Christ Church

Christ Church is a Grade II* listed building located on Gally Hill Road. This is an Early English style church comprising a nave with transepts, chancel, and associated modern additions.

The original church was built in 1841 by architect James Harding. The chancel with its northern Children's Aisle was added in 1876–7 by Henry Woodyer and features interior sgraffito decoration applied in 1893 by Heywood Sumner. A vestry and meeting room were added in 1971.

The exterior is constructed of red brick with stone dressings for the body of the church, while the chancel and aisle are built of coursed stone. All roofs are slated. The design features a four-bay nave with shallow, wide transepts. The chancel, originally separated by buttresses with offsets, maintains consistent hoodmoulds with the rest of the structure. The western gable end has a projecting central bay which internally forms a shallow baptistry and rises to a brick bellcote with a slated pitched roof. A south-western gabled brick porch with a pointed doorway provides entry. The chancel is lit by a three-light window.

The interior contains numerous features of exceptional quality. The main church roof is a complex timber hammerbeam design with carved pendants supported on carved stone angel corbels. The crossing roof is vaulted with a large, elaborately carved pendant boss. The chancel features an arch-braced king post roof with curved windbraces.

The most significant interior feature is the sgraffito decoration scheme by Heywood Sumner, one of only four complete schemes by him known to survive. The south wall depicts a Nativity scene with shepherds and sheep; the east wall shows angels, with the left-hand angel in armour slaying a dragon and the right-hand angel bearing a censer; the northern arcading features angels proclaiming the Resurrection. Sumner also designed two fine quality stained glass windows installed at the west end in 1900, depicting the angel of the Annunciation and the angel of the Resurrection. Additional stained glass includes a Crucifixion in the eastern window and windows in the former Children's Aisle showing the Christ Child and John the Baptist as a boy. Other memorial windows feature saints with portrait heads of the deceased.

Other notable interior fittings include a low open brass chancel screen with gates, dedicated in 1891 and featuring copper foliage, brass panels depicting thistles and honeysuckle, and openwork foliage ball finials. Brass chandeliers hang throughout. A matching pulpit and font, both dated 1893 and carved in stone with marble legs and insets, stand as a pair. A carved wooden screen by George Parsons, completed in 1924, encloses the former Children's Aisle, which was subsequently converted to a Lady Chapel with an additional bay. The chancel displays geometrically patterned multi-coloured tiles, and brass altar rails with openwork spandrels complete the furnishings.

The church has considerable historical significance. In 1839, the area formed part of the large parish of Crondall, and access to the single existing church was difficult for many parishioners. A new church was planned with the support of Charles Lefroy, whose family owned a local manor, and who had been influenced by Charles Dyson, a friend of John Keble. The church was consecrated by Henry Sumner, Bishop of Winchester and grandfather of Heywood Sumner. Anthony Lefroy, Charles's nephew and formerly curate to Dyson at Dogmersfield, became the first curate of the new church and parish. From the outset, the church was known for innovative practices: daily services and twice-monthly Eucharists were held, and the curate wore a surplice in the pulpit, practices considered revolutionary at the time. The distinctive style of worship and church life attracted members of the Lefroy and Dyson families and their associates, who built substantial family houses on land surrounding the church, which had originally stood in open countryside. This development led to the area becoming known as Church Crookham, a name it retains today.