Church of St Peter

Church of St Peter

Parish church built 1893–1902 by Edmund Sedding, with flying buttresses added in 1932 by W.D Caröe.

The building is constructed mostly of red sandstone with Cornish polyphant quoins, strings of Portland stone and polyphant to the clerestorey, and Ham Hill stone flying buttresses. Various marbles are used throughout the interior, and the roof is slate.

The architectural style is Arts and Crafts Free Gothic. The plan is a six-bay truncated cruciform design with a semi-octagonal apsed chancel, north transept, low gabled vestry with cupola, and south-east apsed chapel.

The exterior features a castellated parapet to the nave and an arcaded clerestorey of alternating trefoil-headed leaded windows and niches. The buttressed aisles have moulded coping to the parapet, with six flying buttresses added in 1932. The west front contains a low flat-roofed baptistery between two lobbies with pointed-arched doors to the front and returns, filled below with panelled tracery and three lancet windows to the centre. The west window, spanning the whole interior width of the nave, is set in a deeply recessed Gothic arch with two wide mullions and exuberant flowing cusped tracery. Rising from the front of the baptistery are two wide shafts banded in red and white reaching to the nave parapet. A high pointed arch connecting them has a banded gable end above, with a gabled niche at the apex containing a statue of St Peter.

The interior is spectacular. Stained-glass windows by Sedding light the nave, chancel and Lady Chapel. Widely-chamfered rectangular-section piers of Plymouth stone with slightly concave facets support Portland stone pointed arches with alternate blocked voussoirs. Plymouth stone niches to the spandrels have large granite blocks to the tops, supporting substantial white marble transverse arches with wrought-iron ties and ornamental verticals. These articulate panelled marble and Plymouth stone barrel vaulting. Trefoil-headed clerestorey windows have widely-splayed pointed arches.

The aisle roofs are planked with crown-post trusses, set above red sandstone walls with alternating two- and three-light mullioned windows. Cusped drop tracery adorns the arches. The semi-octagonal chancel, of two and a half bays, is similar to the nave but far more ornamented. The apse walls are banded in grey and white, with roof panels that diminish around the apse. Principal ribs rest on niches with statues and elaborate corbels flanked by windows. Block voussoirs to the arches are richly carved. The floor is diagonally-laid black and white marble squares with black, white and red marble steps to the altar.

The elaborate polyphant and marble rood screen has a pierced parapet behind five statues on a solid cornice with a crucifix above the central figure. An inscription reading "Dignus est Angus qui occisus est accipere virtutem" is carved into the cornice over five arches—pointed to the sides with wrought-iron infill and semicircular to the centre—all with drop tracery. Curved white marble steps lead to double fretted metal gates flanked by a polished green marble plinth with polished moulded marble coping. A carved marble communion rail adjoins the chancel.

The Lady Chapel, smaller in scale but similar in character, is lit entirely by richly-coloured trefoil-headed lancet windows. Roof panels are smaller, and a two-bay arcade to the south has cylindrical capitals to columns with four colonnettes. The altar has a carved white marble communion rail and ornamental marble floor. The vestry has a planked ceiling and red sandstone walls.

Fittings include a grand pulpit on a black marble octagonal stepped base to a shaft surrounded by red marble colonnettes with grey caps and bases. These support a pedestal to the pulpit body, which has green marble panels with trefoil-headed openings and dark brown marble moulded base and cornice. Shafts at the angles are of elaborately-carved white marble. The curved figured marble steps, arched below, have a wrought-iron balustrade. The coloured marble altar has a triple arcade, plinth and cornice. The organ to the left of the chancel was rebuilt in 1985 and has an ornamented case. The font is a white marble figure of St John the Baptist bearing a clam-shell. The stations of the cross are of carved wood.

A tower was originally intended to be erected on the north river side but was not built. Edmund Sedling was responsible for many church restorations in the south-west and was nephew to J.D Sedding, architect of Holy Trinity, Sloane Square, London. Pevsner describes the church as a superlative example of Arts and Crafts inventiveness. The original cost, including fittings, heating and lighting, was £2,500.