Details
718/9/154 JARROM STREET
14-MAR-75 CHURCH OF ST ANDREW AND ATTACHED FORME
R SCHOOLROOM
II*
Parish church of 1860-62 by Sir G.G. Scott.
MATERIALS: Red brick with blue-brick and freestone patterning, graded slate roofs. Buff brick with red and black brick patterning to window reveals and arches internally.
PLAN: Cruciform plan with lower apsidal chancel and south porch.
EXTERIOR: Early-English style church of lofty proportions, with steep roof on a corbel table and strong, simplified Gothic detail. The five-bay nave has two-light windows, comprised of two lancets under a roundel and relieving arch, to give the impression of plate tracery. Above impost level is blue-brick diapering. The gabled bellcote is over the east end of the nave, with arches openings for three bells in two tiers. The south porch has an entrance with shafts and blue-brick hood mould, while the inner doorway has a roll-moulded arch. Both have blue-brick crosses over the doorways. Side walls have pairs of unglazed lancets. The grander west doorway has three orders of nook shafts and stepped arch. The west window is made up of two, two-light plate-tracery windows beneath a cusped circle, all within a shallow arched recess and flanked by buttresses, on the outer side of which are lancets. Transepts have three lancets below a large round window with smaller round tracery lights. There are lancets in the side walls. The chancel is more richly treated. It has blind arcading with freestone shafts on a high plinth, of which alternate arches frame lancet windows. The four-window schoolroom on the north side of the nave is hipped to the east end. It has two four-light transomed windows under gables, a four-light mullioned window further right, and entrance on the left side that is within a link to a modern hall (not listed), and below a roof dormer.
INTERIOR: The nave is faced in white brick with polychrome dressings and banding. It has a powerful six-bay arched-brace roof rising from short wall shafts. Each truss is constructed of two parallel braces joined by cross-braced framing. The chancel arch has an inner order on corbels, and in the chancel is a common-rafter roof. Floors are red and black tiles, with raised floorboards below the pews.
PRINCIPAL FIXTURES: The round stone font is dated 1862 on a plaque, and has a buttressed wooden canopy. The marble polygonal pulpit was added in 1892 and is especially ornate, incorporating marble shafts and detached octagonal shafts to the stem. It also has steps with ornate iron and brass balustrade. Nave benches are plain, with notional arm rests. The altar was added in the 1890s, an impressive alabaster piece inlaid with figures of Christ and angels with censers. Chancel glass is possibly by Clayton & Bell.
SUBSIDIARY FEATURES: The former schoolroom, now used a parish offices, forms part of the listed building. The Vicarage (seperately listed: LBS no 486733), also by Scott, is north-west of the church.
HISTORY: Parish church built 1860-62 by Sir George Gilbert Scott (1811-78). Scott began practice in the mid-1830s and became the most successful church architect of his day. His churches generally have a harmonious quality which derived its character from the architecture of the late C13 or early C14 and he did not take up the more florid kind of High-Victorian architecture that was popular from the late 1850s to the 1870s. It is therefore surprising to find him making extensive use of brick polychromy at St Andrew, which is one of only four churches where he seems to have done so: the others are at Crewe Green, Cheshire (1857-8), Ottershaw, Surrey (1863), and St Andrew, Uxbridge, Greater London (1865). Use of polychromy is of particular interest because it shows how Scott's work was at that time influenced by the churches of William Butterfield (1829-99).
SOURCES:
Brandwood, G., The Anglican Churches of Leicester (1984), 31-33.
Pevsner, N and Williamson, E., The Buildings of England: Leicestershire and Rutland (1984), 210.
REASONS FOR DESIGNATION: The church of St Andrew, Jarrom Street, is designated at Grade II* for the following principal reasons:
* It is a well-designed Gothic-revival church by one of its foremost exponents, especially notable for the simple, strong Gothic detail and the powerful nave roof.
* The use of structural polychromy shows the influence on Scott of the work of William Butterfield.
* It is a large city church in a district close to Leicester Infirmary and De Montfort University that retains historic character.
