St Stephen House And Attached Cloisters

St Stephen’s House and attached cloisters is a theological college, formerly the Mission House of the Society of St John the Evangelist, located near the Church of St John the Evangelist on Iffley Road. The late 19th-century entrance block was likely designed by the local architect Clapton Crabb Rolfe. The main block, with its cloister, was built in 1899 to designs by G.F. Bodley, under the supervision of Brother Maynard SSJE. In 1929, a first-floor addition was made to the Marston Street entrance by F.E. Howard and T. Rayson, and between 1937 and 1939, J.N. Comper added a transeptal east end to the House Chapel.

The entrance block is constructed of red brick with slated pitched roofs and dormers, featuring a short tower belfrey with a pyramidal roof and lucarnes. The building has two, three and four storeys, including a semi-basement. The rear elevation includes an additional fourth storey, the “Founder's Chapel”, which has paired pointed arch clerestory windows, a rose window, and a western gable end carved stone Calvary (heads of Mary and St. John are currently missing). The chapel's interior features an arch-braced roof and simple stained timber arcading, along with simple stained pews. A mural on the western wall depicts the stoning of St Stephen.

The main Bodley block is rendered with stone dressings and has tiled hipped and pitched roofs with dormers. The Marston Street façade features a recessed two-storey entrance block with a central pointed arch doorway flanked by buttresses and three-light windows, alongside two two-light windows at first floor level. This leads to an E-plan accommodation/office block, mostly two storeys high with attics, and cloisters to the southwest which adjoin the listed Church of St John the Evangelist, also designed by Bodley. The House Chapel is situated on the same axis as the church, to the northeast. The ground floor windows of the E-plan block are stone architraved with transoms and mullions, while the first floor has two-light windows, all with small leaded panes. A single-story northeast entrance features a central pointed arch doorway flanked by five-light windows and a central hipped roof extension above.

The House Chapel has four buttressed bays, with a two-bay buttressed transeptal east end. The nave features two-light pointed arch tracery windows and lancets at the east end. The interior includes a wooden screen at the west end and stalls; a painted frieze is positioned above the nave windows. The pointed chancel arch head has an extrados moulding fading into the walls and an intrados moulding on corbel springers, contributing to the chancel vaulting. A simplified corresponding blind arch on the east wall visually frames a classical ciborium by Comper. An axial cloister extension leads to a stone-flagged rectangular cloister, which closes off the E-plan, forming two small courtyards and abuts the church. The cloister is lit by slightly pointed arch three-light openings, set within recessed arched openings to the interior, some of which have window seats.