Church Of The Holy Ghost

The Church of the Holy Ghost is a Roman Catholic church built in 1902 by Canon A.J.C. Scoles. It is constructed of dressed flint with ashlar dressings, some red brick in stretcher bond, and has a Roman tile roof. The church comprises a five-bay nave, with a northern transept acting as a Lady Chapel and a southern entrance linked to the Presbytery. It also includes an apse with nine windows and an octagonal bell tower situated on the south side, in the angle with the Presbytery.

The church is designed in the High Victorian Gothic style, inspired by the Early English style, and features offset buttresses. Windows are generally 2-light with plate tracery and hoodmoulds, with single-light windows to the apse, and a large, three-stepped-light window with attached columns at the west end. The main entrance features an architrave of three orders, a tympanum carved with low-relief quatrefoils, and a gable cross. The Lady Chapel is gabled, with a statue of the Madonna and Child in a niche above the window, a gable cross, and pentafoil windows to the west and east. The bell tower has a chamfered plinth, quoined angles, moulded bands, and a stairwell lit by single-light windows. The bell stage has louvred lights, a corbelled eaves band, and a slate spire topped with a slender cross.

The interior is richly painted and decorated by N.H.J. Westlake, with stations of the cross dating to approximately 1930 (restored 1991-92). Polished marble columns in the Sanctuary and Lady Chapel support decorative archivolts. There are polished stone altars and reredoses, and a tabernacle at the east end. The Sanctuary has a vaulted roof, while the nave features a compartmental roof with foliate capitals supporting vaults. A decoratively carved stone font and pulpit were added in 1928. Decorative brass lanterns illuminate the space. A piece of early to mid-16th century glass, originally from the chapel at Vyne House, Basingstoke, is inset into one of the southern nave windows. A west gallery was inserted around 1965, and the pews were replaced in the mid to late 20th century.

Canon Scoles is remembered for other church designs in Bridgewater and Yeovil, and an extension to Portsmouth Roman Catholic Cathedral. He was buried next to the Sanctuary and commemorated by a stepped ridged gravestone with roll mouldings, gablets, and a crucifixion, situated in the angle of the Lady Chapel and Sanctuary.