Parish Church Of Christ Church

Parish Church of Christ Church

This parish church was built in 1887–1888 to the designs of WG Couldrey of Paignton, with Messrs Drewe of Paignton as contractor. The church was founded to serve the increasing population of late 19th-century Paignton and to provide services of a more evangelical character than those at the medieval parish church of St John. Couldrey's design won a competition for the church, and the total cost of construction was estimated at £7,500 in 1886. Couldrey, working alongside GS Bridgman, was responsible for much of the architecture of late 19th-century Paignton, including Palace Avenue.

The church is designed in Early English style. A planned south-west tower was never built, though a blind gable rising from the south aisle, part of the projected tower scheme, remains visible.

Materials and Construction

The walls are built of local red snecked breccia on a rusticated breccia plinth, with Bathstone and local grey limestone dressings. The roof is slate with pierced ridge tiles, and the rainwater goods are cast iron.

Plan and Layout

The plan comprises a chancel with a semi-circular east end, a nave with clerestory, north and south transepts, and narrow four-bay north and south aisles. A north-east organ chamber, south-east vestry, and west-end narthex complete the arrangement.

Exterior

A grey limestone band runs above the plinth and over the voussoirs of all but the aisle windows. The chancel features five high-set traceried Decorated three-light windows with moulded strings rising to form hoodmoulds. The lean-to organ chamber has angle buttresses, a coped half-gable, and a rose window in its east wall. The vestry on the south side has a parapet and square-headed windows, with a moulded arched doorway on its south elevation.

The transepts are buttressed with set-offs; moulded strings rise to form hoodmoulds of the three-light north and south transept windows. Four three-light traceried windows light the clerestory. The aisles are buttressed with lean-to roofs and paired lancet windows under a continuous hoodmould.

At the west end, a tall triple lancet window features shared hoodmould with shafted lancets having capitals and moulded arches. The west-end narthex has a lean-to roof and buttresses crowned with conical pinnacles to the left and right of the nave. A pair of lancet windows in the centre is flanked by richly moulded doorways (with replaced 20th-century doors). The outer bays each have one lancet window. The right-hand bay is crowned with a small, low, open timber bellcote, gabled on all four sides. Original rainwater goods retain fleur-de-lis brackets and decorated rainwater heads.

Interior

The nave is remarkably tall with unplastered walls. A tall, moulded chancel arch on half-columns with moulded capitals opens to the nave; transeptal arches follow a similar design. The nave arcade comprises four bays with varied column designs, paired across the nave with moulded capitals. A keeled boarded wagon roof with simple trefoil pier-through decoration is carried on timber braces to the wagon ribs, supported on stone shafts rising from the arcade capitals. Iron roof ties appear to be part of the original design. The chancel roof follows a similar pattern.

The chancel contains a moulded doorway to the vestry with hoodmould and detached shafts. Moulded arches lead into the organ chamber on the north side of the chancel and the east side of the north transept. A 1927 timber reredos follows the curve of the east wall, featuring four crocketed gables above trefoil-headed niches carved in relief with scenes from the Life of Christ.

The chancel floor is finished in small red tiles; the nave floor is woodblock. The south transept is partly screened off with a half-glazed screen. The narthex has a two-leaf half-glazed door to the nave and chamfered arches into north and south bays.

Fittings

A late 19th-century font has a curved bowl decorated with toothed moulding, text and roundels with marble inlay, supported on a stout cylindrical stem with engaged marble shafts. A late 19th-century pulpit stands on a chamfered stone base with a cylindrical local marble stem, consisting of an open arcade of polished marble columns with bell capitals and a stiff-leaf frieze below the cornice.

Simple late 19th-century nave benches with Y ends are each decorated with a pierced trefoil. An unusual late 19th-century lectern features a conventional brass eagle placed on a stem of rough-hewn granite with a dressed granite base. Early 20th-century choirstalls are present.

A small number of stained glass windows, mostly early 20th-century, survive. The original glazing of Cathedral glass in pastel colours is preserved in most windows.