Children's Church and Lych Gate at Barnardo's, Redbridge, London

Description

937/0/10068 TANNERS LANE
05-MAY-10 BARKINGSIDE
Children's Church and Lych Gate at Bar
nardo's

GV II
Children's Church, 1892-4, by Ebenezer Gregg for Dr Barnardo. Later additions and alterations.

MATERIALS: Stock brick with stone and red brick dressings and a pitched tiled roof, hipped to the chancel, and asphalt roof coverings to the aisles.

PLAN: (The church is not orientated to the east, and the liturgical east end faces north-west, but this description follows liturgical convention.) The church has a square tower at its north-west corner, a porch to the south, a vestry to the north-east and an organ chamber to the south-east. A porch to the south-west was added in 1933.

EXTERIOR: The tower is Tudor Gothic in style, with clasping buttresses, ogee-arched doors with fleur-de-lis peaks, and perpendicular tracery in the belfry. The tower parapet has a blind trefoil-headed arcade and there were originally pinnacles with crockets at each corner, now lost. The nave is Early English Gothic with three-light lancet windows at the west end and in the aisles and clerestory. The east end has three three-light windows, the middle one taller and set in a gablet which breaks through the eaves of the hipped roof.

INTERIOR: The five-bay nave has been partitioned in the late C20 at the two westernmost bays to create a large meeting room with a concertina screen dividing it from the nave. The stone aisle arcades have polygonal columns and pointed arches. The roof has curved timber braces and rests on stone corbels. The diminutive pews in the nave, designed specially for children, survive along with others brought in from the Woodford Bridge Village Home for Boys after it closed and was demolished. The nave has a woodblock floor with quarry tiles to the aisles. The Gothic tracery timber pulpit, with steps and tester survives. The balustrade, in metal and timber, may have been renewed and matches the altar rail. There is a brass eagle lectern. The chancel arch is stone with an inscription painted around it reading 'Suffer the little children to come unto me and forbid them not' quoting Luke ch. 18 v. 16 and Matthew ch. 19 v. 14. The chancel has a pattern tile floor, metal altar rails, and a clergy seat with trefoil panels, but has lost its original choir stalls. The panelling behind the altar is not original, and probably interwar. The organ dates to 1935 and was made by Spurden Rutt of Leyton. There are two memorials set in the chancel wall: a brass plaque to Dr Barnardo and a marble plaque to John William Godfrey, the Village's first governor. The two westernmost aisle bays have also been enclosed at the west end and now serve as a kitchen and toilets. The stained glass in these areas survives, however, but the pews have been removed. The tower has eight bells, six of 1894 and two of 1926, cast by the Whitechapel Foundry and restored in 2005.

STAINED GLASS: The stained glass, in the east end and the aisle windows, depicts scenes from the Bible, saints and figures from history. There is a particular emphasis on subjects involving women (Joan of Arc, Florence Nightingale, Saints Margaret and Elizabeth) and children (St Christopher and the infant Christ, Christ preaching to children). Inscriptions in the sills of the east end windows reveal the stained glass was donated by Barnardo's staff in 1936 in memory of a colleague. Elsewhere, the glass is clear with diamond leaded panes.

SUBSIDIARY FEATURES: There is a lych-gate in front of the south porch with brick walls and open-sided timber structure above supporting a tiled roof. Small benches are set inside the lych-gate which retains its original timber gates.

HISTORY: Thomas John Barnardo (1845-1905) arrived in Barkingside in 1874, having been given Mossford Lodge, a large house and grounds, as a wedding present by Sir John Sands. Dr Barnardo had many such admirers, particularly from Christian evangelical backgrounds, due to his zealous charitable work with the destitute children of London's East End. His marriage in 1873 and the gift of Mossford Lodge lent Barnardo the moral propriety and the means to focus more of his attention on the plight of penniless girls. Barnardo and his wife lived in the house and accommodated twelve girls in its stable block. The arrangement was not an immediate success, however, partly because the girls were difficult to control. Thus in 1876, Barnardo began building a 'Village Home'. This was to be a series of cottages arranged around a green, each under the care of a 'Mother', and promised a domestic, familial environment in which to nurture the girls. This church was built, the gift of an anonymous donor in memory of her parents, in 1892-4. Barnardo's evangelical piety underpinned the Village Homes settlement, although his was one of the first charities to accept children of any colour or creed. By Barnardo's death in 1905 there were 64 cottage homes arranged around three greens (built in 1876-80, 1887, and 1903-5).

SOURCES: Anon, My Cottage: A Story of Dr Barnardo's Village Home for Destitute Girls by M.E.S. (1884)
Mrs Eyrie-Louise Barnardo and James Marchant, Memoirs of the late Dr Barnardo (1907)
Janet Hitchman, They Carried the Sword (1966)
National Portrait Gallery, The Camera and Dr Barnardo (1974)
Gillian Wagner, 'Barnardo, Thomas John (1845-1905)' in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004)
Plans and photographs in Redbridge Local Studies Library

REASONS FOR DESIGNATION: The Children's Church at Barnardo's, Barkingside is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:
* historical associations: built through the efforts of Dr Barnardo, who founded the Girls Village Home at Barkingside in 1876;
* historic interest: indicative of the strong Christian ideals that underpinned life at the Homes in Dr Barnardo's time, as well as being the only historic communal building on the site, the library, schools and hospital having been demolished;
* architecture: an important landmark, both within and without the Barnardo's site, designed to create the impression that the Village was a homely, rural idyll for London's destitute children;
* fixtures and fittings: some are purpose-designed for children, including the pews and the stained glass of children, heroines and female saints;
* group value: the church is set back from the picturesque village green, lined with its twenty-two cottages (qv), and is an effective visual counterpoint to the clock tower of Cairns Cottage (qv).

Reasons for Listing

Dr Barnardo was a major figure in Victorian England and the history of the charity he founded is of manifold significance, not least to the descendants of the thousands of children he helped. Dr Barnardo's Girls' Village Home at Barkingside was not only his magnum opus, but also his place of rest, and was the emblem of the charity's mission well into the C20. The Village survives today as a remarkable physical manifestation of the strengths and weaknesses of Barnardo the man, and the character of Victorian charity, a highly-esteemed virtue in the C19. It evidences both the sentimental and nostalgic aspects of Victorian charitable foundations, as well as the sometimes severe treatment of children in that era, in particular through the story of emigration to Canada. Even lacking many of its communal buildings, and nearly two-thirds of its original cottages, the Barnardo's Girls Village Homes at Barkingside is a special place. For reasons of their special architectural and historic interest, as well as group value, the central components of the Village -- the Children's Church, Cairns Cottage, and the twenty-two surviving cottage homes -- are recommended for listing at Grade II. The fountain, lodge, and boundary walls are recommended too, mainly for their group value as handsome and integral components of the ensemble, which form an essential part of the setting of the cottage homes. Athlone and Linney Houses, both later, less interesting architecturally, and more detached from the main green, are not recommended for listing. A separate advice (UID 170024) recommends that the memorial to Dr Barnardo, currently listed at Grade II, be upgraded to Grade II*.

External Links

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