Anglican Church of St Aldate

Anglican Church of St Aldate

An Anglican parish church designed in 1959–61 by Robert Potter (1909–2010) and Richard Hare (1924–1990), with engineering input from EW Gifford and Partners and the Faculty of Engineering, Southampton University. The church was built between 1962 and 1964. The church hall, a former timber structure dating from 1928 designed by Harold Stratton Davis; railings around the church hall; and the vicarage of 1929–30 by WH Randoll-Blacking are excluded from the listing.

The building is constructed with a reinforced concrete frame clad in brick and features large areas of clear glazing. Its most distinctive element is the timber hyperbolic paraboloid roof clad in copper. A reinforced concrete spirelet with timber cladding rises from the western end. The interior is rendered, with fittings throughout in Iroko hardwood.

The fan-shaped plan reflects ideas from the Liturgical Movement, designed to bring the celebrant and congregation closer together with a forward-facing altar. The sanctuary occupies the narrow eastern end of the fan, with the congregation seated in the wings. The eastern end is flanked by a narrow range of ancillary buildings extending partway along the long sides. The western entrance is a sharply-pointed triangular porch.

The main body of the church rises at double height from west to east, thrusting strongly towards the east as it narrows and rises, terminating in a convex brick curve. The deeply-oversailing roof reaches a sharp point above the east end. The sharply-angled west entrance sits beneath a partly-detached spirelet. The roof dips to ground-floor level here, sheltering a strongly-modelled two-legged flying buttress below its deep overhang. Lower side chapels with flat roofs and east end vestries reinforce what the architect described as the building's thrust, appropriate to its prominent corner site. The elevations are articulated by high-quality brickwork and Iroko timber windows with strong but delicate mullions. Ground-floor side chapels are largely glazed with narrow panes between timber mullions, creating strong vertical emphasis. Large-paned timber windows almost entirely fill the clerestorey elevations.

The interior is lofty, with the main worship space open to the hyperbolic paraboloid roof, which rises towards the liturgical east end. The nave floor is laid in parquet, with terrazzo for the sanctuary. The sanctuary features a lectern and pulpit on opposite sides of a simple forward altar set on a single widely-curving step with communion rail. The concave rear wall of the sanctuary bears a painted inscription: "GOD SO LOVED THE WORLD THAT HE GAVE HIS ONLY SON THAT EVERYONE WHO HAS FAITH MAY NOT PERISH BUT HAVE ETERNAL LIFE". The west end contains a substantial choir gallery reached by a central open timber stair, with the font positioned beneath the stair. The gallery front is inscribed: "GO TO EVERY PART OF THE WORLD AND PROCLAIM THE GOSPEL TO THE WHOLE CREATION". Above this runs a simple metal balustrade carrying a continuous angled timber music stand. The ceiling is clad in narrow boards of Iroko hardwood, also used for the window frames that form almost the entire north and south clerestorey elevations and for the sanctuary fittings and clergy seating, which has been reconfigured using the original materials. Glazed screens have been inserted to the north and south of the sanctuary. The Lady Chapel has hardwood fittings.

The sanctuary fittings are contemporary with the church and form a suite in Iroko hardwood matching that used in the roof and windows. The pulpit and lectern are simple in form but strongly modelled, with vertical hardwood cladding matching the choir stalls, which echo their design. The font is an 18th-century font from the town-centre St Aldate, retooled by Robert Potter to create a simple limestone cylinder set on a slightly narrower cylindrical stone base. It has a polygonal cover of Iroko hardwood.