Church Of St Mark

Church of St Mark, Broadwater Down

This Grade II* listed church was built between 1864 and 1866 by the London architect Robert Lewis Roumieu, with significant additions made in 1903 and 1985. The church was commissioned by the Reverend William Nevill, the fourth Earl of Abergavenny, who funded its construction entirely. The foundation stone was laid on 20 October 1864 by the Countess of Abergavenny, and the building was consecrated on 21 August 1866.

The church is constructed from rock-faced local sandstone from the Eridge estate with Bath stone dressings, while the inner walls are of brick. The roofs are of slate with polychromatic patterning and red clay tile crested ridges on the gabled sections.

The plan comprises a nave, lower chancel with three-sided apse, north and south aisles, a west baptistry, a northwest steeple with porch beneath, north and south transepts, a north organ chamber and vestry, and a southeast vestry. The principal façade faces north towards Broadwater Down and presents a complex composition of gables and highly individual detailing characteristic of 1860s church design when architects and patrons sought novel and interesting effects. The two-tone slate banding on the nave and chancel, together with lozenge patterning on other roof sections, is particularly noteworthy as polychromatic roofs of this period rarely survive.

The slender northwest steeple forms a local landmark and displays particularly idiosyncratic geometry. It has angle buttresses with very tall shallow tapering offsets and a north gabled portal with a double entrance leading into a porch. The tower is divided into three loosely defined stages, with the middle being the tallest and carrying very narrow slits separated by a circular colonette with a foliage corbel at the start of the belfry stage. The colonette then becomes rectangular with chamfered corners and rises to the base of the spire. Either side of it are three narrow, curiously detailed slits for belfry openings. The spire has broaches and unusual solid projections with tall sloping coverings which continue the rectangular shaft separating the belfry openings.

Beyond the steeple, the architecture displays numerous inventive features: paired, very steeply pitched windows in the aisles; steeply sloping sills on the north transept; a gable with tapering, sloping sill and curious tracery on the east window of the apse. The clerestory is more restrained, with pairs of quatrefoils to each bay, each beneath an arched head.

The interior walls are plastered and whitened. The nave consists of five bays. The west bay of the north aisle is occupied by the tower and porch, while the east arches of the arcade are higher and wider than the others, leading into the north and south transepts. The arcade arches have hollow chamfers and feature two-tone cream and yellow voussoirs. The piers are fairly slender with ornate foliage capitals and square bases with chamfered corners to effect a transition with the circular piers. The west responds of the transept arches display extraordinary angular geometry and include a central bust of an angel.

The chancel arch is tall and wide with a marble shaft rising from a tall base. The nave roof is tall and steeply pitched, with main arch-braced trusses springing from corbels in the spandrels of the arcade. The construction is notably curious: the arch braces have voids between them and the principal rafters, with only a small linking piece halfway up to the collar. The aisle roofs are lean-tos with a large number of purlins. Over the sanctuary, the roof ribs converge to a central point and are delicately decorated with floral details in white, red and green, with similar decoration over the spandrels of the windows.

The sanctuary is richly treated. Its centrepiece is a tripartite reredos with straight-sided gables and deep recesses beneath, flanked by dark marble shafts. The long, tapering sills mirror similar features on the exterior. The flanking walls display two painted scenes—the Entry to Jerusalem and the Road to Calvary—and texts of the Lord's Prayer, Creed and Ten Commandments on alabaster. The dado is tiled.

The pulpit is an ornate polygonal piece with pierced traceried sides, standing on red marble shafts. The font exemplifies the architect's delight in extraordinary forms: it has a circular bowl with rectangular projections, mounted on a tapering base with dark marble shafts in the cardinal directions. The font is placed in the baptistry, added in 1903, which features a rich blue tiled dado.

The seating in both the chancel and body of the church is relatively simple, with poppy-headed ends in the nave. The organ was built by J W Walker, enlarged in 1906 and rebuilt in 1978. The church contains a large amount of 19th-century stained glass. The west window is a notable example of work by Clayton and Bell, who also designed the St James and St George window in the south aisle. Heaton, Butler and Bayne designed the Elijah and Faith and Charity windows, also in the south aisle, and three central windows in the north aisle. The sanctuary east windows are by O'Connor.

The development of Broadwater Down began around 1860 with the construction of several large houses. Robert Lewis Roumieu (1814–77), the London architect who had been articled to B D Wyatt in 1831 and was in partnership with A D Gough from 1836 to 1848, was able at St Mark's to give free rein to creating novel forms. Such work was not without contemporary criticism: the Building News referred to what it termed "acrobatic Gothic," while it was dubbed in the slang of the day as having "GO." GO enjoyed considerable popularity throughout the 1860s and early 1870s but gradually came to be sidelined by more restrained architecture introduced under the influence of late Gothic revivalists such as G F Bodley, G G Scott junior and J D Sedding. St Mark's stands as one of the most lavish creations of this movement.

Parish rooms were added to the south side in 1985.