Church Of St Matthias And Attached Forecourt Walls

This list entry was subject to a Minor Amendment on 04/08/2016

SX4855 740-1/43/381

PLYMOUTH NORTH HILL (East side) Church of St Matthias and attached forecourt walls

(Formerly Listed as: TAVISTOCK ROAD, Plymouth, Church of St Matthias)

01/05/75

GV II Anglican church. 1887 by Hine and Odgers, paid for by Mrs Watts in memory of her husband, Matthias Watts. Roughly coursed dressed Plymouth limestone and Portland stone dressings; dry slate roof over nave and chancel; low-pitched roofs behind embattled parapets to aisles. STYLE: Perpendicular Gothic. PLAN: nave with clerestory, chancel, N and S aisles, S porch,S transept, NW vestry and W tower.

EXTERIOR: traceried windows with hoodmoulds: 7-light chancel E window; 4-light E window to vestry and 4-light S window to porch, otherwise mostly 3-light traceried windows with hoodmoulds. Embattled 2-stage tower, with strings dividing stages, has corner buttresses surmounted by panelled, embattled and crocketed pinnacles; tall bell stage with slender shafts between tall 2-light transomed louvred and traceried windows. Lower stage has 4-light traceried window over moulded pointed-arched doorway of 2 orders under blind traceried panelling. S porch has moulded 4-centred arched doorway with flanking crocketed pinnacles.

INTERIOR: walls of yellow Bath and red Mansfield stone. Fittings: pulpit and font of Devon marble by Hems; reredos by Fellowes Prynne, 891. Stained glass by Fouracre & Watson, the earliest E window 1890.

SUBSIDIARY FEATURES: dressed Plymouth limestone brought-to course forecourt walls with chamfered copings and projecting square-on-plan gate-piers with tapered caps. The tower is a prominent feature of the Plymouth skyline.

(The Buildings of England: Pevsner N: Devon: London: 1989: 644).

Listing NGR: SX4830055302