Church Of St Paul

Church of St Paul, Sarisbury Green

St Paul's is a cruciform church built around 1836 as a chapel of ease for the village of Sarisbury and its surrounding hamlets, later becoming a parish church in 1863. It was designed by the Southampton-based architect George Guillaume (c.1808–1868). The church was subsequently enlarged and improved under the direction of the architect George Fellowes Prynne, who added a doubled-length chancel in 1880 and a south chapel in 1922 as a memorial to the dead of the First World War. A north-east vestry was extended in 1908. A minor mid-twentieth century extension to the west end is not of special interest.

The tower, nave and transepts are constructed in brick with stone and stucco dressings, while the east end is of squared hammer-dressed stone with ashlar dressings. The roof is of Welsh slate. The church is designed throughout in the early Gothic style. The three-staged tower features diagonal corner buttresses with heavy stone offsets, a four-centred west doorway with stuccoed surround, lancet windows to the middle stage and belfry, and a parapet with pediment-like projections to each face and cross-shaped recesses in the return walls. A low quarter-octagonal extension projects to the north. The original church comprises a two-bay nave and single-bay transepts. Each side of the nave is lit by two single lancets with stucco surrounds and hood-moulds, while the transepts have triple stepped lancets. The chancel, rebuilt and extended to two bays, has a triple-lancet east window of ashlar-faced recess with hood-mould and flanking colonettes, set between massive angle buttresses. The south chapel has three tall lancets, with smaller lancets in the apse linked by stone cill-band and string-course.

The interior is entered through a lobby beneath the tower, from which a timber stair ascends to the west gallery. The nave and transepts have exposed roof trusses with a plaster rib-vault at the crossing. The organ sits on the west gallery, whose arcaded frontal breaks forward slightly to accommodate the console. The floor is stone-flagged, with a modern semicircular altar platform at the crossing. A tall moulded chancel arch, flanked by smaller chamfered arches, leads to the south chapel and (now blocked) vestry. The chancel is fitted with an encaustic tiled floor and has a complex open timber roof with carved corbels resembling ammonites supporting a massive principal roof-truss. Beneath deeply-recessed south windows are a sedile and piscina, with colonettes dividing the window lights. The south chapel is roughly square with a chamfered arch leading to an apsidal sanctuary, which features a carved piscina and blue mosaic floor.

The church retains Victorian pine pews with shaped ends throughout the nave. A polygonal carved stone pulpit stands at the crossing, formerly integral with a stone and wrought-iron chancel screen, now removed. Two sets of pine choir stalls, with shaped ends topped by cross finials, are positioned in the chancel, one now moved to the rear of the nave. Brass communion rails with foliage ornament run before the altar. The high altar is backed by a three-gabled reredos of stone and polychrome marble with carved roundels depicting the Evangelists. An English altar in the south chapel has a traceried front panel and twin angel-topped riddel posts.

The church contains a significant scheme of stained glass in a unified High Victorian style. The north transept window features early Victorian patterned glass with a small Last Supper scene in the central light. The south transept window, dated 1870, shows the Last Supper in the central light, with figures of the Archangels Gabriel and Michael in the outer lights, alongside a single-light Good Shepherd window to the left. The three-light east window depicts Christ of the Apocalypse with the twenty-four elders (Revelations 4:10), with the Adoration of the Shepherds and Magi below. The south chancel windows show the Resurrection and Crucifixion with Gothic canopies and text panels. Three windows in the south chapel represent incidents from the life of St Paul and, in their design, resemble the chancel windows; they must pre-date the construction of the chapel. Three small lancets in the apse feature figures of saints.

A lych-gate stands to the west of the tower, built around 1893. It has a carved traceried timber superstructure on a rubble and freestone base with a hipped tiled roof; Biblical texts are carved in blackletter over the lintels.

The church was originally designed to seat 440. The present organ was installed in 1869, and a tower clock was added in 1877. New stained glass was installed throughout the eastern part of the church around the time of Prynne's 1880 chancel work.