Church Of St Laurence

The Church of St Laurence is a Grade II* listed building in Stroud. The west tower and spire date from the 14th century and are constructed of local limestone. The remainder of the church was rebuilt in 1866–8 by the architects Wilson & Willcox of Bath, using Bisley Common stone with Bath stone dressings. The roofs are covered in Broseley tiles arranged in blue and red bands.

The church has an unusual cruciform plan with equal aisles and generously deep transepts. The north and south chapels are almost as long as the chancel. There is a south porch, west tower, and small south-east vestry.

The three-stage west tower is 14th century, with diagonal buttresses and fairly small two-light bell openings, partly hidden by clock faces. All openings are unmoulded with plain chamfers. The stone spire is tall and slim with a splayed foot; the upper part of the original spire now stands in the churchyard. The rest of the church is designed in a rich if slightly mechanical Geometric Decorated style. The windows have bar tracery framed by slim nook shafts with ring moulding. The south doorway features heavy arch mouldings and triple shafts of contrasting grey stone. From the east, the three windows of the chancel and its chapels, with rich tracery of foiled circles, make a striking contribution to the streetscape.

The interior has been described as "the best of any High Victorian town church on the Cotswolds". The five-bay nave has heavily moulded arcades on circular piers of blue Pennant sandstone. The nave includes a clerestorey and an open wagon roof. A ribbed panelled roof over the chancel features painted Gothic decoration in green and red on a cream ground. The foliate capitals are richly treated with crockets and beading, almost Byzantine in effect. Joshua Wall was the carver for all the sculptural work and also designed the roundels in the chancel.

The church possesses lavish Victorian and early 20th-century fittings. George Gilbert Scott Junior designed a reredos of 1872, carved by Morris Geflowski, with high relief panels depicting Gethsemane, the Crucifixion, and the Deposition by Edward Geflowski. It was coloured and gilded in 1970. The font and pulpit, both contemporary with the church, are of coloured marbles and alabaster. The chancel floor tiles are by Godwin of Lugwardine. A rood screen by W.S. Weatherley, designed 1910–14, is quite light and open with elaborate cusping in the head of each main light. It has a rib-vaulted cove with brattished cresting and a built-in tester to the pulpit. There is a very large rood group. Filling the tower arch is an Arts and Crafts oak screen by Thomas Falconer of 1927, made by Peter Waals, with a painting of St George by E.R. Payne from 1929.

The church contains much good stained glass. The good east window is by Heaton, Butler & Bayne from 1866; their windows in the transepts and south aisle south-west have faded considerably. Also by them are the north chapel east window of circa 1885 and one in the north aisle from 1914. The south chapel east window is by Lavers & Barraud from 1868. The south aisle and tower windows are by Ward & Hughes, 1873–7. An unusual gold and blue window at the west end of the north aisle is by J. Bewsey from 1922.

The best monument is that in the south transept to Thomas Stephens, died 1613. Attributed to Samuel Baldwin of Stroud, it features an alabaster kneeling effigy at a prayer desk beneath an arch with Composite columns. The surround includes obelisks and strapwork in colour and gilding. Around the tower arch, high up, is a group of fine Baroque and later tablets. Attached to the outside walls on the north side are approximately 80 good quality brass inscription plates from 18th-century tombstones, many with good lettering and Rococo ornament.

The medieval parish church of St Laurence was founded as a chapel-of-ease to Bisley before 1279. A photograph from 1865, just before demolition, shows a rather plain aisleless structure with early 19th-century alterations. Only the tower and spire survived the rebuilding of 1866–8. The new church plan seems to have taken little account of the old building. Wilson & Willcox provided a quite urban-looking church in Geometrical Gothic with a slightly French flavour, a recipe they favoured for many of their Bath churches and chapels. The new church was consecrated on 4 August 1868. A fire in 2005 required the altar to be renewed.