Church of St Luke

CHURCH OF ST LUKE

Parish church built in 1897-98 to the designs of John Francis Bentley. The style is Free-Gothic in a Decorated manner. The church is constructed of fine-jointed Bath stone ashlar with tiled roofs.

The plan comprises an unaisled nave and chancel, a north-west porch, a north tower with a north-east chapel alongside, and a south-east organ chamber. The east and west windows are derived from Norman Shaw's Latimer Road Church and express the interior curve of the wagon roofs, flanked by buttresses; the east window has a wider hoodmould extending down to the buttresses. The north side of the church is the main elevation visible from the road, featuring a coped gabled porch with kneelers, a moulded doorway with engaged shafts and carved spandrels, and a high-quality carving of the symbol of St Luke in the gable. The stocky tower has an embattled parapet with pinnacles and small windows below the belfry stage that are asymmetrically placed. The asymmetrical south elevation has a single buttress, two matching four-light square-headed windows with traceried heads, and to the west a tall two-light traceried window with transom in otherwise blind walling.

The interior has a moulded chancel arch carried on well-carved stone corbels and impressive wagon roofs. The nave has plain ribs of unstained timber on a deep projecting wallplate and a slender moulded ridge; the chancel has moulded ribs and purlins and a brattished wallplate. The east wall is plain with a moulded string stepped down on either side of the altar; the intended reredos was not executed. Matching two-bay arcades with octagonal piers and moulded stone arches lead to the organ chamber and north chapel. The chancel and sanctuary floor, designed by Bentley, is a mixture of Portland stone paving and tiles. Bentley also designed the communion rails of brass and wrought iron. Nave walls have a plain two-tier dado, and open-backed benches with ends in the form of a truncated X; the floor is parquet. A timber drum pulpit, designed by Bentley, features blind traceried panelling on a stone base. The extraordinary font, also designed by Bentley and executed by Farmer and Brindley, stands on a Portland stone cross-shaped step and has an octagonal pink alabaster stem and deep octagonal tulip-shaped bowl of green-streaked Cippolini marble with a white marble rim. The dark 1906 German Expressionist east window by von Glehn depicts the Crucifixion. Choirstalls dating to 1910 have poppyhead finials.

St Luke's was built in 1897-98 to replace a temporary corrugated iron building erected around 1873 to accommodate the expanding population resulting from the development of the cricket bat and ball factory in the village. The church was paid for by the Hill family, and John Singer Sargent, the portrait painter, recommended Bentley to them as architect. This was Bentley's only Protestant church; he is better known as the architect of Westminster Roman Catholic Cathedral (1839-1902). According to the church guide, a choir screen, tower clock and bells were planned by Bentley but were not executed.