Church of St Martin and St Paul, Tipton Green, Sandwell

Summary

A church of 1837-38, designed in a Commissioners' Gothic style by Robert Ebbles.

Description

A church of 1837-38, designed in a Commissioners' Gothic style by Robert Ebbles.

MATERIALS: red brick laid in garden wall bond with stone dressings and a slate and lead roof.

PLAN: the site falls to the north (ritual east) and the chancel and vestry are supported above crypt. The church is oriented north-west to south-east, with north-west acting as the ritual eastern end. Compass points in this description indicate the ritual pattern of orientation. There is a western tower with a seven-bay nave and a shallow eastern chancel. A low vestry projects at the eastern end and there is a lobby to the west, flanked by spiral stairs which lead up to the gallery, which surrounds three sides of the nave.

EXTERIOR: the tower has diagonal buttresses and three stages with a central western doorway with panelled double doors with a flat-arched head and fanlight. At either side are rectangular staircase turrets which project from the west end of the nave. These have small lancets to their upper walls. The middle stage of the tower has a window of three lights with stone panel tracery and there are lancets to the flanks of the tower. The top stage has a louvered, lancet belfry opening to each side. The parapet is here battlemented, with crocketed finials to the corners.

The nave bays have lancet windows with cast metal lattice tracery. They are divided by buttresses with offsets. The solid parapet has a string course to its lower body and a moulded coping. Metal weather moulds above the lancets appear to be later additions. The eastern end has lancet lights set at either side of the shallow, chancel bay, which has a four-light window with traceried head. The low vestry projects in front of the chancel and has a three-light window to its centre and a parapet with moulded bands.

INTERIOR: the entrance lobby beneath the west tower leads to a further lobby beneath the deep western gallery. This is now divided from the nave, but may not have been originally. The nave has galleries to three sides with panelled fronts, supported on painted, cast-iron columns. To the south-west corner is a staircase well which leads down to the crypt and which may be a later addition. A false ceiling has been inserted in the later-C20 at the level of the top of the gallery fronts. The galleries are approached by their original, open-well winder staircases at the western end and have their original arrangement of boxed pews to the sides. These have panelled doors and hymnal shelves and there is one surviving metal gas lamp support at the centre of the south side. The original nave roof which is intact, but now obscured by the false ceiling, has four-centered, arched trusses between each bay with pierced, traceried spandrels which rest on moulded wall brackets. The chancel has a pair of commandment boards, set in painted aedicular frames on the western wall, which form a reredos above the altar. A stone, Gothic font (now painted) was gifted by a parishioner in 1870. Two parish rooms were formed c.1985 at the rear of the nave and the western gallery. The ground floor room also has a kitchen and lavatories formed along its northern wall.

Pursuant to s.1 (5A) of the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990 it is declared that those parts which were inserted c.1985, including the breeze block wall to the rear of the nave, the suspended ceiling at the level of the top of the panelled gallery front and the lavatories and kitchen with their stud wall divisions, off the present ground floor parish room and to the ritual north side of the rear of the nave, are not of special architectural or historic interest.

This list entry was subject to a Minor Amendment on 08/12/2015

History

St Paul's Church was built in 1837-38 as a chapel of ease to the parish church of St Martin to serve the rapidly expanding population of the parish, especially the village of Tipton Green which was then developing as Tipton's town centre. The population had increased from 4288 in 1801 to 14951 in 1831. St Paul's cost in excess of £5000 raised by subscriptions and grants and provided sittings for 1822 of which 774 were free. Owing to the shape of the land available it was aligned north-south instead of the usual east-west. There is no graveyard. A new parish of St Paul was created in 1843 but when St Martin closed, in 1986, the two parishes combined and the church became known as St Martin's and St Paul's.

Owen Street, in which the church is situated, developed from around 1800 as an expansion of the village of Tipton Green and became the town's principal commercial street.

Colvin records the building as altered in 1899 and it seems likely that this was the addition of the vestry at the ritual eastern end. In 1985 the nave had a false ceiling inserted at the level of the top of the gallery front, apparently to reduce the expense of heating. At the same time two parish rooms were formed to the rear of the nave and, above this, at the rear of the (ritual) western gallery, with lavatories and a kitchen at ground floor level on the north side.

Reasons for Listing

The Church of St Martin and St Paul, Tipton, is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:

* Architectural interest: the building is a good example of a church of pre-1840 date in an early Gothic Revival style which was designed to seat a large congregation and which retains a high proportion of its original fabric, including materials which were produced locally.

* Intact survival: despite later additions which mask some parts of the original interior, the building has a high proportion of its original fixtures and fittings and a good survival of its original plan.

External Links

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