Church of St Leonard

Church, 1953-1961, Adrian Gilbert Scott. The builder was R Corben and Son Ltd.

MATERIALS: buff brick with cream stone dressings. The roof is covered in red pantiles.

PLAN: the church has a rectangular plan, orientated north/south, with a low-pitched hipped roof. The liturgical east end is to the north. The entrance is to the south (liturgical west), beneath a tower facing out to the sea. To the east is a single-storey vestry and offices.

The altar is against the liturgical east wall, with choir stalls in the chancel. The nave has passage aisles and there is a gallery to the south over an enclosed entry hall, or narthex, which has small subsidiary rooms to either side.

EXTERIOR: stylistically the church has a stripped Gothic manner. The exterior is dominated by the blocky tower with a high parabolic arch into which is set an elevated tripartite entrance beneath a tall three-light window. The arch has late Gothic mouldings dying into smooth, rounded jambs. The entrance is formed of three pairs of wooden doors divided by moulded stone jambs, each pair with tripartite over-lights and a band of blind arcading with inflexed arches. The doors are reached via a wide flight of steps. At the head of the tower is an illuminated cross set with glass blocks.

Side windows have inflexed arches and diagonally leaded lights. To the right of the tower is an open-air pulpit. Side walls have two-light traceried windows with triangular arches.

INTERIOR: the interior space is punctuated by the structural use of parabolic arches: the chancel arch, two arches which diminish into the altar recess beyond and the giant parabolic arcades which link the internal buttresses into which the passage aisles are cut. The ceiling is flat over the centre of the nave and canted to the sides.

The dado in the nave and chancel, and extending into the narthex and side rooms, is of Blue Hornton stone with a wave motif at the top. The dado rises behind the altar and is surmounted by incised and painted cross. The marble floor of the chancel and sanctuary is inlaid with depictions of loaves and fishes, scallop shells and locally-caught varieties of fish. The sanctuary and altar are raised. The simple timber altar has a central pedestal tapering towards its base; a form echoed in the elegant timber altar rail which has pairs of balusters arranged in narrow V formations. The choir stalls to the left of the altar are of limed oak in a neo-Gothic style, possibly re-using some Victorian work. Above are organ pipes. In front of the choir is the pulpit in the form of the prow of a Gallilean fishing boat and on the other side of the chancel arch is the lectern made from a ship’s binnacle. The font and cover, carved from a solid piece of elm by John Reid, are in the form of a ship's wheel but these were not present at the time of inspection in 2019.