Church Of St William Of York

CHURCH OF ST WILLIAM OF YORK

Roman Catholic church designed by Hector O. Corfiato and built between 1959 and 1960 by C. P. Roberts and Co., Ltd., of Holborn. The building is constructed of brown brick with artificial stone dressings and shallow-pitched copper roofs.

The church is planned as a rectangle with a nave and sanctuary under a single roof, a single aisle to the north with a choir gallery above its east end, and a sacristy positioned behind. A narthex forms the entrance, containing an apsed baptistery on one side and a square tower on the other, with a gallery above now used by the choir and partly glazed.

The entrance front features three pairs of double panelled doors set within round arches on concrete columns, reached by two short flights of steps. Small square lights filled with yellow glass are set into the tympana above the doors, with five square windows above under a shallow gable. The tower, slightly set back to the left, has a copper-clad clerestorey, a crucifixion to its front, and small offset square windows on the remaining elevations. The elevation facing the car park has a projecting baptistery with windows in stone surrounds at clerestorey level, five square windows below, and nine round-arched windows above. All fenestration comprises simple openings punched into the brickwork, with the larger square windows having artificial stone surrounds. The north elevation overlooks the priest's private garden and features square aisle windows. A projecting round-arched doorway with moulded, stepped surround leads into the sacristy, reached by five steps. Behind it, three tiers of round-headed windows light the east end. The east end wall is blank except for a small projecting niche for the high altar.

The interior retains its original fixtures and fittings remarkably well. The narthex has a curved screen to the right with a yellow square motif repeating that of the tympana, opening onto the former baptistery, which retains a large stone font with incised decoration and wooden cover, though it has been adapted as a bookshop. A water stoup stands to the left, and stairs with a simple steel balustrade and hardwood handrail lead to the balcony. Throughout the building, doors have small inset glazed panels echoing the window motif. The nave has a shallow curved ceiling decorated with plaster reliefs of the four Evangelists and inset circular lights. Shallow long timber benches are complemented by timber altar rails with twisted balusters. Stations of the Cross line the brick walls. The gallery, now adapted as a meeting room and choir gallery with sliding glass windows, contains the organ. Two flights of steps lead to the high altar, still set under Corfiato's elaborate baldacchino, which has carved round columns decorated in black and gold and an arcaded canopy with scalloped hanging cloth and tassels. The marble nave altar in front is an addition of 2001. The altar has unmoulded columns within a simple square framework with fittings matching the baldacchino. A crucifix stands on the rear wall of unrelieved brickwork. A round-headed arcade with squat concrete Doric columns separates the aisle from the Chapel of the Sacred Heart and Lady Chapel at its east end. Above, the former choir gallery has similar round-arched openings separated by a central column and infilled by a screen of circular iron pieces. Side altars are set in blind arcading. Confessionals of reeded timber and matchboarding stand at the west end of the aisle.

Stanmore was an important religious centre before the Reformation and was given its own Roman Catholic parish in 1938. The Dominican Sisters of the Congregation of St Catherine of Siena built a new convent and school in Marsh Lane, which served as the focus of the parish until a new church could be constructed. The site in Du Cros Drive was acquired in 1939, but building work did not begin until after building licences ended in 1954. A house for the priest was built in 1955, and work on the church began on 5 October 1959, with the foundation stone laid on 7 June 1960.

Hector Othan Corfiato (1893–1963) studied at the École des Beaux Arts in Paris before coming to teach at the Bartlett School of Architecture, part of University College London, in 1922. He succeeded Sir Albert Richardson as head in 1946 and retired in 1960. Given his commitment to teaching, he built relatively little. His major works were in Nigeria and Burma, comprising mainly universities and technical colleges, together with housing for the Burma Oil Company. He extended University College London and built three churches and two small chapels, all Roman Catholic, which the RIBA Journal described as "sensitive and beautiful". His largest church, Notre Dame de France in Leicester Place, Westminster, built for London's French community and completed in 1956, is already listed. St William of York shares many common elements with Notre Dame de France in its use of simple brickwork and bold concrete columns, together with repetitive geometric square and circle motifs. Notre Dame de France is circular, a consequence of being built on the site of a former diorama rather than of liturgical innovation, but the elements of St William of York are less diffuse, with attention focused on the altar beneath its powerful baldacchino. It is rare to find a Roman Catholic church retaining so many fine fittings and working so successfully and harmoniously as a single piece of creative design.