Church Of St Barnabas

Church of St Barnabas

This is a Late Victorian Anglican parish church built between 1882 and 1884 by the architectural practice of Carpenter and Ingelow, with substantial extensions added in 1891. It was constructed to serve the expanding population of this area of Sutton.

The church is built of red brick laid in English bond with limestone dressings. The roofs are Welsh slate with ornamental cresting on the ridge tiles, except for the timber top to the tower which is capped by a shingled spirelet. The plan comprises a nave, north and south aisles, a west narthex-porch, chancel, south chapel, northeast porch, vestries, and a small tower with spirelet.

The east end is the most prominent feature, presenting three gables of different heights to the road. The chancel, which is wider and higher than the flanking structures, contains a broad five-light window with Geometrical tracery. The south chapel has a two-light east window with a quatrefoil in the head, while the north gable has an east window of three cusped lights with a pair of quatrefoils above and unusually without hood framing. The side walls of the aisles are lit by two-light windows with quatrefoils in their heads. At the west end, the nave and flanking aisles are each placed under their own gables (the nave being taller), with a narthex-porch running across the nave and south aisle. This porch has north, south and central doorways, the latter under a gable head which breaks the eaves line. The north side features an octagonal turret rising from the vestry and organ chamber block, topped with a louvred timber roof and shingled spirelet.

The interior walls were plastered and whitened during a mid-20th-century restoration, with the work in the nave and aisles carried out in 1957 under C H Runnalls as part of a general restoration. The building has a low, spreading character due to the wide nave and chancel and the absence of a clerestory. Five-bay arcades separate the nave from the aisles, featuring double-chamfered arches with hoods and quatrefoil piers with fillets in the hollows. The chancel is as wide as the nave, and a broad arch between them largely fills the east wall of the nave. A two-bay arcade connects the chancel to the south chapel.

The roofs are modest in design. The nave roof has arch-braces with scissor-braces above the apices of the arches; this roof is in three tiers with wind-braces in the lower two. The chancel roof uses plain keeled construction divided into square panels by ribs. The aisle roofs follow a similar construction to that of the nave.

The principal fixtures include a reredos at the east end of the chancel with a band of painted angels set between polygonal projections housing niches with stone figures of saints. The pewing has shouldered ends and is largely complete, though some seating has been removed from the east end of the south aisle and west end of the north aisle. The circular font on a clustered column base and the stalls are modest pieces. The organ case, featuring a series of panels of pipes, stands before an arch on the north side of the chancel. The east window is a notable example of late pictorial stained glass by Morris and Co, depicting the Sermon on the Mount spread across the five lights.

The former schools immediately to the northwest were begun before 1882 and extended in 1897. Now used as parish rooms, this building displays low-key Gothic detail and gables with slate hanging.

Richard Herbert Carpenter (1841-1893) was the son of R C Carpenter, an important early Victorian church architect who died young in 1855. The elder Carpenter's practice was taken over by William Slater, who was joined as a partner by Carpenter junior in 1863. On Slater's death in 1872, Carpenter took on as a partner Benjamin Ingelow (died 1925), who had been an improver and assistant to Slater. R H Carpenter's masterwork is Lancing College chapel in Sussex, begun in 1868.