Description

1687/10/10005 GALLY HILL ROAD
19-JAN-04 CHRIST CHURCH

II*
Church. Nave & transepts. 1841 by James Harding; chancel with northern Children's Aisle, 1876-7 by Henry Woodyer with interior sgraffito decoration 1893 by Heywood Sumner; vestry/meeting room 1971. Body of church red brick with stone dressings; chancel and aisle of coursed stone. Slated roofs. Early English style.
EXTERIOR: 4-bay nave with shallow, wide transepts; chancel originally of the same hoodmoulds, separated by buttresses with offsets. Western gable end has projecting central bay (internally forming a shallow baptistry) rising to form a brick bellcote with slated pitched roof. South-western gabled brick porch with pointed doorway. 3-light chancel window.
INTERIOR: Interior has complex timber hammerbeam roof with carved pendants, on carved stone angel corbels; crossing roof is vaulted with a large elaborately carved pendant boss. Chancel has arch-braced king post roof with curved windbraces. Fine quality sgraffito decoration to chancel by Heywood Sumner is one of only four complete schemes by him surviving and depicts on the south wall a Nativity scene with shepherds and sheep; on the east wall angels, left hand in armour with a slayed dragon, right hand with a censer; on the northern arcading angels proclaiming the Resurrection. Sumner also designed 2 fine quality stained glass windows, at the west end, in 1900, depicting the angel of the Annunciation and the angel of the Resurrection. Good stained glass also to the eastern window, a Crucifixion, and former Children's Aisle including the Christ Child and John the Baptist as a boy. Other glass includes memorial windows with saints having portrait heads of deceased. Other fine features of interest include a low open brass chancel screen, dedicated in 1891, with gates and having copper foliage, brass panels depicting thistles and honeysuckle, and open work foliage ball finials: brass chandeliers: a matching pulpit and font, 1893, in carved stone with marble legs and insets: a carved wooden screen by George Parsons, 1924, to the former Children's Aisle when it was converted to a Lady Chapel with the addition of an extra bay: geometrically patterned multi-coloured chancel tiles: brass altar rails with open work spandrels.
HISTORY: The church has a history of considerable interest. In 1839 the area was included in the huge parish of Crandall and many people could not get to the one church. A new church was planned with the support of Charles Lefroy whose family had inherited a local manor, and who was influenced by Charles Dyson, friend of John Keble. The new church was consecrated by Henry Sumner, Bishop of Winchester and Heywood Sumner's grandfather. Anthony Lefroy, Charles's nephew who until then had been curate to Dyson at Dogmersfield, became the first curate of the new church and parish. Daily services and twice-monthly Eucharists were held at Crookham Church from the beginning and were thought to be revolutionary; Lefroy wore a surplice in the pulpit. Attracted by the new style of worship and church life many friends of the Lefroy and Dyson families built large family houses on land around the church which had been built in virtually open countryside: hence, the area became known, as it is today, by the name 'Church Crookham'.

Listing NGR: SU8077951804

External Links

• Historic England Listing
• Wikidata Q17534351

External links are from the relevant listing authority and, where applicable, Wikidata. Wikidata IDs may be related buildings as well as this specific building. If you want to add or update a link, you will need to do so by editing the Wikidata entry.

Recommended Books

• 
  Churches: An Architectural Guide (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Introductions)
• 
  Devon (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Sussex: East with Brighton and Hove (Buildings of England) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Warwickshire (Pevsner Architectural Guides) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Essex: Buildings of England Series (Buildings of England) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Cambridgeshire (Pevsner Architectural Guides) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)