Holy Rood Church

Holy Rood Church is a parish church of 1877–8 designed by Thomas Goodchild, with the tower completed in 1928, chancel rebuilt in 1971, and a church centre added in 1991. It is built of knapped flint with Bath stone dressings and a tiled roof.

The church plan comprises a six-bay nave with aisles, a south porch, and a north-west tower. The chancel, now functioning as a narthex, stands to the east alongside a vestry, all connecting to the later church centre.

The exterior is executed in Early Decorated Gothic style. The west window features four lights with Geometric tracery, flanked by stepped buttresses with a high coped parapet above. The three-stage tower has broad angle buttresses; the original lower stage contains a two-order west doorway flanked by colonettes and surmounted by a dripstone; the middle stage displays single cusped lights with carved panels beneath; the upper stage has louvred belfry openings and a battlemented parapet. The aisles contain two-light windows set between buttresses. Multifoil circular windows in the clerestorey are positioned between flush stone pilasters. The south porch has a flint base and timber superstructure with decorative barge-boards. The lower walls of the old chancel and south vestry survive, while the rebuilt upper part is tile-hung beneath a latitudinal valley roof.

The interior is entered from the east through the rebuilt chancel and narthex, a simple space lit from above by rooflight and ceiling louvres. Beyond stands a tall chancel arch now filled with a modern organ case. The nave is supported by simple cylindrical columns carrying moulded arcades with carved ornament in the spandrels. Upper walls are lined in yellow brick with a moulded string course and pointed-arch clerestorey openings. The roof is arch-braced with principals supported on carved corbels below clerestorey level.

An original octagonal stone font with carved side panels and marble colonettes to the base is positioned beneath a modern hanging cross in the narthex. Other fittings postdate the 1968 fire.

The west window, dating from 1887 and erected in memory of Eva Frances Eastman, features four main lights depicting the Good Shepherd and the Baptism, Resurrection and Ascension of Christ, with Christological symbols in the smaller lights above. Various 20th-century windows in the aisles include two containing fragments from destroyed east windows of 1884 and 1948.

Boundary walls to Gosport Road are constructed of flint and brick with stone coping; end piers feature coped finials.

The present church was built in 1877–8, replacing the small medieval parish church of Crofton (now Grade II* listed) and reflecting the shift in population from the old village centre during the 19th century. The local firm of Plummer and Gamblin carried out the construction on a site donated by landowner Montagu Foster. Stained glass was installed in the east and west windows in 1884 and 1887 respectively. The north-west tower, initially left unfinished, was completed to a revised design omitting the proposed spire in 1928; the present clock was installed in 1934. In 1944, a bomb destroyed the original east window glass. Its replacement, installed in 1948, was itself destroyed in 1968 by a fire that consumed much of the east end of the church. The chancel was rebuilt in reduced form in 1971, and the church centre was constructed behind it in 1991. In 1996–7, the interior was reordered to face the undamaged west end, with the rebuilt chancel retained as a narthex.