St Aidan'S Church

ST AIDAN'S CHURCH, CARLTON

St Aidan's Church is a daughter church to Helmsley parish church, built between 1884 and 1887 to designs by Temple Moore. It was commissioned by the Reverend Charles Gray. The design employs early Gothic styling.

The church is constructed of sandstone rubble laid in irregular courses, with darker ashlar quoins and copings that are irregularly sized and rough-faced to the rear. The roof is covered with plain tiles.

The building comprises a west tower with the nave and chancel forming a single body. The tower is square in plan. Its west face has a single narrow lancet window. Above this, the bell-cote stage features paired lancet bell-openings, each with a circular opening above. The lancets are double-chamfered and the circular openings contain quatrefoil plate tracery. String courses run at the level of the sill and spring line of the lancet bell-openings. These openings are repeated on all four faces of the tower, though the lancets are omitted from the east face. The tower is topped by a pyramidal roof surmounted by a metal cross finial.

The south elevation of the nave and chancel has a projecting ashlar door surround that is gabled and incorporates a deeply moulded, round-arched doorway. This follows late 12th-century models, with the projection having a small niche containing a Christ figure at the apex. The door surround is subtly asymmetric. The double doors are planked and incorporate ornate ironwork. To the right, or east, are three small chamfered lancet windows. The east elevation has three lancet windows, a small circular ventilation opening above (now blocked), and an inscribed foundation stone below. The coped gable is surmounted by a stone Celtic cross. The north elevation is blind except for a single small lancet at the western end, opposite the south door. Immediately to the east is a square chimney stack built of ashlar that projects through the roof but does not extend above the ridgeline.

The interior features a wagon roof that is longitudinally boarded to give a continuous, almost semicircular ceiling. This is painted with stencilled decoration. The walls are whitewashed and the window reveals are deep and splayed. The reveal of the easternmost window in the south wall is enlarged to form a sedilium with piscina. The floor is undecorated parquet with a single step to the chancel, a step to the sanctuary, and a further step to the altar. The east end has a panelled dado with a central open frame containing a small later triptych. The east windows contain late medieval style stained glass, possibly by the firm of Kempe and Company. These are First World War memorial windows. The central south window is another memorial window with similar stained glass.

All the fittings were designed by Moore, including the painted decoration. The stone-topped altar is of timber and retains its original painted and stencilled decoration. The timber chancel screen is also painted and incorporates bench seating for a small choir. Its design suggests that the church was designed to do without either a pulpit or lectern. The font, centrally placed opposite the north window, is octagonal and is supported on eight fluted piers on two ashlar steps. The cover is wooden. The west end has a painted cupboard for prayer books and a painted wooden tower screen with door. The pine pews are also thought to have been designed by Moore. The tower retains three bells.

St Aidan's Church was commissioned by the vicar of Helmsley, Reverend Charles Gray, and was designed by Temple Moore, probably in 1884, and built between 1885 and 1887 for an estimated £530 including the internal fittings and decoration. The only significant alteration to the church has been the installation of stained glass into four of the windows following the First World War, which makes the sanctuary significantly darker than Moore probably intended.

St Aidan's is Moore's earliest surviving church designed independently from his mentor and partner George Gilbert Scott junior. Moore's first solo church, St Bartholomew's mission church in Dover, built 1883 to 1884, has been demolished. Moore was taken on by Scott as a pupil in 1875, but by about 1880, Moore, then aged 24, was gradually taking over the practice because of Scott's deteriorating mental health. Moore became regarded as the country's leading church architect of the Edwardian period, building 38 new churches in England, nearly all of which are listed, and restoring many more. He took on Scott's son, Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, designer of Liverpool Anglican Cathedral, as a pupil.

St Aidan's Church is of particular interest because it demonstrates many aspects characteristic of Moore's later work, both in terms of style and individual features. Moore avoided the over-elaboration of decorative detailing favoured by his more florid contemporaries, the quality of his designs drawing on good proportion and sweetness of line, as noted in The Builder in 1902. As at St Aidan's, he often used variations in walling texture to provide visual interest, the irregular ashlar dressing being particularly of note. He also frequently played with asymmetry both on a large scale, such as the imbalance of windows between the north and south walls, and on a small scale, such as the asymmetric decorative details of the south doorway. Another key approach displayed at St Aidan's was to design his churches to give the appearance that they had evolved over time.

The great thickness of walls at St Aidan's with wide splayed windows is also typical, although it is not known if the walls, like some of his later designs, are in fact hollow. Carving out features from this wall thickness, such as tower detailing and the sedilium, is also characteristic. The unusual incorporation of a window in the sedilium was used more elaborately later at Carlton in Cleveland. The boarded wagon roof was a particularly favourite approach of Moore and is a feature of a large proportion of his later churches. A similar design was employed at St Mary Magdalene, East Moors, by Scott, which Moore had completed in 1881 to 1882 and is grade II* listed, thus potentially demonstrating some continuity in thinking. Even the simple and plain detailing of the floor can be seen as being characteristic, deliberately avoiding distracting tilework often used elsewhere in the later 19th century.

There are also some more individual features that are repeated later, such as the small round openings high in the tower also employed at St Columba Middlesbrough, listed grade II, and St Wilfrid's Harrogate, listed grade I, and the tower roof also seen at the unlisted cemetery chapel at Brompton near Scarborough.

Moore was also a prolific and notable designer of church furnishings, many of which still survive and are often specifically noted in listing descriptions. Following Arts and Crafts thinking, the furnishings exhibit a high degree of craftsmanship and individual design. Their level of survival at St Aidan's is exceptional, retaining the original colour schemes that have apparently not even been retouched, and the fact that they are within a church by the same designer adds further interest.

Especially considering Moore was only 28 when he designed St Aidan's, the design is remarkably assured. Pevsner, writing in 1966, describes the way that the church affords a sense of physical and spiritual shelter. The size and distribution of the tiny windows demonstrates deliberate and clever use of lighting to focus attention on the altar. This ties in with the furnishings which show that the church was intended for Eucharistic worship with no provision for preaching, giving a spacious and uncluttered feel to the interior rare for a small church of its period.

St Aidan's is one of a group of buildings commissioned by Charles Gray and Lord Feversham in the Helmsley area, all designed by George Gilbert Scott junior and Temple Moore. This group of buildings, sharing patrons and designers, is potentially of significant architectural interest as a group, the linkages between St Aidan's and the grade II* listed church at East Moors being particularly of interest.