Church of St Peter

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SO92SW 630-1/1/893

CHELTENHAM TEWKESBURY ROAD (South side) Church of St Peter

12/03/55

II*

Former Parish church. 1847-8. Architect, SW Daukes; builder, Thomas Haines. West window of 1858, by William Wailes. Cost £4,838. Stone with plain tile roofs. Romanesque style. Cruciform plan with large central dome.

EXTERIOR: tall central crossing tower with circular upper stage and conical roof. Four-bay nave, wide transept, short chancel and apse. Windows: single-light windows with cogged moulding to heads and round-arched hoodmoulds. East end has three tall round-arched lights. Tower has twin belfry openings with central column and round arch, pyramidal roof.

INTERIOR: Norman style with chevron tower arches and dome. Use of semicircular arch bracing to the roof is in harmony with the 'Classical' forms of the Romanesque style used. Galleries in the north and south transepts and to west end supported on wooden columns with scalloped capitals. Neo-Norman plaster-work.

Goodhart-Rendel considered this a 'really a great success'. Teresa Sladen has described this as 'an important early Victorian church on account of its unusual and early use of the Romanesque style, (relating to) indigenous examples such as the Round Church at Cambridge, restored in 1841 and extravagantly praised by The Ecclesiologist'.

HISTORICAL NOTE: Daukes took over The Park development from Thomas Billings.

(Sampson A and Blake S: A Cheltenham Companion: Cheltenham: 1993-: 119; Blake S: Cheltenham's Churches and Chapels AD 773-1883: Cheltenham: 1979-: 30-31; The Buildings of England: Verey D: Gloucestershire: The Vale and The Forest of Dean: London: 1970-: 130; Sladen T: Notes: 1995-; Howell P and Sutton I: Faber Guide to Victorian Churches: London: 1989-: 25).

Listing NGR: SO9385523355