Church of St Joseph, boundary wall and gate piers, Sheringham, Norfolk

Summary

Roman Catholic parish church, built in 1908, extended between 1909 and 1910 and again between 1933 and 1935, all to the designs of Sir Giles Gilbert Scott; boundary wall and gate piers constructed around 1910.

Description

Roman Catholic parish church, built in 1908, extended between 1909 and 1910 and again between 1933 and 1935, all to the designs of Sir Giles Gilbert Scott.

MATERIALS: The main roof of the church has a slate covering, and the structures adjoining the church generally have plain tile coverings. The walls are constructed of red brick with stone dressings, as are the boundary wall and gate piers.

PLAN: The church and attached chapel are L-shaped on plan and stand on the south side of Cromer Road, near the corner of Cromer Road and Cremer’s Drift. All compass points in the following description are liturgical rather than geographical, so that the main altar is described as being at the 'east' end of the church (rather than compass north).

EXTERIOR: The church is a tall double-height rectangular-plan structure, with a single-storey aisle to the north and south sides, a confessional projecting from the south aisle, a porch projecting from the west end, a chapel and an organ chamber projecting from the north side, and a perpendicular rectangular-plan chapel extending south from the chancel. The roof over the nave and chancel is shallow-pitched and slate-covered, hidden behind high parapets and gabled to the east and west with carved-stone cross finials. The roofs of the single-storey projections are steeply sloped and covered with plain tiles, with the exception of the west porch which is flat roofed. The walls are constructed of red brick, with five courses of brick laid in stretcher bond, and two courses laid in header bond. The lower part of the walls has a three-stepped plinth, with stone coping to the lowest step, and brick coping to the upper steps.

The east gable has a high circular window with cinquefoil tracery surrounded by six mouchettes; under the window two stone shields bear the letters ‘IHS’ and ‘XPI’ carved in relief. The north and south elevations each have three large square-headed windows in brick and stone surrounds, containing stone tracery of two trefoil-headed lights with four mouchettes over. A shallow brick pilaster between the second and third windows marks the junction of the 1910 building to the east and the 1935 extension to the west. The south aisle has a small projection at the junction between the 1910 church and the 1935 extension containing a confessional, with a single window to each of its east and west elevations in a stone surround with a scalloped lintel. Near the east end of the south aisle, a flat-arched timber-boarded door has a chamfered stone surround, with two inflex arches to the lintel and chamfered jambs. The porch at the west end, added in 1935, is the width of the nave, with an embattled parapet. The main entrance on the north elevation of the porch has a pointed arch with a chamfered stone surround and double-chamfered brick jambs and contains double timber-boarded doors. Three windows on the west elevation of the porch have mullioned stone surrounds and scalloped stone lintels, grouped 1:4:1. Over the porch is a tall two-light west window with a traceried equilateral arch; protective glazing was added to the exterior in the early C21. On the north elevation, an organ chamber, built in 1910, projects from the north side of the chancel and has a steeply pitched plain-tiled roof with a gabled bellcote, and two small windows in stone surrounds with scalloped lintels. The single-storey chapel projecting from the north aisle was built in 1935 in place of the 1910 entrance. Dedicated to Our Lady of Walsingham, it has a steeply pitched plain-tiled roof, gabled to the north, and a small three-light window to each of its east and west elevations in stone surrounds with scalloped stone lintels.

A perpendicular rectangular-plan single-storey chapel (built in 1908) projects south from the east side of the chancel. It has a steeply-sloped, pitched and plain-tiled roof, red brick walls with stone dressings, and shallow stepped buttresses. Its east and west elevations each have two traceried windows containing two trefoil-headed lights in stone surrounds. The south elevation of the chapel has a central flat-roofed projection containing a lavatory, probably added in 1935, with a flat-arched half-glazed door to its south elevation, and a single window to each of its west and north elevations in stone surrounds with scalloped stone lintels.

INTERIOR: The nave of the church is double height with three clerestory windows to each of its north and south walls, and is flanked to the north and south by an arcade and a low side aisle. The arcade has five bays of equilateral arches separated by oblong piers, three at the east end (1910 church) and two at the west end (1935 extension), with wide oblong piers between bays 3 and 4 each pierced by a small semi-circular headed arch. The king-post roof is timber-boarded, painted blue and stencilled in white. The floor is of oak and Welsh slate, and the walls are plastered and adorned with Stations of the Cross crafted by the Stuflesser Workshop in Ortisei in north Italy in 1914. The stained-glass west window was manufactured by Dunstan Powell of Hardman & Co. and was previously located on the west gable of the 1910 church before the church was extended to the west in 1935.

The round east window was also manufactured by Hardman & Co. and features the Pelican in her Piety surrounded by symbols of the Passion. Under the east window, the chancel has a white and black marble platform, on which a white marble altar rests on octagonal hollow faced columns. White marble and gilded altar rails survive on the north and south sides, however the rail in front of the altar was removed around 1993. The reredos on the east wall of the sanctuary includes copies of saints shown on the C15 rood screen at St Helen, Ranworth in the Broads; it was shortened in 1993, when the altar was detached and brought forward. The suspended rood by Ferdinand Stuflesser (1855-1926) was moved one roof truss towards the sanctuary (west) in 1993. The carved wooden pulpit to the north side of the altar stands on a chamfered stone base.

The south aisle has two doors to a confessional, which retains a wooden partition. The west porch features a chapel on its south wall with an icon of Our Lady of Perpetual Succour and an aumbry. At the west end of the nave, a copy of a C15 font at the Church of St. Mary in Little Walsingham, Norfolk, depicts the seven sacraments. Off the north aisle, a small chapel dedicated to Our Lady of Walsingham was built against the round-arched doorway of the 1910 church when it was extended in 1935. The chapel has a timber-boarded ceiling with polychromatic blue and while painted and stencilled decoration, and contains an altar with a wooden reredos depicting Our Lady flanked by St Thomas More and St John Fisher, who were canonised in 1935, and a stone antependium carved in relief with the scene of the Annunciation. To the north side of the chancel, the organ chamber retains an organ manufactured by Richard Heslop of London.

To the south side of the chancel, a glazed screen and door, probably installed around 1935, provide access to the 1908 chapel. The chapel has a barrel-vaulted ceiling, plastered walls, and wooden floor. The altar has a painted antependium and reredos depicting St Joseph flanked by St Cyril and St Methodius, brothers and apostles of the Slavs. Two two-light windows on the east wall have stained glass of the late 1920s, depicting the Flight into Egypt and the Death of St Joseph. One light on the west wall contains a panel of early-C19 painted glass depicting St Mary Magdalene.

SUBSIDIARY FEATURES: The boundary wall and gate piers to Cromer Road and Cremer’s Drift were constructed around 1910, of red brick laid in English bond with moulded red brick trefoil-shaped coping. There are two sets of gate piers to Cremer’s Drift and two to Cromer Road, constructed of red brick with stone bands and triangular stone caps.

History

England’s many medieval churches had been built for a Roman Catholic mode of worship (the Latin rite). Elizabeth I’s 1559 Act of Uniformity rendered them all part of the Church of England and outlawed the Catholic Mass. The following two centuries imposed upon a diminishing minority of Catholic worshippers in England severe civil inequalities, public suspicion and periods of outright persecution. Aside from a small number of private chapels and foreign embassies, there were very few buildings dedicated to Catholic worship.

The Second Catholic Relief Act of 1791 permitted the first new generation of Catholic places of worship to be built in England and Wales since the Reformation. They were forbidden to feature bells or steeples and were typically small, classically or domestically detailed, and were often hidden or set back from public view. The 1829 Act of Emancipation removed most remaining inequalities from Catholic worship and was accompanied by a growing architectural confidence. By the 1840s A W N Pugin’s vision of the Gothic revival as a recovery of England’s Catholic medieval inheritance fuelled stylistic debate and inspired new design for both Catholics and wider society. In 1850 Pope Pius X ‘restored’ the role of bishops, cathedrals and dioceses in England, inviting even grander architectural projects.

There was a significant expansion in the numbers of Catholics in England between 1850 (around 700,000), 1911 (around 1.7m) and 1941 (2.7m). This increase was accompanied by the development of a new Catholic parish system in 1908, by the construction of convents, monasteries, schools and social institutions, and by landmark buildings such as Westminster Cathedral (consecrated 1910).

Though the First and Second World Wars had some short-term impacts on the rate of expansion, the boom in schools, new towns, suburbs and housing estates in the 1950s and 60s saw more Catholic churches built in England than at any time since the Reformation. During that period the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) introduced profound reforms to the Catholic church, including architectural changes informed by the Liturgical movement. Key changes include saying the Mass in languages other than Latin, and the reordering of churches to reflect a greater ecumenism and communality of worship.

The Roman Catholic parish church of St Joseph in Sheringham was begun in 1908 and completed in 1935, to designs by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott. In November 1894, Bishop Riddell of Northampton observed in his Advent Pastoral that there was no Catholic mission between King’s Lynn and Great Yarmouth, a distance of 80 miles. He proposed to build a new church in the fashionable seaside resort of Cromer, and the Church of Our Lady of Refuge was built in 1895 to designs by George Sherrin. The railway extended to Sheringham in the early 1880s, and in 1906 Catherine Deterding (née Neubronner), whose husband had taken on the ruins of nearby Kelling Hall, gifted Revd Thomas Walmsley Carter of Cromer parish money to purchase a site for a church in Sheringham. In August 1908 a small chapel dedicated to St Joseph was opened by the newly-appointed Bishop Keating of Northampton. The diocesan magazine in January 1909 recorded that the new church was designed by ‘Mr Gilbert Scott, architect of Liverpool Cathedral’ and had seating for one hundred parishioners. The chapel was well attended, and in summer overflowed with holidaymakers.

An endowment for a larger church was soon made by Mrs Deterding; construction work commenced in 1909 and the new church was consecrated on 02 August 1910. Constructed perpendicular to the 1908 chapel, the new church was two-and-half bays in length, with a porch and organ chamber off the north aisle, and a stained glass window by Dunstan Powell of John Hardman & Co., gifted by Mrs Emmeline Watkin in 1912, ornamenting the west gable. The 1908 chapel became the weekday chapel of St Joseph, and an attached presbytery, also funded by Mrs Deterding and designed by Scott, was added to the east end of the chapel in 1911. Mrs Deterding died in 1916 and was buried against the north aisle, her grave marked with a white marble headstone.

By 1933 Fr Carter had raised sufficient funds to extend the church and Scott was engaged once more. He extended the nave by a further two bays, and the stained-glass window by Dunstan Powell was reset in the new west gable over a single-storey, flat-roofed narthex. The north doorway was replaced by a chapel dedicated to Our Lady of Walsingham. The extended church was consecrated by Bishop Youens on 25 March 1935. Canon Carter died in 1938 and was buried near the main door. After the Second Vatican Council, a timber forward altar was introduced, and further alterations around the altar were undertaken by Anthony Rossi in 1993.

Reasons for Listing

The Church of St Joseph, Sheringham, built in 1908, extended between 1909 and 1910 and again between 1933 and 1935, all to the designs of Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:

Architectural interest:
* for its considered design, craftsmanship, and expansion in the early C20 to meet the needs of its growing congregation;
* for its intact plan form and the high degree of survival of its internal fixtures and fittings;
* for its design by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, an architect of national importance, with a number of listed buildings to his name, some at high grades.

Group value:
* for the strong functional group it forms with its attached presbytery, which is also listed at Grade II.

External Links

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