Church Of St Mark

Church of St Mark, Pennington

Parish church, built in 1859 to the design of Charles Edward Giles, with a choir vestry added in 1933 and memorial chapel enlarged in 1948.

The building is constructed of red brick with yellow brick decoration and Bath stone dressings, beneath slate roofs. Its plan is oriented liturgically north-south, with the liturgical east to the south. The nave is accompanied by a vestry and sacristy to the north-east, a memorial chapel and boiler room to the south-east, and a choir vestry to the west. An entrance porch is positioned at the north-west of the nave.

The exterior presents a consistent design in striped brick, showing mild influence from William Butterfield. The entrance porch is buttressed with a single arched door. The nave features three plate-traceried two-light windows per side, separated by buttresses each topped with quatrefoil openings. The nave roof is slightly higher than the chancel and incorporates a belfry at its eastern end. The vestry and memorial chapels resemble transepts, each with a three-light window of bar tracery. The east end displays a large three-light window with a cinquefoil light above. The western choir vestry extension, partly concealing a tall four-light west window, is executed in matching materials but features straight-headed windows.

The interior is largely unaltered. Unpainted polychrome brick walls rise beneath a dark scissor-braced, open-trussed roof. A chancel arch with banded brickwork separates the nave from the chancel. Patterned tiling in the chancel faces the pews. The sanctuary is richly appointed with wall arcading containing alabaster panels.

Furnishings include a triple-arched alabaster reredos with clustered marble colonnettes, given by Frederick Ellis in 1894. An organ by Bishop & Sons of London and Ipswich dates to 1906. A limestone pulpit with openwork traceried panels was added in 1914. The stone font dates to 1890. Unsigned late Victorian stained glass of consistently good quality adorns the church throughout; the east window, donated in 1892, depicts the Crucifixion. The nave contains seventeen rows of plain deal bench pews, while the chancel has more elaborate oak pews.

The chancel contains elaborate wall paintings. On the east wall above the altar is Christ in majesty, flanked by the Virgin Mary and St John, with the Annunciation and St John the Evangelist with the Virgin Mary depicted below within painted Gothic surrounds. These paintings were executed by Westlake in 1904 in an early Renaissance style. The north wall bears a scene of St Paul preaching to the Athenians with the Acropolis in the background, and the south wall shows the Adoration of the Magi; both are by William Aikman, dating to 1930 and executed in a bright, Bible illustration style.

A lych-gate of 1927, designed by T. Bevir, architect, stands at the church entrance. The large graveyard to the north contains a large memorial cross, which is separately listed.

This church is the successor to a medieval chapel within the large Milford parish. A replacement structure was erected in 1839, but the present building was consecrated by the Bishop of Winchester on 13 March 1859 at a cost of £2,023. Funds were provided by the Pulteney family, the Incorporated Church Building Society, and voluntary contributions. Charles Edward Giles, the original designer, was an active church architect based first at Taunton and later in London between 1849 and 1868, working on no fewer than 43 church projects funded by the Incorporated Church Building Society. The church was built to serve the expanding village of Pennington; a similarly dated school on South Street (separately listed) demonstrates contemporary provision for secular needs.