Friary Church Of St Francis And St Anthony

Church, 1955-59, designed by Harry Stuart Goodhart-Rendel for a Capuchin Friary. Now a Roman Catholic parish church. Some later alteration, most notably to the sanctuary in 1995.

Built in red and grey bricks with pantile roof. The church has a roughly cruciform plan with nave aisles, central tower, and south-eastern liturgical rooms, though it is not orientated in the traditional east-west direction.

Exterior

The church is substantial, low and spreading, characterised by contrasting bands of fine brickwork, detailed window heads and simple geometric tracery—hallmarks of Goodhart-Rendel's style. Decorative diapering is concentrated on the west front, which features a splayed recessed central bay containing a large five-light window and main entrance. This is flanked by four attractive sculptures of saints associated with the Capuchin order. The sanctuary was extended and the south-eastern section altered in the 1990s, but the work was executed to match the original, so the church retains external coherence.

Interior

The long nave creates the main visual impact, with a stylish hexagonal patterned ceiling of painted pre-cast concrete and plain washed aisle arches. Notable features include Goodhart-Rendel-designed leaded lights, a north-western baptistery, and surviving joinery including the vestibule screen, gallery and pews.

The church contains a more than life-sized alabaster effigy of Francis Scawen Blunt (died 1872), carved by his brother Wilfred, described in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography as a 'hedonist, poet and breeder of Arab horses'. A 19th-century marble-lined chapel of St Anthony of Padua stands in the south aisle, originally located in Mrs Alfred Montgomery's Naples villa. It was installed in the Victorian friary church in the 1860s and reinstated in the new church in 1959.

Alterations include the removal of the arch between the nave and crossing, which required insertion of a concealed steel support to carry the tower and placement of a glazed screen with concrete cross beam between sanctuary and crossing. This resulted in loss of part of Goodhart-Rendel's ceiling and his designed sanctuary altar, altar rails and flooring.

Setting and Churchyard

The church stands within a large mid-to-late 19th-century churchyard with original walls containing numerous gravemarkers and tombs. Notable burials include the vault of the Blount family; the grave of Catherine Walters, known as 'Skittles' (died 1920), the notorious Victorian courtesan; Alfred Lord Douglas (died 1945), intimate friend and lover of Oscar Wilde; and his mother the Marchioness of Queensbury (died 1937).

History

The Church of St Francis and St Anthony, now a parish church in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Arundel and Brighton, was designed and built 1955-59 as the friary church of the Capuchin order, which had resided in Crawley since the late 1850s. The Capuchins were invited to Britain from Italy by the Hon. Mrs Alfred Montgomery. Their first church and buildings, completed in 1861, were erected on land donated by her cousin Francis Scawen Blunt. By the 1950s, the friary community had outgrown the church due to Crawley's development as a New Town after the Second World War, prompting the commission of a new building from the renowned church architect Harry Stuart Goodhart-Rendel.

The scheme positioned the new building at right angles to the old church, with the sanctuary built over the old church's nave, incorporating older tombs into the new foundations, now marked by plaques. James Longley and Company of Crawley served as builders, and the building opened in November 1959. The interior was altered in 1995.