Roman Catholic Church Of St George

Roman Catholic church built 1858-60 by Benjamin Bucknell in an early 14th-century style, with a tower added in 1875. The church underwent some late 20th-century reordering.

The building is constructed of Monkton stone rubble with Bath stone dressings, under roofs covered in late 20th-century asbestos slates with stone-coped gables. The windows feature decorated tracery throughout.

The church is orientated north-west to south-east, aligning with Billet Street. It comprises a tower, a clerestoried nave with aisles, a sanctuary with side chapels, and a sacristy to the south-west corner. An attached rectory (Grade II) adjoins to the south-west, forming an L-shaped plan.

The tower, facing Billet Street, has four stages with corner buttresses. A large pointed west doorway features three orders of shafts within a moulded flat-arched surround with cinquefoil carvings to the spandrels. The second stage contains a five-light window with cusped heads rising to flowing tracery. The upper stages have long ogee-arched bell-openings that are pierced and traceried, divided by a transom. An openwork parapet with corner pinnacles crowns the tower.

The aisles comprise six bays divided by buttresses, each bay containing a two-light window. The south aisle has a deeply-chamfered pointed-arched doorway towards its west end. The clerestory features a similar window arrangement to the aisles, with bays defined by pilasters and smaller windows. The east end displays a large six-light traceried window with an inset carved stone trefoil above. The flanking chapels are articulated by buttresses, each with a three-light east window and a stone trefoil in the gable apex. The sacristy has a lower roof-line with a flat-arched window of four lights with cusped ogee-arched heads on its east elevation, and a matching two-light window with a small single window on its west elevation.

The interior features late 20th-century glazed and timber screens forming a narthex at the tower's lower floor, above which sits a large west organ gallery with a canted wooden front. The nave displays early Gothic styling of around 1300, with an arcade carried on clustered columns with capitals. Within each spandrel of the arcade is a carved stone corbel of a head from which a short stone shaft rises to a further carved corbel in the form of an angel playing a musical instrument, positioned just below the clerestory string course. These angel corbels support the arched trusses of the scissor-braced roof. The aisles have lean-to roofs with arch-braced trusses. Small chapels occupy the east end of each aisle.

The north chapel contains the relocated carved octagonal stone font, a Gothic reredos of five empty niches, and an altar frontal depicting the Death of St Joseph. The Lady Chapel features a similar Gothic reredos with statues of the Virgin Mary and female saints, together with reliefs depicting the Adoration and the Visitation.

The tall sanctuary arch is carried on clustered columns with carved capitals. A stone pulpit to the left of the arch has panels carved with figures of St Mary Magdalene, St George, the Good Shepherd and a bishop, supported on a base of coloured marble shafts. A large statue of the Sacred Heart on a pedestal with marble shafts stands opposite.

The original high altar was separated from the reredos around 1969 and brought forward, receiving a new mensa of polished Ashburton marble at that time. The reredos, attributed to C F Hansom, contains eight statues in gabled niches on either side of the tabernacle, flanked by matching wall arcades with larger statues of saints. Two pointed arches at the side walls of the sanctuary contain stone screens on their east sides, each divided into three ogee-arched pierced panels with marble shafts and surmounted by carved angels with gilded wings. Full-height stone shafts rise from the floor to support the roof, with angel corbels to their lower parts.

The east window of around 1860 depicts the Virgin Mary and St George flanked by Saints Dunstan, Joseph, Walburga and Boniface. The east end of the north aisle contains a window of Saints Philip and James signed by William Morris & Co. A stained glass window in the north aisle commemorates the Fallen of the Second World War. The west window, depicting Christ in Glory, was designed by Patrick Reyntiens and installed in 2009 to commemorate the church's 150th anniversary.

The wooden Stations of the Cross, added in 1977, were carved by Tom Preater of Taunton. The narthex contains a First World War memorial in the form of a wall-mounted timber Calvary.