclose three vertical windows in the lower section of the otherwise blank west wall. Above, the wall is punctuated by rows of smaller, alternating windows, all set with coloured glass which diffuses scattered coloured light across the interior. To the right, a large cross is fixed to the wall. A single-storey vestry attached to the north elevation has strip windows echoing the clerestorey lights, while a smaller single-storey lobby leads to the southern entrance.

Interior

The interior walls of the early section are rendered and lined as ashlar. Windows are set in deep reveals with a slight ogee head and a narrow roll moulding at the arris. The roof, executed in late 15th-century manner, has a deep moulded spine beam and ribs supported on moulded corbels.

The chapel contains several fine wall monuments, largely to the Moyle family. On each side of the east window are busts of Robert (died 1638, erected 1657) and Walter Moyle (died 1660), each set in a pedimented aedicule with an inscription below and crest above. On the north wall is a monument to William Gifford and Adriana his wife (died 1601), flanked by kneeling weepers within an aedicule with a scrolled strapwork pediment and apron. On the south wall is a monument to Thomas Willan (died 1828), a white marble tablet within a veined marble Gothic aedicular surround. On the floor lies an inscribed tablet to Arthur Moyle, died 1681. The east window, dating from 1958, is by AE Buss.

The interior has been re-ordered. The altar is set on an extended platform, some benches are retained, and there is an 18th-century font with a veined marble moulded bowl on a baluster stem.

The 1958 interior, now the community centre, is a single rectangular space divided by two rows of slender tapering concrete columns, likened to attenuated golf tees. These have splayed heads, circular on plan and in exposed board-marked concrete. The roof is punctuated by three circular lights. Above the opening to the 19th-century church is the former organ loft. Doors are flush-panelled in narrow timber frames. The free-standing cedar altar table and some benches are reused in the community centre; other fittings, including the pendant light fittings, have been removed.

History

The Church of St Mary, Brentmead Gardens, probably stands on the site of the medieval parish church or chapel, adjacent to the manor house later known as Twyford Abbey. A church was first recorded at Twyford in 1181 and in the medieval period was linked with the manor, which was owned by St Paul's Cathedral. In 1636 the manor was acquired by the Moyle family, who appear to have rebuilt or remodelled the church in the 17th century. Outside the church to the south lies a damaged stone tablet to Walter Moyle and his two sons Robert and Francis (1660). A late 18th-century drawing depicts the church as a single-cell, two-bay building with a large bellcote above the porch at the west end and with simple two-light windows. In the background is the house, a substantial five-bay symmetrical wing facing south and a cross wing with a large external stack to the rear.

In 1807–9, William Atkinson remodelled the house and chapel for the new owner, Thomas Willan, who has been described as both a stagecoach proprietor from the City of London and a farmer. He created a romantic, castellated house fashionably renamed Twyford Abbey. The chapel was gothicised but echoed the form and scale of the earlier building. A photograph dated 1908 shows the west end treated as the current east end with buttress finials and with a Gothic porch.

The house was bought by the Alexian Brotherhood in 1902 for use as a nursing home. They took on the chapel, which was restored in 1906, and fittings including a new altar were introduced. A history compiled in 1908 confirmed that other fittings were of 18th-century or early 19th-century date. Their enclosed burial ground survives to the south of the church.

In 1958, NF Cachemaille-Day was invited to enlarge the church to accommodate a growing congregation. Rather than replicating the early 19th-century interpretation of the medieval chapel, in the way that many of his pre-war churches reflect a local, vernacular, or historic type, Cachemaille-Day chose a minimalist modernist approach, building on a scale which treats the original church as a chancel.

William Atkinson (1773–1839) trained under Thomas Wyatt before becoming architect to the Board of Ordnance until 1829, for whom he designed the Ordnance Office in Pall Mall. Known principally as a country house architect, particularly in Scotland, he excelled in alterations to existing buildings, adding, for example, classical wings to Broughton Hall (Yorkshire) and Tudor additions to Chequers (Buckinghamshire). He also worked on a small number of ecclesiastical projects including repairs to Durham Cathedral and designed the church at Rickmansworth, Hertfordshire, which was later replaced by Sir Arthur Blomfield. Atkinson was also known as the inventor of a form of Roman cement, which was possibly used in the dressings of Twyford church.

NF Cachemaille-Day FRIBA (1896–1976) was a prolific church architect, his work spanning the decades either side of the Second World War. He trained at the Architectural Association and became a Fellow of the RIBA in 1935. He worked with Louis de Soissons and as chief assistant to Goodhart-Rendel before forming a partnership with Felix Lander and Herbert Welch. He set up independently in 1935, having established a reputation as a church architect. He produced some notable and forward-thinking churches during the 1930s, including St Nicholas, Burnage, Manchester (1931–33), for which he designed an extension in 1963 (all Grade II), the Church of the Epiphany, Leeds (1936–8, Grade I), and St Michael and All Angels, Wythenshawe, built in 1937 (Grade II). Post-war churches include All Saints, Feltham (Grade II), which was planned in the late 1930s but postponed by the war and built in 1951 and 1956–7. St James, Clapham (Grade II) was designed in 1957–8 to replace a chapel by Lewis Vuillamy which was bombed in 1940, and is a further example of the experiments in concrete which typified his later work. Cachemaille-Day gained a reputation for rebuilding bombed churches after the war, knitting his stripped-down concrete forms into surviving fabric, as at St Thomas, Clapton Common, London Borough of Hackney (Grade II).