Church Of St Mary The Virgin

Church of St Mary the Virgin, Worton Road, Isleworth

Anglican church designed in 1937 and built between 1952 and 1955 by architect H S Goodhart-Rendel. The building is constructed of brick externally clad in banded red and blue brick with diaper work to the chancel, and roofed in Westmorland slate.

The church is planned as a series of relatively small spaces that could be spanned economically. A central crossing defined by arches opens into broad transepts, with a nave flanked by aisles. The sanctuary is flanked by St Joseph's chapel and a space for the organ, with vestries behind. The plan is liturgically reversed, with the altar positioned at the west end rather than the east. A link to an earlier hall exists but is not included in the listing.

The exterior displays Goodhart-Rendel's distinctive style, characterised by high gables, brick diapering and round-headed windows. Round-arched windows to the transepts, nave and west end are set between brick piers. Narrower round-headed lancets light the chapel, whilst the aisles feature lines of square-headed windows in seventeenth-century style. Timber double doors form the main entrance beneath a round arch, with a smaller door in the transept beneath a square stone head. A higher gable with Diocletian windows marks the chancel; between this roof and that of the chapel stands a brick bellcote with cross and bell.

The painted brick interior dramatically repeats the arch motif. A rounded arch to the chapel, sanctuary and organ aisle is cut by side walls incorporating arches to the transepts, these terminating in solid buttresses pierced by round-headed arcades to the aisles. Exposed painted rafters are panelled with Donnacona board between the purlins and principal rafters.

A large faience tiled reredos behind the altar, designed by J Ledger and made by Carter and Co. of Poole, depicts scenes from the lives of Our Lady and Christ. The original altar, now moved forward, features marquetry panels. Sedilia stand to the side, accompanied by chunky altar rails with horizontal bead motif in similar timber. A pulpit with integrated sedilia and a matching reading desk, now positioned in the aisle, are of corresponding design. A timber rail with kneelers fronts the first row of chairs. A stone font with timber cover sits in the centre of the nave, aligned with the door. St Joseph's Chapel contains a stained glass window by Thomas Derrick, made by Loundes and Drury, depicting St Joseph as a working carpenter with his tools, alongside a painted crucifix by J Ledger. The bell in the bellcote belonged to a ship to which the Reverend F D G Campbell, vicar at the time of the church's building, was assigned when he was awarded the Victoria Cross; it was presented by his father, Vice Admiral Campbell. Light fittings of intersecting vesica-shaped iron bands supporting naked light bulbs—a favourite device of Goodhart-Rendel's derived from J F Bentley—illuminate the interior.

Like many of Goodhart-Rendel's churches, the plan is simpler than the sections and elevations designed for the economy of short roof-spans. The main space in front of the altar with its intersecting arches develops an idea by Eric Gill at St Peter's Roman Catholic Church, Gorleston. From the back of the church the three spans appear identical, but all are subtly different in their actual dimensions.

St Mary's is of considerable architectural interest as a transitional work between Goodhart-Rendel's inter-war Anglican churches and his post-war commissions, chiefly for the Roman Catholic church. It is among the most interesting of his smaller church works. Harry Stuart Goodhart-Rendel (1887–1960) was the most exciting designer working in a personal Gothic tradition in the 1950s and a leading historian of the Gothic Revival. His own work accepted every tenet of Gothic tradition except the pointed arch, remaining loyal to an Arts and Crafts synthesis he developed around 1912. A convert to Roman Catholicism in 1936, Goodhart-Rendel was imbued with ideas of St Thomas Aquinas as reinterpreted in Jacques Maritain's Art et Scholastique (published in English translation in 1923), and his work became increasingly concerned with the craftsmanship of construction. He came to set out every detail of his brick construction on squared paper, proportioned according to arithmetic systems that in his post-war works achieved grand simplicity. This is his first complete post-war church.