Church Of St Stephen

Church of St Stephen

A parish church in Bristol with origins in the 14th century, rebuilt around 1470, with later repairs to the clerestory following storm damage in 1703 and restorations to the aisles and east windows in 1873. The church is constructed in Bath stone ashlar with Pennant rubble on the south aisle.

The building is planned as an aisled and clerestoried nave and chancel with a south-west tower, south porch and south-east vestry. The architecture is Perpendicular Gothic with a Somerset-type tower.

The exterior features a tall five-light transomed east window. The south aisle is five bays with three-light windows above a sill drip mould and a crenellated parapet. The clerestory has four-light Tudor-arched windows separated by thin buttresses running up through a drip mould into a crenellated parapet. The south porch has a Tudor arch hung with open cusps, splayed reveals with hollow mouldings and Tudor roses. Its hood is ogee with crockets increasing in size to the finial, with blind tracery in the spandrel. Angle buttresses have crocketed pinnacles, blind tracery panels beneath a drip mould and a parallel gable.

Inside the porch is a fan vault with pendants. The church door has casement reveals set with foliage in the arch and a cranked hood. A 19th-century south-east crenellated octagonal vestry has three-light mullion windows with cinquefoil heads and sill bands between buttresses. The large west nave window has a flat Tudor arch with six-light transomed lights.

The four-stage tower is divided by deep drip moulds, with weathered plinths between setback buttresses diminishing upwards to slender shafts. A north-west octagonal stair tower occupies the top three stages, which have blind panelling with cinquefoil heads. The ground-floor west window is four-light with a hood and raked stops. Remaining windows are blind paired lancet cross windows with ogee hoods with crockets and finials, and blind tripartite belfry windows with ornate panels and louvres to the upper halves. A deep drip mould with gargoyle beasts is topped by an open traceried castellated parapet with open square turrets bearing on gargoyle corbels and an octagonal spirelet to the stair turret.

The interior has a seven-bay nave with columns bearing four attached shafts to painted angel capitals holding scrolls. Similar corbels support the shallow roof. The chancel is not structurally differentiated but the two eastern bays have a raised floor. A door in the north aisle leads to a rood loft stair. The lower north aisle wall with wall tombs dates to the 14th century. The tower base has tall narrow arches with attached shafts and bell capitals bearing on angel corbels, with vestigial fan vaults. The roof is a 15th-century arch-braced tie beam construction with gilded bosses.

Fittings include wrought-iron gates and piers by William Edney from the early 18th century, removed from the Church of St Nicholas after the Second World War. An ornate large marble pulpit of 1890 by Harry Hems of Exeter features canopied niches containing statues, ramped steps and a wrought-iron handrail. Panelled choir stalls with poppy heads and pews with carved bench ends date to 1886. A wrought-iron sword rest by William or Simon Edney from the early 18th century features considerable foliage. An ornate font of 1882 has a square base with marble shafts rising to an octagonal basin with trefoil panels.

Memorials include the Royal Arms of Charles II over the south door. In the north aisle are three ogee-arched chest tombs. The westernmost is to Edmund Blanket (died 1371), featuring a crocketed ogee arch with open cusps and recumbent figures of a man and wife praying, with trefoil panels and figures to the chest beneath. It was transferred from the previous church on this site. A Dresser tomb to Martin Pringe (died 1626) has an oval tablet with allegorical figures at the corners in an aedicule with Corinthian pilasters to a broken segmental pediment bearing a cartouche and two recumbent statues, with a painted apron showing an hourglass, tools and a merman and mermaid.

In the south aisle is a marble wall tablet to David Peloquin (died 1766), featuring a sarcophagus with small side urns and a large central urn, with an obelisk with drapes behind and an apron with winged cherubs beneath. A Dresser tomb to Sir George Snygge (died 1617) has a panelled plinth with three-quarter Corinthian columns bearing a dentil cornice, with obelisks either side and a heraldic panel above; inside is an arch with roundels and strapwork with plaster figures and an alabaster recumbent figure resting on his elbow. A wall tablet to Robert Kitchin (died 1594) has a rectangular painted frame with fleurs-de-lys at the corners and a kneeling couple inscribed on a brass plate. Various late 18th and 19th-century marble wall tablets are also present.

A subsidiary feature attached to the west of the stair tower is a crenellated wall and elliptical-arched gateway flanked by buttresses.

The tower and east window were paid for by John Shipward, Mayor of Bristol in the 1480s. The church originally stood beside the quays by the River Frome, which was excavated in the mid 13th century.