Church Of St Tarcisius

The Church of St Tarcisius is a Roman Catholic church constructed between 1923 and 1926 by F A Walters. It was designed specifically as a war memorial to British Catholic officers who died in the First World War, many of whom were trained at the Staff College or the Royal Military College at Sandhurst. The church is built in the Perpendicular style, using Bargate stone rubble with Bath stone dressings and a tiled roof. The building comprises a west tower with a porch underneath and a baptistery to one side, a four-bay nave with a north aisle, a lower two-bay chancel, and transepts with side chapels.

The west tower has three stages, featuring a crenellated parapet and arched, louvred windows to the bell chamber. A triple traceried window sits below a west door, which has a carved stone head and double doors, flanked by offset buttresses. The baptistery to the north has two cinquefoil-headed lights. The nave has two-light arched windows, also divided by buttresses and displaying cross-shaped saddlestones to the east. Gabled transepts have traceried windows. The chancel features an elaborate five-light traceried east window and matching saddlestones.

Inside, the porch contains marble memorial tablets. The nave has a pitched pine braced roof with kingposts, and an arcade of Bath stone pointed arches supported on octagonal columns. Larger Bath stone arches on columns characterize the transepts, and a wooden gallery is present in the north transept. An octagonal carved stone pulpit and an octagonal stone font are also present. The original oak pews remain. The south chapel has a carved reredos, and the north Lady Chapel features triple arches and a stone reredos depicting the Virgin and Child and angels. The chancel incorporates a barrel-vaulted pitched pine roof, a carved white alabaster altar rail, and a carved Beer stone reredos with six canopies depicting Catholic saints and martyrs: St Tarcisius, St Pancras, St Augustine, St Patrick, St George, and St Sebastian. Numerous stained glass windows are by Paul Woodroffe (1875-1954).