Church Of St Mary The Virgin

The Church of St Mary the Virgin is an Anglican church built between 1877 and 1878 to designs by William Emerson of No. 1 Westminster Chambers, London. His watercolour perspective of the building was shown at the Royal Academy in the spring of 1877. The builders were Messrs E. Nash of Hove. The church is constructed of red brick in Flemish bond with sandstone dressings on the exterior, and red and white bricks with Bath stone trim internally. The roofs are slate with terracotta ridge crests.

The church is oriented with the ritual east end to the north (all directions given below are ritual). It comprises a chancel of one bay with a five-sided apse, two vestries to the south of the chancel, an organ chamber and additional vestry to the north, transepts of one bay each, a nave of four bays with north and south aisles, a baptistery in a semicircular projection at the west end, an entrance porch set in a truncated tower at the north-west, and another entrance porch at the south-west. The design is in the neo-Gothic style.

The exterior features a single lancet window in each facet of the apse, with the hood mouldings all linked to form a springing band. A sill moulding is interrupted by angle buttresses of one setback which die into the springing course. The apse is topped by a brick cornice found on most elevations. In the angle between the chancel and north transept is an organ chamber with a lean-to roof and single lancet in each face. To the north of the organ chamber is a stair to the loft, and between the stair and the north face of the organ chamber is a low porch with a pointed-arched entrance and lean-to roof. Attached to the organ chamber is a low structure with a three-sided projection to the east end, perhaps intended as a side chapel, with a brick and stone parapet and single lancet in the east face. The vestries to the south are obscured. The apse roof is not continuous with that over the transepts and nave.

The end walls of the transepts project slightly beyond the line of the vestries and nave aisles. The north transept has a three-light window with a six-foiled roundel in the head. Between this window and the five pointed lights below is a string course. The lower transept windows have simply chamfered jambs, stone sills and a sandstone sill band. Window arrangements on the south transept are identical. The transept string course returns to continue along each aisle, each bay of which is illuminated by one two-light window with six-foiled head. Each aisle bay has one facing gable. Flat buttresses of single setback to the aisle interrupt all hood mouldings and sill bands. The clerestory is relieved only by a string course just above the peak of the gable ridges. The peak of the west gable is divided into a stepped, brick arcade of seven bays, the centre five pierced by single stone lancets. In the top half of the central brick bay is a corbelled niche.

The entrance porch at the ritual north-west corner of the nave has a polygonal stair turret next to the aisle wall. The upper stages of the tower and spire were never built and the tower is finished with a gable roof. The lower stage in the west face of the tower contains what was meant to be the principal entrance to the building: a gabled aedicule topped by a cross with a diapered tympanum. Below is a pointed arch, subordered and having jamb shafts. The haunches of the entrance arch are intersected by a blind, pointed-arch arcade of attached colonnettes with stiff-leaf capitals. The springing course of the entrance arch is carved with conventionalised representations of plants. There is an additional shaft to either side of the entrance itself, which is formed in stone rather than brick. The lintel bears the inscription "Domum Tuam Decet Sanctitudo Domine", with niches above. The stone tympanum is pierced by a six-foiled roundel.

The south-west entrance porch is less elaborately ornamented, square in plan, of a single stage with hipped roof partly hidden by a high parapet. It has pointed subordered stone arches over a door frame in white stone with chamfered and subordered jambs. The south face is lit by two lancets.

The baptistery elevation is treated as three bays marked by buttresses which set back to become bases for paired stone shafts. Spanning each gap is a subordered pointed arch. Between each buttress is a pointed stone window of two lights with cinquefoil roundel to the head, each window set in an elaborate aedicule with diapering to the aedicule gables.

Inside, the sanctuary and choir of one bay are covered by octapartite stone rib vaulting with brick webbing. Ribs spring from piers with acanthus capitals, which are joined to the wall by spurs supporting pointed barrel vaults. There are six steps up from the nave to the choir and a further two to the sanctuary. The chancel arch is supported by coupled shafts, the west return of which merge with the crossing piers. Octapartite vaulting spans the crossing, with diaphragm arches to the north and south transepts. Each transept has one bay and is roofed by a pointed barrel vault of brick. The transept windows have stone plate tracery set in moulded brick surrounds, while those below have chamfered brick jambs. A chapel was formed to the east of the south transept by late 19th-century or early 20th-century oak screens which came from All Souls, Eastern Road. These feature panelling below and cusped ogee arches above, with the screen's cornice decorated with flowers. The east end of the north aisle was dedicated as a Chapel of Remembrance to the War Dead in 1924.

The nave ceiling is boarded and ribbed, and in section is trilobed, with a horizontal band introduced between the coving and barrel vault. The arcade piers are comprised of four attached columns with a roof shaft applied to the nave face. Each is set on a socle which is as high as the wood benches in the nave. A wooden rib rises from the shaft, and intermediary roof ribs are supported by plain corbels. Each aisle bay is spanned by a pointed barrel vault perpendicular to the axis of the nave. The spandrils of the nave arcades are plain brick, with no triforium or clerestory. The walls are composed, in the upper reaches, of alternating courses of red and brown brick and stone, becoming brown brick in the lower areas. The baptistery of one bay is raised by four steps above the floor of the nave and entered through a diaphragm arch supported by carved corbel blocks, with a roof vault of wood.

The sanctuary and choir floors are composed of mosaic, with marble steps down to the crossing. White paving stones with small red tiles at the corner lead to the transept, central and side aisles. Oak blocks set in herringbone pattern frame this pavement. Oak open benches are set on paving of pine blocks laid in pitch. The baptistery is paved in white stone. Underfloor hot-water heating grilles are set at the foot of walls and along the aisles.

Notable features include a very fine carved reredos of 1893 composed of a blind, canopied arcade beneath which is carving representing the resurrected Christ appearing to Mary at the tomb with angels observing. The altar front shows the Adoration of the Magi. The carving in the sanctuary is historiated with figures representing the virtues. The carved choir stalls are arranged on collegiate pattern. The clergy stalls on the north side date to 1926. All the other seating and chancel fittings are by Hammer and Lascelles and date to 1877-78. The altar rails were made by Hart and Son and were completed in 1878 for approximately 30 pounds. Of the same date is the Caen stone pulpit at the north-east corner of the nave with panels depicting Biblical subjects including Satan and the Tree of Knowledge and Christ with the Woman at the Well. The carvings are by Bennett and Nicholls, costing 202 pounds. There are further furnishings by Cox. The organ is by Bevington and Joy. The chancel light standards were taken from an old church and date to 1869. The font has a base of Italian marble and a shaft of Swiss granite, which was brought as a memorial from the site where the son of the Vicar had died in a mountaineering accident.

The easternmost window in the north aisle was designed by Charles Eamer Kempe and dates to 1901. It has three lights showing the Madonna and Child flanked by St Luke and St John. The rest of the windows in this aisle are in a similar style and depict scenes from the Life of the Virgin. One, the Soanes Memorial window of 1897, may also be Kempe's work even though it is not listed in Mrs. Trubshaw's "Index of Work Executed by Mr. CE Kempe". The third window in the north aisle depicts the Marys at the Tomb and dates to 1880. The south-aisle windows show scenes from the Life of Christ and are of roughly the same date as those in the north aisle. The windows in the apse depict the Crucifixion and the Resurrection and are by a different hand. The same artist very likely executed the windows in the Baptistery. Both sets date to around 1880. According to the churchwarden, the two south clerestory lights in the choir, which depict single figures against tinted glass backgrounds, have been attributed to Morris and Company, though this attribution has not been confirmed. The style of the figures is similar to the work of designers in the Morris circle. The north transept glass, dating to the late 19th and early 20th centuries, was partly destroyed by the storm of October 1987. Fragments of the smashed centre light were reset with new designs.

Amon Henry Wilds built the first church, a Greek Revival structure, on this site in 1826-27 for Charles Elliott in the grounds of East Lodge, the home of the Earl of Egremont. Elliott's son, the Reverend Henry Elliott, was the founder of St Mary's Hall School, Eastern Road, and the first curate of the church. The choir vestry contains memorials to members of the Venn Elliott family.

In 1875 the proprietary chapel became a parish church and plans were made to enlarge the chancel. This work had started by the summer of 1876 under the direction of the builder Nash. At the end of June, however, the entire chancel and part of the nave collapsed. An appeal to build an entirely new church was opened in July, at which time there was a call to reorient the building cardinally, according to the liturgical practice of the day, with its long axis parallel to St James's Street. In the end, however, the original orientation was retained. The original estimate of 12,000 pounds was too low, as a result of the quantity surveyor's error, and a revised estimate of 15,000 was accepted. Emerson had planned to build a large tower at the north-west corner. This, like the figure sculpture planned for the west front, was never executed. By the time the building was consecrated in October 1878, close to 20,000 pounds had been spent.