Christ Church Southgate Parish Church

Christ Church is an Anglican parish church standing close to Southgate Green. The foundation stone was laid in 1861 and the building was consecrated in 1862. It was designed by George Gilbert Scott in the Early English style at a total cost of £11,689.28. A church office was built in the tower around 1980.

The church is constructed of snecked Kentish Rag with Bathstone dressings and has slate roofs. The plan comprises a chancel and clerestoried nave with lean-to north and south aisles, a north-east chapel, south-east organ chamber, south-east vestry, and north-west porch and tower.

The chancel has angle north-east buttresses with gables and a south-east buttress at the junction with the vestry. It features a triple lancet east window under a sexfoil and paired lancets on the north side. The vestry has paired east-end lancets and a three-sided buttressed south-east projection, with steps up to a west-side doorway and a shoulder-headed doorway to the boiler room below. The nave has angle buttresses and a clerestory of four paired trefoil-headed one-light windows. The west end is distinguished by a richly-moulded west doorway with shafts having stiff-leaf capitals, flanked by blind trefoil-headed arcading with a hoodmould carved with heads. A large triple lancet west window sits above a vesica window. The original two-leaf door features elaborately ornamented strap hinges. The north and south aisles have angle buttresses and gabled windows to each bay, consisting of paired lancets under trefoils. The north-east chapel has a two-light east window with plate tracery and two north-side lancets.

The imposing north-west tower is stout, with plinth, moulded strings, and angle buttresses. The north-east buttresses incorporate a stair turret with a lean-to roof, broken forward in the centre under a gable with a doorway and slit windows. The north face features a richly-moulded doorway with shafts having bell capitals and an original two-leaf door with ornamented strap hinges. Above the doorway is a tier of quatrefoils, with a clock face above (the clock was installed in 1887). The west face has paired lancets to the ground floor stage and slit windows to the bellringing stage. The belfry stage has large two-light plate-traceried windows flanked by blind arcading and is corbelled below a substantial broach spire with a single tier of gabled lucarnes.

The interior features a moulded chancel arch on marble shafts with ring mouldings and stiff-leaf capitals. The nave roof is common rafter scissor-braced, while the chancel has an open wagon roof. The north and south arcades have quatrefoil piers with ring mouldings, moulded capitals, and double-chamfered arches. Arches to the organ chamber, north-east chapel, and tower rest on tapering reeded corbels; the tower arch is partly infilled by the 1980s office. Original encaustic tiles throughout feature patterns and colours elaborated at the east end, with attractive ornamental heating grilles incorporated into the nave tiling.

The chancel contains internal black marble shafts with ring mouldings and moulded arches. Moulded arches into the north-east chapel and south-east organ chamber have marble shafts added in 1913. A fine alabaster, marble, and mosaic reredos sits under three crocketted gables, featuring a Last Supper mosaic by Salviati with a design similar to one in Westminster Abbey. This is flanked by blind alabaster and marble trefoil-headed arcading across the east wall with coloured marble banding and a stiff-leaf cornice and capitals. Alabaster and marble sedilia and a recess on the south side of the chancel were added in 1906 in the same style as the east wall decoration, with stiff-leaf capitals to the trefoil-headed arches.

The church contains good-quality choir stalls with shaped, shouldered ends with rounded finials, the backs decorated with friezes of pierced quatrefoils. A polygonal timber pulpit, serving as a First World War Memorial, has carved sides on a wineglass stem. The font features an octagonal alabaster bowl with alternate sides carved with baptism scenes, supported on a marble stem with marble shafts having moulded capitals and bases. A tall timber font cover of 1913 has open trefoil-headed sides and an open crocketted ogee timber dome. The nave benches have moulded shouldered timber ends and umbrella stands.

The north-east chapel was refurbished and decorated in 1905-1906. It contains good timber parclose screens, with a plastered roof covered in stencilled decoration. The walls are also stencilled and include texts and oil-painted figures and scenes from the life of Christ, executed by Percy Bacon and Bros Ltd. A coved chancel screen was added to the church in 1937 and has since been resited against the west wall. The circa 1980 timber and glass church office is reached by a staircase in the tower.

The church features notable stained glass. The east and west windows are by Clayton and Bell. Other windows comprise a well-documented series by the William Morris studios, with the general scheme and layout the responsibility of Philip Webb. Designers included Burne-Jones and Ford Madox Brown, with windows representing work from the 1860s to the early twentieth century. The north-east chapel windows are considered among the earliest in the church, and it has been suggested that the figure of Saint Matthew might be a self-portrait of Morris. The high-set north windows in the chancel are very fine and were designed by Burne-Jones.

Several monuments have been resited from the previous church, including a large marble wall tablet to Sir David Hechstetter, died 1721.

A seventeenth-century chapel previously stood on the site to the west of the present church.

The church and walls to the north and east form a group. This is a large 1860s church notable for its fine tower and for an outstanding interior that preserves original features and fittings, with most pre-dating 1920, including stencilled and painted decoration of 1905-1906. The good stained-glass windows include an outstanding series by the William Morris studios.