Church of St Simon

Church of St Simon

This is a church built between 1864 and 1866, designed by Thomas Hellyer of Ryde. It stands on the east side of Waverley Road in Southsea, Portsmouth.

The building is constructed of yellow brick in Flemish bond with red brick bands and dressings. It has steep pitched Welsh slate roofs with red clay ridge tiles and is designed in the Neo Early Decorated style.

The church plan consists of a five-bay aisled nave, a two-bay chancel with polygonal apse, an organ loft on the south side with choir and clergy vestries on the north, and a south-west entrance porch.

The exterior south face features a porch with splayed corner. The porch has a boarded door recessed behind a stone cusped head and set under a pointed yellow gauged brick arch with intermediate red bricks. The porch has brick dentilled eaves and a slated lean-to roof. Within the splayed face is a stone two-light geometrical tracery window with a gauged brick pointed arch set within a facing steep stone coped gable. The aisle has four three-light stone reticulated tracery windows, each light with a lancet head and a sexfoil pane over the centre light, set under gauged brick pointed arches. Red brick bands appear at springing level with blue stone sills. Flanking brick stepped buttresses support the structure. To the right is a narrow recessed stone lancet window set under a gauged brick pointed arch. Further right is a low projecting porch with a boarded door set under a gauged brick pointed arch and a facing stone coped gable. On the far right is the organ loft projecting from the chancel with a facing stone coped gable and two recessed stone cusped lancet windows with stepped brick jambs and head. The nave has six paired two-light reticulated tracery clerestory windows, each set under a gauged brick pointed arch.

The east face has a polygonal apse to the chancel with five tall two-light traceried stone windows, each set under a gauged brick pointed arch. Each side of the apse has a two-light stone traceried window.

The north face is similar to the south face except without a porch. At the east end is a flat-roofed vestry and boiler house. The west face of the nave has diagonal stepped buttresses to each corner and two taller central buttresses, each terminating with a pedimental stone cope. A facing stone coped gable at the centre between the buttresses contains a low lean-to roofed porch with three small recessed stone cusped-headed windows, each set under a flat stone arch. To the left and right are three narrow stone lancet-headed windows, each set under a gauged brick pointed arch. At the centre of the nave at high level is a tall three-light window with flanking two-light reticulated stone windows, each set under a gauged brick pointed arch.

The interior features north and south arcades to the aisles with stone columns supporting stepped red and yellow brick pointed arches, each with brick roll moulded and label. Within the arcade spandrels are circular panels in red and yellow brick inscribed with the Beatitudes. The clerestory windows are set under patterned yellow and red brick pointed arches. The nave has a queen post roof with a diagonal boarded ceiling to the rafter soffits, while the aisles have lean-to boarded ceilings. The chancel has a boarded ceiling. A full-height chancel arch with a red and yellow brick pointed arch springs from brick piers, each with three-tier slim stone columns set within recessed corners of brickwork. The north and south arcades to the chancel each have a central stone column with flanking brick pilasters. Two brick pointed arches lead to the organ loft on the south and vestries to the north. Over each opening is a small five-bay open clerestory, each with a pointed brick arch springing from paired stone short columns with abacus. Below each of the five apsidal windows is a recessed panel with a patterned tiled mural; the centre three panels have pointed heads and contain texts. Two bays at the west end have an inserted late twentieth-century partition to form a church centre. The chancel contains stained glass windows.