Church Of St Margaret Of Scotland

Church of St Margaret of Scotland

Roman Catholic Church, built 1968-9, designed by Austin Winkley of Williams and Winkley. The building exemplifies the Modern movement style inspired by the latest liturgical thinking of the New Churches Research Group and post-Vatican II principles.

The church is constructed of Forticrete concrete block walls with steel trusses supporting flat roofs. Set at the back of a narrow site, it incorporates the basement area from a Victorian villa that previously occupied part of the site. The plan comprises a sunken basement containing a vestry, office and boiler room, with the main building volumes above arranged as a series of linked square blocks with cut-off corners—an idiom later repeated by Winkley in his subsequent churches but novel here.

The complex is entered through set-back doors placed off-centre, with a separate access to the hall from the left side. A glazed ceiling in the tiled hallway brings borrowed light from the hall above, with stairs descending to the basement rooms. To the right, carpeted steps lead to the weekday chapel, which contains Stations of the Cross and a figure of Our Lady by Lindsay Clarke, a bequest from Father Vincent Rochford to Father Sidney Dommerson, the parish priest who commissioned the building. A single black stained timber confessional occupies this chapel space.

The main worship area lies beyond, entered from the corner. It is almost square in plan, with a central axis blocked by preferential pews. At one end is a forward-projecting octagonal sanctuary area; at the other is a baptistry. Both are set under high roofs lit by clerestory glazing above two lower roofs covering seating areas to either side. The sanctuary contains a freestanding wooden altar with a pierced top housing a consecrated stone altar, matching birch ambo, celebrant's chair and two-person marriage seat. Above the altar hangs a gilded crucifix by Stephen Sykes, a gift from parishioners as a memorial to Father Sidney Dommerson, who died within days of the building's completion. The tabernacle is located in the wall between the church and chapel, a requirement of Cardinal John Carmel Heenan, Archbishop of Westminster and ultimate client authority. The font is a large vessel reminiscent of Doulton firkins favoured by Maguire and Murray, Winkley's mentors, set in a sunken basin. An organ case stands behind the altar. Original pews and light fittings remain.

Patent industrial glazing in long strips with frosted glass is used throughout, except for two stained glass windows by Patrick Reyntiens—one to the baptistry and one abstract rendition of the Second Coming to the sanctuary area. Full-height black stained double doors with glass panels and overlight mark the entrance; black stained doors with additional glazing lead to the hall. Both church and hall feature black stained cupboard doors. The hall has a beech floor and black stained wood surrounds incorporating a bar. A glazed balcony area serves as library and reading room. The weekday chapel, main worship space, and all major interior spaces retain their original character and fittings.

This is the first church designed by Austin Winkley, who studied under Robert Maguire at the Architectural Association and was a member of the New Churches Research Group, founded in 1957. The group promoted a modern architectural idiom aligned with Liturgical Movement ideas—a movement that developed in France and Belgium during the nineteenth century and sought to bring clergy and laity closer together physically and spiritually in the celebration of worship, drawing on concepts from the earliest years of Christianity. The movement was influential in continental Europe before introduction to Britain in the 1950s. The Second Vatican Council (1962-5) formally accepted many of these ideas within the Roman Catholic Church, producing radical rethinking of design premised on "noble simplicity rather than sumptuous display". This building is an early and particularly well-made and well-detailed example of post-Vatican II church planning.