Sutton Baptist Church including the church hall and Sutton Baptist Church Sunday School

DESCRIPTION

Sutton Baptist Church is a complete religious complex built in 1934, comprising the main church, Sunday School and church hall. It was designed by N F Cachemaille-Day of the architectural practice Welch, Cachemaille-Day and Lander in a distinctive Free Gothic style. The design demonstrates Cachemaille-Day's admiration for medieval European brick architecture, particularly Albi Cathedral, expressed through an Arts and Crafts sensibility. Internally, the debt to German Expressionism is more explicit, giving this church particular distinction even among the architect's better-known Anglican works.

MATERIALS AND CONSTRUCTION The buildings are structurally formed of brick walls, reinforced concrete floors and steel truss roofs. Throughout, they are faced in greyish-red brick laid in Flemish bond, with pantile and plain tile dressings and slate roofs. Inside the church, walls are either exposed brick or lined with lime plaster. External details such as entrance canopies are constructed in reinforced concrete, whilst window mullions are in brick. Internal fixtures and fittings in the church are made of fumed oak. Ceilings in the church feature acoustic panels, while those in the school, parlour and hall have wax-polished plaster. A notable characteristic throughout is the use of brick and tile to create form, texture, movement, ornament and symbolism, particularly evident in window tracery and decorative panels.

LAYOUT AND ARCHITECTURAL HIERARCHY The complex forms a unified composition with a clear architectural hierarchy, progressing from the austere monumentality of the church to the more domestic scale of the school and hall. The church occupies the western end with a rectangular plan, aligned roughly north-south. Its choir and baptistery are positioned at the southern end, with the main entrance in the north-facing principal elevation. To the east stands an attached two-storey school wing, with Clifford Hall on the ground floor and a former parlour above, closing the group to the east.

THE CHURCH EXTERIOR The church is articulated by flaring buttress-like shafts that rise the full height of the building, with the parapet obscuring the roof, creating an effect reminiscent of soaring medieval European brick cathedrals. The north entrance front is divided into three canted bays with flared shafts at the angles. At its centre, a pair of entrances sits between brick piers beneath a moulded concrete canopy, reached by steps. Above each entrance is a tympanum set within a moulded brick architrave, infilled with pantiles creating a wave pattern. Each entrance has a pair of glazed doors in oak frames with moulded transoms, the tripartite mouldings perhaps echoing the symbol of the Trinity. Above these is a single three-light window with a curvilinear head and tracery, flush with the wall as if piercing its skin, all executed in brick. The window's base is blind, infilled with pantiles laid in a chevron pattern forming an apron to the upper lights which dies away into the tympanum. The flanking bays contain tall two-light windows with curvilinear heads to the upper lights and square-headed ground floor casements, linked by blind tiled panels. Windows throughout the church, except where fitted with stained glass, are metal-framed casements with rectangular leaded lights emphasising the horizontal, slightly recessed in concave reveals with a flat outer face flush with the wall surface.

The towering nave comprises three window bays, with a blind bay for the vestibule and gallery to the north and a single-bay choir of equal height to the south. Nave and choir windows are three-light with curvilinear heads and tracery, flush with the wall as on the entrance front. Entrances on the north elevation have flat concrete canopies on angled brick piers, with paired doors featuring horizontal sunk panels and tripartite moulded transoms. Above them are blind vertical brick panels.

Single-storey vestries and offices wrap around the southern end of the building, with a part-glazed panelled entrance door beneath a flat arch and paired metal-framed casements with transom lights, set back slightly in similar concave chamfered reveals beneath flat arches.

THE SCHOOL The school is of two storeys in six and a half bays, with the entrance in the western bay. It has a flush brick facade with a plain parapet. The entrance consists of a pair of part-glazed doors with triple moulded transoms beneath a flat concrete canopy similar to those elsewhere. Windows are two-light metal-framed casements with rectangular leaded lights and top-hung transom lights, recessed in chamfered reveals beneath flat brick arches.

THE HALL AND PARLOUR The taller hall and parlour range has a pitched roof aligned east-west over the vestibule and parlour, and a lower pitched roof over the hall extending to the south. The principal north elevation, closing the ensemble, is divided into three symmetrical bays articulated by full-height splayed buttress shafts as on the church. The central entrance has a pair of part-glazed doors beneath a flat tripartite moulded concrete canopy, with a glazed fanlight above fitted with leaded lights. Windows are metal-framed, of two lights with curvilinear heads and tracery to the upper sections as on the church, and square-headed casements in ground floor windows. Each has a blind panel of herringbone pattern tile forming an apron to the upper lights, and in the central window this dies away into the fanlight. The eastern side elevation and rear elevations are consistently treated in the same manner, retaining their original fenestration and doors.

THE CHURCH INTERIOR The church interior is an impressive space, exceptional both for its period and for a Nonconformist church. The nave creates a wide inclusive space where sculptural form is modulated by the setting of windows within arches, modelled window tracery, and shafts supporting uplighters. The interior culminates in the dramatic baptistery with its aedicular reredos and east window. Unusually, features typically associated with Anglican churches, such as the design and position of the pulpit, are applied to this Nonconformist church, which together with its range of high-quality fixtures and fittings give it added resonance and rarity.

The lofty interior is defined by full-height pointed arches in moulded brick which frame the door and window bays, and offset on each side, frame the arch at the entrance to the choir. Nave windows are recessed in splayed reveals, also in brick with brick tracery. Between each bay, an angular moulded brick shaft mounted on the wall carries a plaster niche containing an uplighter. The nave has a brick dado in Flemish bond to cill height, above which walls are lined in plaster with a timber cornice picked out in a chevron pattern, originally painted green, blue and black. The ceiling has a shallow pitched profile rising to a peak in the centre, lined in individual lozenge-shaped acoustic panels painted grey, with a narrow fillet originally painted pink between each panel. The gallery has a plain painted masonry front panel supported on the curved walls below, with raked timber seating, some with individual bible boxes. It is reached by masonry stairs with windows featuring wide brick reveals, and retains some original light fittings. In the choir, ribs picked out in colour spring between the arches and meet at the roof's apex, which is also lined in wall-board panels. Throughout the church interior, vestries and offices, doors are either solid-panelled, such as those leading to the vestries, or in public areas have glazed panels arranged horizontally with moulded transoms as on external doors.

The choir is approached by shallow stone or polished concrete steps and lined with oak seats having solid front panels, arranged collegiately. These frame further steps leading to the baptistery. Lined in Hopton Wood stone, it has steps at either side with a shallow pool on a platform behind each for the minister's assistants, and a chrome balustrade. To each side is a door opening onto the rear corridor. The reredos is in brick with twisted outer columns and a tiled canopy, enclosing a Hopton Wood stone panel with a sculpted medallion by Julian Phelps Allan depicting the Baptism of the Ethiopian Official (Acts, 8). Below it is inscribed: GO YE THEREFORE AND TEACH/ALL NATIONS BAPTIZING THEM/IN THE NAME OF THE FATHER/AND OF THE SON AND OF THE/HOLY GHOST. MATT 25.19.

Above it, the south-facing 'east' window has stained glass of 1934 by Christopher Webb, who regularly collaborated with Cachemaille-Day from the mid-1930s to the early 1960s, providing stained glass, murals and other fittings. It depicts scenes from Pilgrim's Progress, unusually for a Baptist church telling a story. The west-facing 'south' nave window of 1949, by Miss D Marion Grant and designed as a war memorial window, depicts the Apocalypse.

The church contains a complete set of oak fixtures and fittings, predominantly designed by Cachemaille-Day. Set into the base of the eastern pier, and therefore off the central axis of the church, the pulpit has a facetted brick base echoing the external treatment of the church, supporting an oak superstructure with splayed panels. Above it is a separate circular canopy with a fluted edge. In the centre of the church is a freestanding Deacons' bench arranged in an arc, and the freestanding table, both by Albert Cole, Master Carpenter. To the right stands a freestanding oak lectern. In the nave, oak bench pews are arranged to each side of a central aisle, with a few of the rear seats removed. The nave has parquet floors.

Two stone plaques in the vestibule record the laying of foundation stones on 3rd March 1934 by the President of the London Baptist Association, Seymour J Price Esquire, and on behalf of the church and congregation by the Minister, the Reverend H V Larcombe BA BD.

THE SCHOOL INTERIOR The school employs the same palette of forms and materials in simplified form. Windows have brick reveals and mullions, and those in the former parlour are recessed in plain pointed rear arches. Metal-framed leaded casements have brass handles and furniture. Original doors are panelled and glazed as in the church, set in stepped moulded architraves. The former parlour has a flat panelled ceiling. The eastern window has stained glass installed in 1955, representing Jesus' compassion towards children and in thanksgiving for 21 years' work of the children's church.

THE HALL INTERIOR The hall has full-height windows to each side beneath a moulded cornice, with paired panelled doors to each side and at the northern end set in stepped architraves. It features an inter-war proscenium arch and stage with steps on the curve to each side, set against a brick dado with fluted plaster panelling above, a moulded canopy and panelled ceiling. The hall ceiling is in wax-polished plaster with panels in a yellow-brown and chestnut colour arranged in a geometric pattern. Inserted in it are circular ceiling lights, thought to be original. In the vestibule is an inscribed stone panel laid by the superintendent of the Sunday School, E S Gibson Esquire, on 3rd March 1934.