Roman Catholic Church of St Agatha and attached Presbytery, gate piers and boundary walls

Roman Catholic Church of St Agatha and attached Presbytery, gate piers and boundary walls

A Roman Catholic parish church built between 1907 and 1909, designed by Scoles and Raymond. The church is conjoined with a contemporary presbytery, and the plot is enclosed by gate piers and boundary walls.

The church is constructed of local red sandstone, roughly dressed, squared and coursed, with red concrete tile roofs and Bath stone dressings. It is oriented north-west to south-east, with its east end facing Exeter Road. The plan comprises a nave, sanctuary, north porch and north aisle, with shallow transepts and a sacristy to the south. A short link from the south side joins the church to the presbytery, which stands at the corner of Exeter Road and Elm Grove Road.

The church is designed in the 13th-century Gothic manner favoured by Scoles, with windows either as lancets or featuring plate tracery. Buttresses with offsets are set to the angles diagonally. Gables have high coped verges and moulded kneelers, with cross finials. Moulded eaves brackets run around the building, and a continuous drip mould runs over the heads of windows and between them on the north side. The complex plan creates varied external elevations. The tall nave has an apsidal sanctuary beneath a steep-ridged roof. The lower north aisle sits under a separate ridged roof with a shallow transept and projecting north-west porch housing plain timber entrance doors set in an opening with slender flanking shafts and a pointed arch of a single order of moulding. In the tympanum above is a much-eroded carving of The Annunciation, with a carved inscription reading: AVE MARIA GRATIA PLENA. ST LUKE ….8. The high south chapel features a tall, slender octagonal tower with spirelet, with a shallow transept south of the tower. A single-storey link joins the south side to the presbytery.

The interior has a four-bay north aisle with tall pointed arches springing from polygonal purple marble columns with moulded capitals and bases. The nave has a parquet floor and five-sided painted wooden ceiling with floral motifs in the interstices. The arcade and high south windows have drip moulds with carved foliate and floral stops. Three lancets in the high west wall frame a life-sized marble figure of Our Lord set on a base of clustered columns beneath an elaborate canopy with crocketed gables carried on coloured marble columns. The north transept houses a chapel to St Agatha, with a statue on a high base of clustered marble columns under a gabled canopy with crocketed pinnacles. At the east end of the north aisle is the Lady Chapel, with a stone and coloured marble altar featuring an image niche above with a figure of Our Lady under a gabled canopy with crocketting. Altar rails match those to the sanctuary. The south wall contains a double-arched opening to the organ chamber, which has a balustrade pierced with quatrefoils above the sacristy door in the south aisle. A high pointed arch opens to the sanctuary, whose wall surfaces are articulated by slender attached half-columns running from the cill band, with mouldings springing from the moulded capitals and running continuously over the lancet windows. A painted inscription runs beneath the cill band. The sanctuary is divided from the nave by altar rails formed as a stone and coloured marble balustrade with cusped arcading and carved alabaster details; painted wrought-iron gates have applied foliate details. The sanctuary is raised one step of black marble above the nave floor, which continues into the sanctuary; the remainder has coloured terracotta tiles. Painted roundels depicting angels sit to either side. A vestry doorway in the south side has a Carnarvon-arched opening. The altar is high and elaborate, with an altar table—moved slightly forward of its original position—matching the altar rails in its use of a marble balustrade. Behind stand a pair of alabaster angels carved in Arts and Crafts style, and the reredos includes an image niche set under a gabled canopy with a crocketed pinnacle above, richly carved with decoration.

All fixtures and fittings were designed by the architects and manufactured by B A Wall of Cheltenham. The octagonal font is set on clustered marble columns with a marble rim and carved roundels to the sides. The pulpit, positioned at the end of the south aisle, forms a continuation of the altar rails with similar cusped arcading and marble balusters. The Stations of the Cross are carved in stone and set into the nave walls, linked by painted text. The figurative stained glass to the chapels and sanctuary is by Hardman and Powell of Birmingham.

The presbytery, attached to the south side of the church, was designed as part of the same complex and built slightly later. It is constructed of roughly-dressed coursed red sandstone to the main elevations and red brick to the rear wing and stacks, with Bath stone dressings designed to match the church's style. Stone window openings have Carnarvon arches; gables have moulded kneelers and high coped verges. Windows have been replaced with uPVC examples set in the original openings. The presbytery interior was not accessible at inspection. The building is joined to the south aisle of the church by a single-storey link housing an office. The plot is bounded to the east and south by a boundary wall of roughly squared and coursed granite with alternating horizontal and vertical capping. At the main entrances to the church and presbytery on Exeter Road are gateways with pairs of gate piers of coursed sandstone with gabled hamstone caps carved with trefoils.