Details
ISLINGTON
TQ3186SE ST THOMAS'S ROAD
635-1/24/827 (East side)
Church of St Thomas and attached
halls and walls
II
Anglican church. Dated 1888 on many rainwater heads, and
completed in 1889. Designed by Ewan Christian, built by Dove
Brothers; additions and alterations of 1901 and 1904, the
latter by Edward Street. Church hall probably of c.1880. Red
brick set in English bond with stone dressings, roof of slate.
Chancel and nave under a single roof, north and south aisles
under their own pitched roofs, narthex and baptistery, vestry
and church halls, bellcote. Gothic style. All windows to the
church are lancets with chamfered reveals. East window of
three stepped lights under a continuous hoodmould; one window
to south side of chancel. The south aisle has a canted apse
with four windows and seven windows on its south face, six in
pairs between buttresses, one next to a gabled south porch
which has a pointed-arched entrance with an inner order,
hoodmould and wrought-iron gates; cornice of bricks set at an
angle; the north aisle has five windows set between buttresses
and, at its east end, a single-storey porch range with a
pointed-arched entrance and one flat-arched three-light window
with parapet over. Apsidal baptistery and narthex, the
baptistery having five windows, and the narthex three to each
side under a lean-to roof, and a pointed-arched entrance with
an inner order under a hoodmould to either end; three gables
to the west end above, four-light window, the two central
lancets higher, and two-light windows to the aisles, all with
double-chamfered reveals and grouped under hoodmoulds. Small
hall to south-west corner, now roofless, with a pointed-arched
entrance under a hoodmould to left and a flat-arched window to
right with three lights and one transom, and a single-light
window with one transom on either side, stone-coped parapet.
Timber bellcote at the junction of chancel and nave with
pyramidal roof. Church hall at south-east corner with
pointed-arched windows of three lights with geometrical
tracery in the east and west gabled ends.
INTERIOR: . Generally of brick, though the brick is painted in
the chancel and baptistery, as are the columns of the nave.
Chancel and nave under one roof. East window flanked by
columns engaged at shaft rings; sedilia, under pointed arches
and divided by a column, to south side of chancel; arches to
either side of chancel, the organ in that to the north and
that to the south filled with a parclose screen; choir stalls
removed; patterned encaustic tiles to chancel floor; low wall
dividing chancel from nave with an iron screen above of 1920
supplied by Wippells, pendent rood of 1922 supplied by Burnes
and Oates. The pulpit is square in plan and carried out from
the low wall on two columns. Nave of three bays, the Purbeck
marble columns with roll-moulded capitals carrying pointed
arches of moulded brick with an inner order and a hoodmould
running continuously from the chancel over the arcade, and
then over the three-bay arcade of the baptistery. Boarded roof
over nave and chancel, deeply coved above the wall plate and
then pointed-arched in section, with corbelled ribs; dormers
at junction of chancel and nave.
South chapel with low wall and iron screen, probably of
c.1920; segmental-arched entrance in south wall of south
aisle; moulded sill band to windows which have deep
embrasures; pointed-arched entrance to west end. At the east
end of the north aisle is a pointed arch to the organ chamber,
and two pointed-arched entrances, that to the porch under a
segmental arch; pointed-arched entrance to west end. Circular
font in baptistery on a green marble base surrounded by pink
marble columns with original wooden and wrought-iron cover.
East window by C.E.Kempe; six lights in the south chapel and
five in the baptistery, by Clayton and Bell.
C. 25 metres of wall parallel to the north aisle, another c.25
metres in Monsell Road, and c.40 metres in St Thomas's Road:
red brick with plinth and coping of black brick; three pairs
of gate piers in St Thomas's Road and one in Monsell Road,
square in plan with one course of stone and stone coping and
finials, now much decaded.
(Historians' file, English Heritage London Division).
Listing NGR: TQ3153686264
