Church Of St Saviour

Church of St. Saviour, Coalpit Heath

Parish church built in 1844–5 by William Butterfield, his first Anglican commission. The church underwent alterations to the north vestry around 1908 to accommodate an organ chamber.

The building is constructed of limestone rubble with few pieces of dressed masonry, with Bath stone dressings and distinctive "Butterfieldian" irregular quoins. The roofs are slate with finials to the nave and chancel. The plan comprises a west tower, aisled nave, south porch, chancel and north vestry. The style is Gothic, executed in a muscular Early Decorated manner.

The two-stage tower has a pointed arched west window with reticulated tracery and pointed arched windows in the belfry with bell louvres and clock. It is topped by a hipped roof behind a parapet and has a cockerel weathervane. The tower features weathered and angle buttresses, string courses and quoins.

The four-bay aisles each have a west window; the south aisle has an east window, with four windows to the north and three to the south. All are two-light pointed arched windows with cusped trefoil heads and quatrefoil panels above, with hood moulds terminated by mask stops. The aisles have weathered and angle buttresses and pitched roofs with raised coped verges.

The south porch is located in the second bay from the left and is steeply gabled with raised coped verges and a cross finial. It has a small trefoil-headed light to each side, buttresses, and a pointed arched hollow-chamfered door with hood mould.

The two-bay chancel has a similar tall three-light east window, a two-light north window, and to the south a tall pointed arched two-light window. There are buttresses, a pointed arched door and a smaller two-light window. Lower and upper string courses run along the cills of windows and over the head of the door, interrupted by buttresses, with angle buttresses at the corners.

The north vestry, positioned in the angle between the north aisle and chancel, was later extended to the east. It has a two-span roof and central external stack, two two-light windows to the north, a pointed segmental-headed studded door to the east and a similar window. Butterfield's original ground plan showed only one north window and east door.

The interior features a pointed tower arch with a wooden screen, formerly Butterfield's chancel screen, having a trefoil-headed upper glazed section, balusters and heavy cornice. The nave has a four-bay arcade to north and south with pointed arches and octagonal piers, and a five-bay roof with scissors trusses rising from stone corbels, common rafters, executed in stained deal. The north aisle has a pointed arch to the east, opened later, with a similar wooden screen. The aisles have seven-bay roofs with principal and common rafters, one row of purlins and struts from purlin to corbel at the arcade above piers.

The porch has a pointed arched door with hollow-chamfered surround and a heavy studded door with fine ironwork around the keyhole and plate for ring handle. It is covered by a three-bay scissors truss roof.

The wide pointed chancel arch has polygonal jamb shafts and hood mould with mask stops. A wooden screen designed by Harold Brakspear around 1930 occupies the chancel arch. A former pulpit door to the left of the chancel arch was blocked when the vestry was extended and the organ brought in. The south priest's door is also blocked, with a chamfered pointed segmental head. To the south are a trefoil-headed piscina and sedilia, with a credence shelf to the north. A pointed arched door leads to the vestry, which contains a fireplace with pointed segmental head.

The interior layout is entirely axial, apart from the placing of the pulpit and north vestry door. The chancel arch is kept lower than the arcades, so that from the west end its apex appears to meet that of the east window.

Fittings include a stone pulpit in the nave to the left of the chancel arch, an octagon rising from a square base with traceried panels; an octagonal stone font in the nave; pews in the nave and aisles designed by Butterfield with poppy head bench ends; a brass chandelier in the chancel; and early twentieth-century wooden reredos panelling. Stained glass in the south aisle east window, dedicated to Annie Hewitt (1915), daughter of William Hewitt, one of the first church wardens (1846–8).

The church occupies an informal spatial relationship with the adjoining lychgate and Vicarage.