St Botolph's Church

Details

753/14/186 LANSDOWNE ROAD
21-MAY-76 (North side)
ST BOTOLPH'S CHURCH

II
Parish church, 1872-9 by Edmund Evan Scott, south aisle and transept rebuilt and choir vestry added 1903-5 by Robert Singer Hyde, parish rooms (not of special interest) added 1982.

MATERIALS: Flint with red brick and Bath stone dressings; Welsh slate roof with tile cresting; shingled spire.

PLAN: Cruciform church comprising five-bay nave with narrow lean-to north aisle and wider south aisle, south-west tower, north and south transepts containing organ chamber and Lady Chapel respectively, and chancel with choir and clergy vestries to north. Modern parish rooms adjoining north aisle.

EXTERIOR: Early English style. West front has two tall deeply-recessed lancets with quatrefoil above. North aisle, partly obscured by 1982 extension, has small cusped lancets, with triple lancets to clerestorey above. Choir vestry projects to north-east in front of north transept. Three-stage tower doubles as a porch, with pointed brick entrance archway to south flanked by stone colonettes; similar colonettes frame double lancet belfry openings in brick upper stage; plain corbel-table above supporting a tall broach spire. Chancel has four-light east window with plate tracery. 1905 south aisle and transept are in a later Gothic style with bar-traceried windows; transept has small lean-to porch to west.

INTERIORS: Interior walls faced in brown brick with red brick and stone dressings. Five-bay nave arcades of moulded red brick on cylindrical stone columns with single attached shafts, the latter supporting slender wall shafts which in support the main trusses of the open arch-braced roof. Clerestorey windows are triple lancets with free-standing colonettes. Chancel arch with brick piers and stone shafts, above which are twin Alpha and Omega roundels. South transept and chancel have raised floors and boarded wagon roofs; in south wall of chancel are four blind cusped arches forming sedilia and a piscina.

FIXTURES AND FITTINGS: These include:
* Simple pine pews with pointed-arched ends in nave and aisles;
* Octagonal stone font with arcaded sides and base formed of four granite colonettes with crocket capitals;
* Octagonal stone pulpit with figures of saints in niches, dated 1889;
* Altarpiece in south transept, of 1935 by WHR Blacking;
* Simple stone war memorial panel in south transept;
* Stained glass of various dates, including: west window, depicting four English saints, installed in 1892 in memory of Revd Henry McLeod Beckles; east window depicting the Annunciation, Nativity, Crucifixion and Resurrection, with Christ in Majesty above.

HISTORY: The medieval church at Heene was in existence from the C11, and was rebuilt on the present site in the C13. This building, a chapel-of-ease in the parish of West Tarring, became ruinous by the early C18 and was largely demolished at some point after 1766, leaving only the fragmentary remains that still stand to the east of the present church (q.v.). The latter was founded in 1872, as part of a housing development by the Heene Estate Land Company that turned the former hamlet into a suburb of Worthing. The Brighton architect Edmund Evan Scott was chosen to design the new church, which was developed in two stages: first, in 1872-3, the chancel, transepts and three bays of the nave, and then in 1879 the western end of the nave and the tower. Further residential expansion led to the enlargement of the church in 1903-5; initial proposals would have seen the earlier church almost completely rebuilt, but the works actually carried out - by Scott's former partner Robert Singer Hyde - comprised only the reconstruction of the south aisle and transept and the addition of a choir vestry. In 1935 the south transept was converted into a lady chapel. New parish rooms were built as an extension to the north aisle in 1982.

Edmund Evan Scott (1828-1895) was a Brighton-based architect, best known as the designer of St Bartholomew's Church in that city (Grade I, 1872-4), a vast brick edifice commissioned by Fr Arthur Wagner that ranks as the tallest parish church in Britain. Scott was elected ARIBA in 1851, and worked in partnership with a number of other local architects, including his one-time pupil Robert Singer Hyde (c.1845-1913). He was responsible for a number of other churches in Sussex, including St Mary's at Buxted (1885-6) and the rebuilding of St Cosmas and St Damian at Keymer (Grade II, 1865-6 and 1890). His secular buildings include the former Royal Sussex Regiment drill hall on Church Street, Brighton (Grade II, 1889-90).

SOURCES
Huxley-Williams, M.G et al, A Brief Story of Heene (1993).
Hudson, T.P., ed, Victoria County History: Sussex vol 6 part 1 (1980), 85-92.
RIBA Directory of British Architects 1834-1914 (2001), vol. 2.
Biographical note on Scott at www.sussexparishchurches.org, accessed on 5 March 2010.

REASON FOR DESIGNATION
St Botolph's Church, built by Edmund Evan Scott in 1873-9 and extended by Robert Singer Hyde in 1903-5, is designated at Grade II for the following principal reasons:
* Architectural interest: an imposing and well-detailed mid-Victorian Gothic church by a significant regional architect.
* Contextual interest: the church was built as part of the development of this area of Worthing and is a prominent feature in the landscape.


This List entry has been amended to add the source for War Memorials Register. This source was not used in the compilation of this List entry but is added here as a guide for further reading, 30 October 2017.

Legacy

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

Legacy System number:

432799

Legacy System:

LBS

Sources

Websites
War Memorials Register, accessed 30 October 2017 from http://www.iwm.org.uk/memorials/item/memorial/40125

End of official list entry

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