Church of St Paul

Details

This list entry was subject to a Minor Amendment on 16/04/2020

ST5773NE
901-1/3/1053

BRISTOL
Clifton
ST PAUL'S ROAD (north west side)
Church of St Paul

28/09/94


II
Church. 1853. By Manners and Gill. Aisles and nave rebuilt 1867 by CF Hansom.

MATERIALS: Pennant rubble with limestone dressings, exterior stack and slate roof with decorative ridge tiles and two cast-iron vents.

PLAN: aisled nave with west and southwest porches, north side tower and attached north west house. Originally built as a hall church, the nave was raised by Hansom and Decorated Gothic Revival-style tracery largely replaced by Geometrical in the two-centred arched openings.

EXTERIOR: east end has a tall nave gable and flanking aisle gables with angle buttresses, two two-light windows beneath a central round window to the nave, and three-light aisle windows. A deep porch has an ashlar gable with steps up to a doorway with three orders, granite columns with foliate capitals and a carved scene of St Peter teaching, in the tympanum. Sliding doors into the reveals and a double inner door. Flanking side porches have pierced parapets and two side windows. North aisle has seven bays of two-light windows separated by buttresses. Similar south aisle; south west porch has an ashlar gable with paired, arched doorways on paired granite columns, the right-hand one blocked, set in a two-centred arched recess, with a quatrefoil in the tympanum and a finial.

The three-stage tower has diagonal buttresses, a north doorway with double doors and strap hinges and a hood with head stops, and a south west octagonal stair turret to the first stage; small one-light window above and a string; cinqefoil second-stage window below a weathered band, and two-light belfry windows with Decorated tracery and louvred panels. A corbel table to an ashlar broached spire with three diminishing stages of spirelights. Two storey; four-window range house to the north west corner has a double-pile roof and three cross gables with roll-top coping, the right-hand ones paired. These have three-light ground-floor windows with trefoil heads and labels, and two-light first-floor two-centred arched windows with a central round light. Left-hand gable has a three-light ground-floor window with flat, cuspate head, and a three-light first-floor window with a shallow arch with trefoil over; plain two-light window between the left and middle gables, and a blocked left-hand door with shouldered lintel. External stack to the west gable. The west end of the nave has a three-light nave window, and two-light aisle windows.

INTERIOR: two-bay chancel with timber reredos, in three sections with painted panels and flanking pointed-arched arcades; tall chancel arch with triple attached shafts; five-bay nave with round sandstone shafts on square piers with water leaf, foliate capitals and moulded arches; carved corbels to vault shafts to a timber roof with arched trusses pierced by trefoils, and two tiers of windbraces; timber aisle roofs with pointed-arched trusses; west gallery.

Fittings include an octagonal pulpit with marble shafts, and a similar octagonal stone font. The original building was an unusual example of a hall church with the aisles the height of the nave, perhaps suggested by the Cathedral (qv), and with a spire modelled on Pugin's St Peter's, Marlow.

Listing NGR: ST5762273524

Legacy

The contents of this record have been generated from a legacy data system.

Legacy System number:

380503

Legacy System:

LBS

Sources

Books and journals
Gomme, A H, Jenner, M, Little, B D G, Bristol, An Architectural History, (1979), 300

End of official list entry