Church of St Mary and St George

Church of St Mary and St George, High Wycombe

Built between 1935 and 1938, this church was designed by the architectural partnership Wellesley and Wills to serve the expanding population of north-west High Wycombe. It now stands surrounded by largely post-war housing. The practice included Lord Gerald Wellesley, later 7th Duke of Wellington, who was made a FRIBA in 1921 and served as surveyor to the King's Works of Art from 1936 to 1943. This is his only known church. The partnership also worked on decorations at No. 15 Kensington Palace Gardens in the 1930s and restored the circa 1700 Old Palace Place on the Green in Richmond for Sir Kenneth Clark in 1928. Wellesley also designed the folly at Buscot Park, an equally imposing brick structure.

The church is constructed of textured red brick with stretcher bond facing externally and header bond to the sanctuary. The roofs are laid in red pantiles with a copper-covered dome to the crossing. The basement is cement-rendered with square block glass windows.

The building adopts a cruciform plan with a nave, north and south passage aisles, octagonal crossing, north and south transepts, and a chancel with a projecting lower semi-circular apse. East lean-tos provide internal access to the pulpit and reading desk. A north porch leads to the transept, a west belfry is present, and a south-west porch serves the building, with vestries beneath.

The exterior is conceived as a landmark building on a hilltop in a free Byzantine style, distinguished by a large copper dome. On top of the dome sits an octagonal turret with a tent roof terminating in a spike. Fenestration consists mostly of round-headed windows with spoked glazing bars in the heads. The clerestory windows in the nave are arranged in two different ways: in the eastern part, a triple arrangement of a taller window flanked by two lower ones, and further west, one large window. The crossing tower has oculus windows in the canted corners, and there is a further large oculus in the south wall of the south transept. The sanctuary apse is blind. The gabled belfry at the west end has a cross-shaped opening to the west and two-light north and south windows. The gabled south porch at the west end of the south aisle features a plain round-headed outer doorway and good original two-leaf panelled inner doors with cross-shaped glazed panels.

The interior displays clean, harmonious lines and considerable lightness, as all brick surfaces have been painted white and pale yellow, which has impacted on the original design. In the crossing, blind round-headed recesses below the oculus windows serve to light the space beneath the dome. The sanctuary is reached through a plain round-arched opening. The nave is divided into two unequal parts: one bay has three plain arches to the passage aisles while the other has just one, reflecting the external arrangement of the clerestory windows. Both bays feature a tall transverse arch rising to the level of the flat ceiling. In the west wall, a triple arch arrangement at ground level leads to the former baptistry, which has now been glazed in as a quiet space. The nave has a wood-block floor and the sanctuary has stone paving.

The aumbry in the south wall of the sanctuary is interestingly detailed with stepped sides and a scalloped head. Beside the chancel arch, in the canted corners of the crossing, are matching three-sided stone pulpit and lectern/reading desk, each accessed through a panelled door. The organ gallery in the north transept has a finely detailed timber spiral stair, probably dating from the 1970s. The font comprises a small octagonal bowl with carved sides on a tapering stem. Congregational seating consists of chairs, and the chancel lacks choir stalls or embellishment.

The use of round-arched styles in the inter-war period was popular for church building, and this example is distinguished by the addition of a large dome. The passage aisles are characteristic of church architecture of the period. The character of the interior has been considerably altered by the application of paint to what originally would have been bare brick walls.