The Parish Church of St Barnabas

The Parish Church of St Barnabas

St Barnabas is a parish church on Sea Road built between 1890 and 1891 by the eminent Gothic Revival architect Sir Arthur W. Blomfield, with a substantial south aisle added in 1908–09 by Sir Arthur Blomfield and Sons. The church was constructed to provide additional Anglican accommodation in the expanding town of Bexhill, with the parish carved from St Peter's church. The land was donated by the 7th Earl de la Warre, and Canon Leopold Stanley Clarke, vicar of St Peter's, gave £6,000 towards the new building when he retired in 1888.

The exterior is built in flint with limestone dressings and red clay tiled roofs, executed in a variety of later medieval styles. The original church consists of a tall nave with four bays and a clerestory lit by two-light Y-tracery windows. The north aisle walls are relatively low, with each bay demarcated by buttresses with offsets. The west end features a tall west window with a 1–2–1 configuration, the central pair of lights having cusped Y-tracery. Below this window stands a lean-to narthex porch with a north entrance and small single-light windows in the west wall. On the north side of the chancel is a tall, cross-gabled organ chamber, and to its east a single-storey, flat-roofed vestry. The chancel's east window is large with five lights and a richly cusped and traceried head. A timber bellcote with double louvred openings straddles the roof ridge at the west end, capped by a steeply pointed shingled spirelet.

The 1908–09 Edwardian addition of the south aisle doubled the church's size. The aisle is under its own gable and has a spreading west window of five lights with Geometrical tracery. The south elevation is divided into bays by buttresses with offsets, each bay containing a three-light window under depressed arches, except for the easterly-most bay which has a three-light window under a steeply pointed arch. At the east end of the aisle stands a three-sided apse with two-light windows, forming a sanctuary for the south chapel.

Internally, the walls are faced with red brick, as are the octagonal piers, which have a cement core. The sanctuary is laid with Rust's mosaic, widely used for churches at the end of the 19th century. The nave is floored with pitch pine blocks. The church has always been seated with chairs. The south chapel, dedicated to All Souls, was fitted out by Leslie Moore in 1939.

Sir Arthur William Blomfield (1829–99) was one of the most active and successful church architects of the Gothic Revival. The fourth son of Bishop Charles J. Blomfield of London (bishop 1828–56), he was articled to P. C. Hardwick and began independent practice in London in 1856. His early work is characterised by a strong muscular quality and the use of structural polychrome often with continental influences. He became diocesan architect to Winchester, which led to extensive church-building commissions throughout the diocese, and was also appointed architect to the Bank of England from 1883. Blomfield was knighted in 1889 and awarded the RIBA's Royal Gold Medal in 1891. His sons, Charles James (1862–1932) and Arthur Conran (1863–1935), joined him in practice and continued the firm as Sir Arthur Blomfield and Sons after his death.

The continued pressure on church accommodation in Bexhill led to the addition of the large new south aisle in 1908–09.