Roman Catholic Chapel Of The Most Holy Name Sir John Moore Barracks

Roman Catholic military chapel, built between 1966 and 1968 by Zbigniew Jan Piet (Pietruszewski) of Brian and Norman Westwood, Piet and Partners, for the Sir John Moore Barracks. The building has reinforced concrete foundations and a brick west wall, with a roof originally shingled and later replaced with artificial slates around 1994. It is broadly triangular in plan, featuring one curved wall, set into an earth mound and on a small scale. The concrete foundations incorporate a polythene sheet formwork, giving the low internal walls a smooth, shiny finish. A soaring, triangular timber roof rises from these walls, one side horizontally boarded, the other vertically, supported by steel-braced timber trusses and creating a clerestory. The west end has simple openings to a mezzanine meeting room and over the entrance, which has a pivoted single door leading down steps to the side. Some yellow glass remains in the sanctuary and clerestory, intended to impart a warm tone. The interior consists of a single worship space with an altar set forward of the east end, within a raised sanctuary area. A spiral staircase at the rear leads to a meeting room and choir balcony. The south wall features stations of the cross made of fibre glass by John McCarthy, arranged in a row like a comic strip, as conceived by Piet. A Madonna by McCarthy is also on the west wall. There is bench seating for 100 worshipers. When Brian and Norman Westwood, Piet and Partners were commissioned to build the barracks around 1961, Piet’s Roman Catholicism led him to personally oversee the chapel’s design. He describes the building’s form as a tent, inspired by his Boy Scout experiences, and constructed using Polish timber he personally selected at the docks. The building’s style is reminiscent of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Unitarian Church at Shorewood Hills, Wisconsin, though on a significantly smaller scale and with a more fluid form. The chapel is an unusually well-made building for its date, reflecting the architect’s deep religious commitment, combining nostalgia for his native Poland with gratitude for his life in Britain after his exile in 1945.