Church of St Michael and All Angels, Hackney Downs, London

Summary

Parish church by J E K Cutts, 1883-1885.

Description

Parish church by J E K Cutts, 1883-1885.

MATERIALS: red brick with cast concrete dressings and Bath stone columns. Slate roof tiles throughout, with some later replacements apparent.

PLAN: the church comprises a five-bay nave with a tall clerestory, north and south aisles, a two-bay chancel, a morning chapel (to the south side; now a subdivided meeting space), and a north transept, originally with an organ chamber and vestries (the latter since converted to a nursery). The vestibule from the main west entrance leads to the church hall, which is sectioned-off from the main body of the church (formed as part of work undertaken in 1972).

EXTERIOR: tall and imposing red brick Gothic Revival church with robust Early English detailing and a large, steep-pitched slate roof. A small brick porch of slightly later date stands at the west end of the church in place of the intended tower and spire shown in the original plans by J E K Cutts. Above the porch is a tall three-lancet Gothic window, framed by a pair of narrow buttresses. A small bell is set in an arched recess at the top of the west elevation, with a pinnacle on each side. Stepped buttresses run along the walls of the south and north aisles, punctuated by Gothic lancet windows, with paired Gothic lancets above to the clerestory of the nave. At the east end of the north aisle there is a projecting gable-ended transept bay for the organ, with original lean-to structures to the north and east built to accommodate the clergy and choir vestries (these converted to a nursery in 2016). The east end has a large Decorated Gothic window with flanking buttresses to the north and south and a three-light Gothic lancet window above. The dressings and plate tracery throughout are of cast concrete.

INTERIOR: The main church entrance is from the west, through the porch into the nave, via the inserted hall of 1972. Two arcades, supported by stone columns, separate the nave from the aisles. The walls and spandrels in the arcades and clerestory are plastered and painted white, contrasting with the brick arches to the windows and arcades. The clerestory windows to each side are of paired Gothic lancets with clear, leaded lights. The nave and chancel roofs are supported by exposed timber scissor trusses. The chancel floor is covered with polychromatic ceramic tiles. The font stands at the south-east end of the nave and the pulpit at the north-east end. The reredos sits against the east wall of the chancel, below the stained-glass window. The stained-glass windows to the north and south aisles, along with the clerestory, are described in more detail below.

FURNISHINGS AND FITTINGS: early features retained within the church include the octagonal font of 1885, which is carved from Devonshire marble and has a carved oak steeple cover. The pulpit (1889) is also octagonal, with stone tracery, winder stairs, and supporting marble columns. The carved oak reredos at the east end of the chancel (1931) and the wrought-iron screen between the nave and the chancel (1934), are by Messrs Maile & Sons Ltd. There are carved screens to the organ chamber (to the south and east), probably of late-C19 date. The organ has been removed, though what appear to be parts of its casement have been reconstituted as part of a storage space. There are simple timber pews with shaped ends to the nave and aisles. The pews to the chancel have simple carved trefoil arches to their front panels. There are several memorial tablets mounted to the walls, including one to commemorate the fallen men of the parish from the First and Second World War and a City of London Volunteers Regiment memorial of 1900 to a parishioner who died in the South African Campaign of the Second Boer War.

The stained-glass windows date from a series of distinct phases, with attributions below drawn from the survey by Eberhard, R (2020), referenced in the ‘SOURCES’ section. The earliest glass, dating from the 1880s and 1890s, is noted to be by Heaton, Butler and Bayne, one of the leading firms of Gothic Revival stained-glass manufacturers in Britain, who established their studio in Covent Garden in 1862. Work by the firm can be seen in the Decorated Gothic east window, which has five lancets with a sexfoil opening at the head, depicting themes including the nativity, the flight into Egypt, the ascension, annunciation, adoration of magi and crucifixion (1899-1910); a series of nine lancet windows in the north aisle (1889); and a two-light stained-glass window at the east end of the south aisle (1884), which was the only one to have been installed at the time of the consecration in 1885, designed in memory of Emma Diana Alabaster (Halls, H,1959, p8). The remaining windows date to the C20, with the pair depicting the ascension and the charge to Peter in the north aisle made by Kelley & Co (1925). The window in the south aisle of St Peter (1968) is by Messrs Maile & Sons Ltd and a further window in the south aisle of Christ with three children was made by Hargel and designed by E T Fellows in 1984.

History

Stoke Newington Common saw rapid urban development over the course of the latter-half of the C19. Building of a new church to serve the growing population of the area had become imperative by the 1880s and land was given to support this cause by William Tyssen-Amherst (1st Baron Amherst of Hackney) of Didlington Hall, Norfolk, who was at the time MP for West Norfolk. To meet the immediate needs of the parish, the ecclesiastical authorities decided to erect a temporary, galvanised iron church upon the Fountayne Road portion of the site in June 1882, this positioned roughly on the plot of the present vicarage (for which the iron church was subsequently dismantled in 1885). Funding for the main church was drawn from the Bishop of Bedford’s East London Church Fund and building was well underway by November 1884, when The Builder featured two drawings including the intended west tower which was scheduled ‘to be built at a future time’, though was ultimately abandoned due to budget constraints. Other economies in the building process can be noted in the relatively novel decision to employ cast concrete rather than stone for the dressings and window tracery; a particular ‘feature of interest’ of the church, as The Builder article noted (1 November 1884, p375). Construction was complete in early 1885 and a service to mark the consecration of St Michael and All Angels was held on 2 May 1885. The new church was designed by John Edward Knight Cutts, (1847-1938), a prolific church architect of the period in London and former pupil of Ewan Christian (architect to the Ecclesiastical Commissioners from 1851 until 1895 and designer of the National Portrait Gallery). The completed church was capable of seating 748 people, including the choir. Following formal completion, a small porch was built at the west end of the church, in the place of the originally planned tower and spire. The vicarage to the north of the church was built shortly after the church, possibly also to the designs of J E K Cutts.

Over the course of the 1890s and early 1900s, several fixtures and stained-glass windows by Heaton, Butler & Bayne were installed (as detailed under the ‘FIXTURES and FITTINGS’ section below). In the inter-war years, fittings including the oak reredos (1931) and the wrought-iron screen between the nave and the chancel (1934) were installed by Messrs Maile & Sons Ltd. The church congregation grew in the post-war years to include new worshippers from the Caribbean, who settled in Hackney after arriving as part of the Windrush migrations from the late 1940s (with many from Montserrat and Antigua). The growth of the congregation and the need for informal meeting spaces gave rise to the main phase of post-war adaptation, which saw the conversion of the west end of the nave into a church hall, built as part of work carried out by Dennis Sexton in 1972. This also included the addition of vestries on the south side and kitchen and toilets on the north, retaining the stained-glass and exposed structural elements of the church in these spaces, with simple dividing stud walls introduced to compartmentalise the space. Visibility of the nave and chancel was maintained through the lantern in the ceiling of the hall and the narrow windows and glazed doors to the east. The font, originally at the west end of the south aisle was relocated at the east end when the hall was built. At the east end, the morning chapel to the south of the chancel was converted into two meeting rooms. The organ chamber on the north side is now redundant, the organ having been removed in 1993. Some repair work was undertaken in 1994, including restoration of the chancel arch and the underpinning of the west porch in 1997. In 2016, the former vestry in the north-east corner of the church was converted to serve as a nursery school.

Reasons for Listing

The Church of St Michael and All Angels, Stoke Newington Common, built 1883-1885, is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:

Architectural interest:

* as a characteristically substantial, robust church design in the Early English style by John Edward Knight Cutts (1847-1938), a prolific church architect of the period known for his economical but well-proportioned designs;

* for the early and extensive use of cast concrete in an ecclesiastical building, applied with skill in the delicate window tracery where stone would be commonly used, this being noted as a particular ‘feature of interest’ in the national building press at the time of construction;

* for the range of internal fittings of high quality, including a series of late-C19 stained-glass windows by Heaton, Butler & Bayne and an octagonal font carved from Devonshire marble and elaborate stone pulpit installed in the 1880s.

Historic interest:

* as a prominent and well-preserved Anglo-Catholic church built in the 1880s through the Bishop of Bedford’s East London Church Fund, a major church-building initiative for London’s expanding suburbs in the late C19.

External Links

Historic England Listing

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