Church Of All Souls

Church of All Souls, Athelstan Road

Built in 1890, this is a large town church designed by Sir Arthur W. Blomfield, one of the most prolific church architects of the 19th century. The building is constructed in Flemish bond red brick with occasional stone details and clay-tiled roofs.

The church comprises a chancel, nave with north and south aisles, a west baptistry, a northeast transeptal organ chamber with vestries, a southeast chapel, and southwest and southeast porches. The exterior is boldly massed and designed in a vigorous Early English style. The building is tall, and this effect is emphasised by the falling site at the east end, which creates a dramatic grouping of the chancel and south chapel. The nave has lean-to aisles and a tall clerestory. The windows throughout are constructed from brick without freestone and have no cusping.

At the east end, the chancel features an elevated window with an unusual rhythm of Y-tracery, a taller lancet, and Y-tracery again, all beneath a super-arch. The south chapel has a five-light graded lancet east window and Y-tracery south windows. The nave and aisles contain five bays: the aisles have pairs of lancets in each bay, while the nave clerestory has end bays with plate-tracery of paired lancets with a circle above, and middle bays with three graded lancets. The west end has a canted baptistry with a steep pyramidal roof and a pair of two-light windows with uncusped brick Y-tracery; a brick roundel with a stone cross sits in the gable. On the north side, the transeptal organ chamber has two tall slit windows and a roundel, with a simple gabled timber bell housing. A low northeast vestry block has a plain parapet and square-headed windows.

The interior continues the dramatic treatment of the exterior. Much character derives from the extensive use of bare brick with minimal stone dressings. The circular piers of the arcades are unusually formed entirely of brick with moulded stone capitals. The arches are double-chamfered with hood-moulds. The moulded brick chancel arch has mouldings dying into the responds, as does the arch to the west baptistry. The nave has an impressive roof structure with tie-beams, queen-posts, and a scissor brace above the collar with cusped arch-braces. The tie-beams rest on moulded corbels on brick shafts, with curved longitudinal braces between purlins and trusses. The chancel roof is a pointed, boarded tunnel vault. The aisles have ties across to the arcade walls. The southeast chapel has a boarded timber vault with deep ribs on stone corbels. At the east end, dark marble shafts of the east window extend to the ground, framing the reredos beyond.

Principal fixtures include a low brick and stone wall at the chancel entrance carrying an impressively ornate wrought-iron screen; plainer wrought-iron screens connect the chancel to the organ chamber and southeast chapel. The wrought-iron pulpit stands on a stone base. The reredos, dating from 1897, fills the wall beneath the east window with three tiers of mosaic figures and patterning. The south chancel wall has a triple sedilia with trefoil heads and green marble shafts. The chancel floor comprises stamped and encaustic tiles. The stalls have open traceried fronts, and seating in the body of the church has ends with an inverted Y-profile. The west end font has a marble circular bowl on a quatrefoil base with green marble shafts. The west window contains high-quality glass in the style of Morris and Company. The organ is an unusual and essentially unaltered example by Messrs. Norman and Beard of Norwich.

The church was built to serve the expanding suburb of Clive Vale. Blomfield (1829–99) was the fourth son of Bishop Charles J. Blomfield of London, was articled to P. C. Hardwick, and began independent practice in London in 1856. His early work is characterised by strong, muscular quality and the use of structural polychrome with continental influences. He became diocesan architect to Winchester, securing numerous church commissions throughout the diocese, and was appointed architect to the Bank of England from 1883. Knighted in 1889 and awarded the RIBA Royal Gold Medal in 1891, Blomfield's later churches often have routine qualities, but All Souls is among his best works. The use of brick is particularly notable, with strong, bold lines made more dramatic by the almost exclusive use of brick on the principal show façades to the southeast and south. This structural honesty continues into the interior, where large volumes and bare brick create a coherent building of strength and nobility. The church represents one of the finest examples of a line of mid-19th-century town churches using red brick to reduce costs whilst maintaining generous scale and providing an imposing place of worship.