Church Of The Resurrection

Church of the Resurrection

Church. Built in stages: 1868–9 by George Edmund Street; 1882 by John Loughborough Pearson; and 1899–1905 by Sir Arthur Blomfield.

Street's original church was built in early Decorated Gothic style with a nave, chancel, and vestry to the north. Pearson added a north aisle in similar style. When Blomfield's larger church was constructed, Street's south transept and porch were removed. The new Decorated-style church by Blomfield features a west narthex, nave with sanctuary end, south aisle, and porch. Street's original church was then converted into a north aisle with chapel.

Street's and Pearson's work has walls of grey Plymouth limestone with Bath stone dressings and Decorated-style windows. Pearson's north aisle has an arch-braced roof with cusped spandrels and moulded detail, with octagonal piers forming a 4-bay arcade facing Street's church.

Blomfield's church has external facing of limestone from Berry Head, Devon, with internal lining of brick. It features 2-light windows with hood moulds over pointed-arched doorways to the lean-to narthex. The west end has linked hood moulds over 2-light windows and a corner turret with spirelet reset from Street's church. Paired clerestorey windows are divided by pilaster buttresses. The south aisle has paired lancets divided by offset buttresses. The transept has lancets over 3-light plate-tracery windows, with tall 3-light windows lighting the east end. The east window was removed following a fire in 1985. Plain tile roofs throughout.

Street's church interior retains a mosaic sanctuary floor and stone carved reredos. The chancel arch is moulded with carved responds. The roof is arch-braced with cusping to alternate trusses. Pearson's aisle has a 4-bay arcade with octagonal piers.

Blomfield's church was severely damaged in the 1985 fire but has retained the piscina, credence, and sedilia to the sanctuary. The sanctuary has shafts to Perpendicular roof corbels. The church has a 4-bay arcade and a chamfered west arch on chamfered piers, with similar but lower outer arches to the narthex.

The church's construction is closely linked to Eastleigh's development as a railway town following the completion of the London and Southampton railway in 1840. The church was built in the 1860s with support from gifts by Charlotte Yonge, the authoress, Ecclesiologist, and friend of John Keble, founder of the Oxford Movement. Yonge's mother gifted the reredos. In 1891, when the London and South Western Railway carriage works relocated from Nine Elms in London to Eastleigh, the company made donations for the building of Blomfield's new church, with Street's church remaining on the north side of the new structure.