Church of St Edward The Confessor, Roman Catholic Church

Church of St Edward The Confessor, Roman Catholic Church

A Roman Catholic church built in 1856 by Daniel Cubitt Nicholls on land and with donations from the Twelfth Lord Petre, a member of a prominent Essex Catholic family. The church was dedicated in May 1856 by Cardinal Wiseman, first Archbishop of Westminster, and replaced a temporary building that had stood on the site from 1854. St Edward's was amongst the first 19th-century Catholic churches built in Essex following the establishment of the Catholic Diocese of Westminster in 1850. The church's dedication reflects Romford's historical associations with St Edward the Confessor, whose summer residence was at nearby Havering-atte-Bower; the Anglican parish church at Romford shares the same dedication.

The building is constructed of coursed ragstone with Bath stone dressings and a red tiled roof, designed in the Early English style. It comprises an aisle-less nave of four bays, a chancel, a sacristy to the north-east, and a porch and gallery stair tower to the south-west. The nave is separated by two-tier buttresses, with windows featuring plate-tracery of double-lancets beneath roundels. The east window contains geometric tracery with triple-lights and three roundels, with carved heads of St Edward and St Agnes at the springing points of the arch. The west end features a rose window over two double shouldered arched windows with small trefoil arches in the porch and gallery stair tower. The sacristy has triple shouldered arched windows in its east elevation. The steep gabled roof has a central wooden belfry topped by a splayed-foot spire, small dormers at the west end, and hipped and half-hipped roofs to the porch and Latin gable crosses.

In 1934, a North Chapel was added at the west in yellow brick laid in English bond, featuring windows in the more elaborate Decorated style, a door set in a Tudor arch, and a pitched roof with a flat-roofed vestry.

The interior features diagonally-boarded timber scissors-truss roofs to both the nave and chancel. The chapel has a simple boarded roof. A panelled wooden gallery at the west end of the nave is reached by the stair tower. Above the roof corbels is trefoil-decorated timber dado. The nave windows and the two double shouldered arched windows below the gallery are set in four-centred arched niches. A pointed chancel arch with hollow chamfers springs directly from the walls. Shoulder-arched and pointed arched doors provide access to the sacristy and presbytery respectively. An organ sits over a four-centred arch to the chapel. The geometric design of red and black floor tiles in the nave and chancel dates from the late 20th century.

Original fittings include an octagonal stone font, now in the chapel, and an ornate stone reredos with a pinnacled canopy depicting scenes of the Nativity and Deposition, flanked by figures of St Edward the Confessor and St Agnes by Boulton and Harris (donated by Agnes Clifford, sister of Lord Petre). The original altar remains despite being superseded by a free-standing altar during reordering in the 1990s. The Sanctuary contains an aumbry with carved foliate decoration and a plain piscina, both set in foiled arches. A second aumbry in the nave, set in a foiled arch, has a painted carving of the Agnus Dei in the spandrel, and a piscina stands in the south porch. The chapel contains a modern shrine to Our Lady of Walsingham by Howell and Bellion. The stained glass in the east window, dating from 1885, depicts scenes from the life of St Edward and was made by Hardman and Co of Birmingham, a major supplier of stained glass during the Gothic Revival, notably for the Palace of Westminster.

A gallery was added to the west end of the chancel in 1917. The west gallery was rebuilt in 1934 when the North Chapel was added. A day school originally stood to the west of the church, built at the time of the church's construction, presumably by Cubitt Nicholls. In 1890-91 this was replaced by a new building to the south of the church designed by George Sherrin (1843-1909), who appears to have had connections to the Petre family through work on their estates in Essex, including Tilehurst, Brentwood, built for Sir Sebastian Petre in 1884. The presbytery, linked to the church via the sacristy, was probably also designed by Sherrin at this time. In 1934 a church hall was probably added to the west of the church. In 1961 the church school was closed and eventually converted to a social club which was extensively remodelled and extended at the end of the 20th century.

The presbytery, former school, church hall and all boundary walls are not of special interest.