Church of St Bartholomew

Church of St Bartholomew, Beltinge

This church was designed in 1908 by the architect William Douglas Caröe and building commenced in 1915 (the foundation stone is dated All Saints Day, 1915), though the church was not consecrated until 1932 and remains incomplete to this day. The church was built to serve the expanding population of early 20th-century eastern Herne Bay.

The building is constructed in English bond brown brick with tiled arches, clay-tiled roofs, and a shingled spirelet. The plan comprises a nave, chancel, a four-bay south aisle with a south-west porch, a north-east organ chamber and vestries, and an incomplete west tower. A south-east Lady Chapel was never built.

The exterior displays a freely-treated Gothic style. The south side is the principal facade, featuring a buttressed south aisle with a catslide roof continuous with that of the nave, with buttresses projecting through the roof. Each bay has triple lancet windows with shallow cusped heads recessed under very flat segmental arches with tiled heads. The south porch has a single buttress and a splayed east doorway with outer and inner segmental tiled arched heads. Its south face displays a brick quatrefoil frieze with further quatrefoil decoration in the gable and a built-in cross. At the junction of nave and chancel stands a shingled, louvred spirelet straddling the roof ridge. Yellow brick at the east end of the aisle and south wall of the chancel marks the location of the intended Lady Chapel. The chancel south wall has small high-set lancets, and the east window comprises five grouped lancets in a splayed recess.

The north side of the nave is less ornate but also features buttresses projecting through the roof and paired lancet windows in each bay recessed behind tiled arches. A formidable two-storey buttressed organ chamber with a hipped roof and gablet sits here, decorated with a brick quatrefoil frieze and a five-light ground-floor window flanked by two glazed slit windows above. Vestries occupy the angle between the organ chamber and chancel. At the west end, the nave roof extends over the lower parts of the incomplete tower, which has a gabled base with a west doorway between buttresses and a studded, panelled two-leaf door. The north and south walls rise above the gabled roof as deep brick cheeks to a belfry open on the west face.

Internally, the walls are plastered and feature decorative brick friezes in the chancel (below the clerestory) and nave (below the eaves). The nave arcades are tall, rising to the frieze just below the eaves, with arches turned in buff tiles with red-brick soffits. The chancel arch is constructed simply of unmoulded red brick. The nave roof employs crown-post and tie-beam construction, boarded above; the tie-beams are supported on massive moulded stone corbels carried down in wall-shafts to below the arch springing. The chancel roof is a boarded timber tunnel-vault with two tie-beams and a panelled ceilure with moulded ribs and carved bosses. The south side of the chancel features four quatrefoils below the frieze containing relief sculptures of the Evangelists. Blocked arches to the proposed Lady Chapel are visible on the south wall. On the north wall of the chancel, a first-floor organ chamber is cantilevered out centrally over an ashlar recess. The aisle roof is an eccentric design with tie-beams, posts and up-braces to the purlins, and down-braces to the ties.

Principal fixtures include stone sedilia, a piscina and aumbry with idiosyncratic decoration in the chancel. There is a wooden drum pulpit with linenfold panels. The font has a plain octagonal bowl and marble shafts to the base—a conventional design suggesting reuse rather than early 20th-century execution. Seating in the nave and chancel dates from the late 20th century.

William Douglas Caröe (1857-1938) was a leading church architect of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He was articled to Edmund Kirby of Liverpool in 1879-80, transferring his articles in 1881 to the great Gothic revivalist J L Pearson until 1883. He travelled extensively on the continent from 1877-82 before establishing a practice in London in 1883, subsequently developing a prolific church-building and restoration practice. He became architect to the deans and chapters of Southwell, Hereford, Brecon and Exeter, architect to the Charity Commission, and from 1895 to the Ecclesiastical Commission. Caröe is noted for his freely-treated and often eccentric handling of the Gothic style, and St Bartholomew's exemplifies this approach with its highly inventive detail.