Church Of St Margaret Of Antioch And Attached Railings

This is a late Gothic Revival church built in a lofty basilica style, completed in 1892 to serve the rapidly expanding suburban community of Leytonstone. The architect was JT Newman (1831–96), who partnered with William Jacques (a former pupil who became his partner in 1869). Newman was architect to the London School Boards, surveyor to the London Hospital Estates Sub-committee, and to the Council of the Bishop of St Albans Fund. The builder was SJ Scott, as recorded on the rededication stone. The parish was created in 1893, and the church succeeded an earlier iron mission church. A Lady Chapel was added in 1910. The partnership of Newman and Jacques was also responsible for Christ Church, Sutton, of similar design, and Newman alone designed the Martyrs' Memorial of 1878 on the Broadway at Stratford, not far away.

Exterior

The most striking feature of the church is its loftiness. The soaring west end, unemphasised by a tower, makes a powerful impact on the main approach. The building is constructed of yellow stock brick in Flemish bond with mostly red brick dressings, some blue, incorporating rubbed and moulded brick. The roof is of Welsh slate with dentilled eaves and apex crosses or mouldings.

The plan comprises a nave with west baptistery, north and south aisles, shallow southwest and northwest porches, a southeast Lady Chapel, a north transept, and a northeast vestry block. The chancel is integral with the nave, sharing the ridge but offset at the eaves.

Windows throughout are narrow, mainly lancets, mostly tripartite, with stepped red brick surrounds. Clerestory windows are tripartite; aisle windows are small and round-headed. The east and west windows, also tripartite, have exceptionally long and narrow lights; those to the north transept are even narrower. The bays are defined by pilasters or stepped buttresses.

On the west elevation, the window accounts for the major part of the steeply gabled frontage. The long lancets of the tripartite window, tallest at the centre, have stepped surrounds, a continuous hood mould, and slender separating pilasters. They are recessed in a giant window-shaped panel with a hood mould over. A small tripartite opening sits in the apex above, and side buttresses with gabled caps form kneelers to the gable verges. Below, at the centre, is the small baptistery lean-to wing flanked by turret buttresses. At each side is the low tripartite west window of each aisle.

On the south elevation, the high clerestory windows are separated by pilasters between the eaves and the deep lean-to aisle roof. The ground floor bays are also separated by buttresses with stepped offsets of angled brick, with two windows to a bay. At the very southwest corner is the gabled porch flanked by simple turret buttresses. It has a fine wide moulded brick round-headed arch of five orders, with a recessed cross above. The tympanum is of plain ashlar with an iron lamp fitting at centre over a fluted stone pier separating a pair of boarded doors with decorative hinges.

The north elevation has a very similar porch at the northwest corner, but it is set against the lower stages of an unbuilt tower with a polygonal staircase bay, now with hipped roofs. The gabled northeast transept has a stepped polygonal turret with a pyramidal roof at the east and a large similar tripartite window with exceptionally narrow lights, almost like extended arrow loops. There is a further entrance doorway to the right, similarly enriched with brick orders, slightly more pointed than the main porches and with a single door. Paired lancets are to the left, and there is a further similar doorway on the east side.

The east end, not so readily visible, is similar to the west, with the lower separately gabled Lady Chapel with a tripartite window, slightly cusped, adjoining at the same level at the southeast. The gabled vestry block at right angles below has a flying buttress over. There are similar dated cast-iron hoppers and downpipes throughout.

Interior

The wide aisles and high and broad arcades with slender piers create a sense of loftiness. The roofs are of dark stained wood, comprising ribbed boarded wagon ceilings cantilevered out on triangular strut brackets at eaves level, creating a hammer-beam effect. Slender trusses of tie beam, king post, and a high triangle of struts and intermediate collar trusses run to the nave. The roof narrows to the chancel, which has collar trusses with curved principal rafters. The sloping aisle roofs have deep moulded corbel brackets between the aisle windows. The floor is of parquet woodblock throughout, incorporating some heating grilles. At the northwest is the vault to the lower stage of the tower, which was never built. At the west, the baptistery recess has a wide gabled round arch flanked by turrets.

The arcades have wide pointed moulded arches of unequal orders with a continuous hood mould, narrow polygonal capitals, and slender piers fluted for two-thirds of their length. In the spandrels and at the apexes are the responds to corbels for the strut brackets, symmetrically positioned between each clerestory window. The tripartite lights are set back in deep arched reveals and emphasised by a continuous string course or sill band.

The division between the nave and slightly narrower chancel is emphasised by the dramatic cambered polychrome wood rood beam with the crucified Christ and Saint Mary and Saint John, polychrome wooden figures. The rood beam and chancel screen or wall are by Sir Charles Nicholson, dedicated in 1921. He was also responsible for the Madonna and Child and St Margaret statues. Below the rood beam is a low wall with panels of red and green painted stencil decoration with further polychrome figures of saints in dark wood canopies.

The two-bay chancel continues the lines of the clerestory and arcade, though the latter arches are blind, enclosing paired part-blind arches. Above to the north is the tall arch to the organ chamber; the clustered pipes and moulded, part-gilded case are partly visible. To the south is a very decorative sedilia comprising two steeply pointed Decorated style crocketed canopies, set rather narrowly within one blind arch, with matching sedilia at the east corner. Adjacent arches were opened when the Lady Chapel was built. The polychrome brickwork of the interior has been overpainted.

Furnishings

The east end has the high altar, of dark stained and gilded wood, deeply carved and tiered. Above it, the Murillo painting set against a curtain under a canopy forms the reredos. The richly carved altar is from Oberammergau to the design of a local artist and is a memorial to the First Bishop of St Albans. The altar candlesticks have the same provenance.

The Lady Chapel has a green mosaic floor and Arts and Crafts furnishings matching its slightly later date. The windows are cusped. The altar frontal is unusually of painted wood; another is displayed in the vestry.

The church contains some notable 17th-century Baroque oil paintings collected and donated by a previous incumbent, including ones after Murillo and Guido Reni. Others depict the Salvator Mundi and The Deposition, all with fine gilded frames. These paintings are arranged liturgically, some associated with altars.

The Stations of the Cross are traditionally placed along the nave walls and are by local artist AF Prynne and three local women under his direction. Stained glass has been gradually introduced into the windows throughout the life of the church in the small nave windows, and there is an interesting variety of windows of different dates and artists, including mid to late 20th-century works by Beningfield and King.

The organ came from a redundant city church. Its pipework is of some interest, but the mechanism is unworkable.

A carved wooden memorial pulpit of 1908 stands at the northeast of the nave. There are wooden open pews to the nave, carved pews to the chancel.

Subsidiary Features

The church is surrounded by a contemporary set of cast-iron railings and gates by Bayliss, Jones and Bayliss Ltd of London. The railings have spear finials, stanchions with pyramidal finials, and paired brick and stone gatepiers.

Historical Significance

The church is listed for its architectural quality and as a good example of the picturesque historicist style of the late Victorian High Anglican tradition.