Church Of The Ascension

PLYMOUTH

SX4858SW THE LAWNS, Crownhill 740-1/22/905 Church of The Ascension 25/09/98

II

Church. 1956-58. Potter and Hare. Local multi-coloured stone rubble in greys and browns; some rendered areas; stone window dressings; pitched slated roof to eaves. PLAN/EXTERIOR: cruciform hall-church plan with aisles and piers rising to the roof. Shallow transpets. Altar in crossing beneath baldaccino. Projection to north-east containing vestries and parish room. Projecting tower to south-west, containing entrance. Font centrally placed at west end. The church is dominated by its hexagonal shaped tower, with its thick flank walls of local uncoursed rubble stone and its entrance angle rendered; stone around inset entrance door. Vertical precast concrete bell louvres and pitched roof with deep eaves, their underside curving upwards. Stone rubble to curved east wall of church (with small hexagonal windows inset) and to east and west walls of transepts. Panels between rendered, with a mullioned clerestory, set high in the wall. Transepts with tall five-light mullioned windows with curved heads. Two-light square headed full height windows with two transoms to north and south of sanctuary. Windows with small rectangular leaded panes. INTERIOR with tall, green composition piers, facetted and tapering at the head and down to the base, rising to groin vault. Segmental vaulted baldaccino over altar rises on gilded, fluted, tapering piers and painted to the underside with figurative design by Robert Medley. Freestanding altar beneath this, both this and the baldaccino raised on shallow step. Timber altar rails to three sides of sanctuary, with closely spaced moulded vertical `mullions'. Stained glass in muted greens, blues and yellows inset in hexagonal apertures in exposed stone rubble east wall. Sculpted cross of silver metal with turquoise glass decoration. Stone font of inverted bell shape with light timber domed cover. Western gallery with simple white-panelled balustrade. Six-light west window with mullions rising to full height. C19 reused pews, painted white. A beautifully detailed church in local stone which was liturgically advanced for its period, having a freestanding altar, designed so that the celebrant could face the congregation. (Hammond P: Liturgy and Architecture: 118-119; Architectural

Review: April 1959: 283-4).

Listing NGR: SX4834558295