Church Of St Stephen

Church of St Stephen

Parish church, built 1840–1845 by James Wilson. The chancel was added in 1883 by Willcox. The building is constructed of limestone ashlar with a slate roof.

The church follows a cruciform plan with late 19th-century additions to the east end. The exterior displays diagonally leaded pointed arched windows with foliate stops to the hood moulds, and planked doors with ornate wrought iron hinges. The rainwater heads are ornate and brattished with square section downpipes and flower fixings. The original building features coped parapets, lintel friezes, weathered sills, and a triple moulding to the plinth. Offset angle buttresses rise above the parapet with pointed finials and cinquefoil heads to the window lights.

The late 19th-century half-octagonal chancel has crocketed finials articulating a projecting coped parapet chequered with four-petal flowers in square panels, supported by foliate bosses on the lintel. The three two-light east windows have ogee arches. A late 19th-century block positioned in the angle between the chancel and north aisle (possibly a vestry) has a door to the east side; its north side has an ornate finial to the gable over a circular window with mouchette and quatrefoil tracery, below which are two windows with tracery to centres and tops. Another late 19th-century block to the north-east has a steeply pitched roof parallel to the nave, with a pierced cross finial and hood mould over three lancets at the east end.

The two-bay north side has three offset buttresses flanking two paired windows with a string course rising as hood moulds; the windows have quatrefoils to the tops and trefoil heads to the lower lights. The west side has a similar finial and a segmental-arched porch to a flat-arched door. The gabled 1845 crossing has buttresses and a quatrefoil in a circular window over a tall three-light window panelled to the base, with intersecting tracery and mask stops to the hood mould. The left return has a small low trefoil-headed window and a large blind two-light window. The north side of the nave has two two-light windows flanked by paired buttresses.

The west tower rises to 120 feet in three stages with extended diagonal offset buttresses gabled above the first stage. Panelled double doors to three sides are set well back; the pointed architraves have six engaged columns without bases or capitals that meet at the apex, with casement moulding between forming one continuous moulding. Above the west door are three deep cinquefoil-headed niches with continuous arcaded hood moulds; to the returns are single lancets. Three string courses span the facade, with a clock positioned between the upper two on the west front. The second stage is octagonal; the buttresses continue as free-standing octagonal turrets linked at the top by a frieze of pierced quatrefoils in circles. The mouldings to the top and base of the frieze continue around the turrets, which have finials similar to those of the buttresses; below the friezes, half-arches spring from the turrets to the friezes with quatrefoils in the spandrels. The north, east, and south facets of the second stage have three-light louvered openings with Decorated tracery and mask stops to the hood moulds. The third stage is similar but smaller, with two-light louvered openings and smaller octagonal turrets. The south side is similar to the north side. To the south-east corner is a late 19th-century gabled block with engaged colonnades to the pointed arch of a porch on the east side.

The interior contains a handsome painted ceiling by W.J. Wilcox, executed by H. & F. Davis. The church is reported to have a marble font dated 1843, which was a gift of the Pinder family and may have been designed by Edmund Blore of Westminster. The transept ceiling and the reredos are by Sir T.G. Jackson, dating to around 1900. An east window in the Lady Chapel depicts the martyrdom of St Stephen and was created by Mark Angus in 1983. The crypt was converted to a Parish Room in 1993–1994.

The church was originally built as a chapel of ease for Walcot Parish at a cost of £6,000, but finally gained parish status in 1881. Its north-south orientation caused problems with the ecclesiologically-minded Bishops of Bath and Wells, which delayed its initial consecration until 1881. The Royal School used the expressly built north-east aisle (probably designed by Wilson and Wilcox) from 1866, and a gallery was added for their use in 1884–1885; this arrangement continued until the opening of their chapel. The chancel, vestry, organ chamber, and organ were added to the designs of W.J. Wilcox at a cost of £3,000 in 1883; a drawing of the chancel is held in the church. St Stephen's Church forms a very important visual focus on Bath's northern slopes and is a supremely picturesque composition, benefiting from freedom from dependency on precedent that would characterise the next phase of church building.