Details
753/7/262 ST GEORGE'S ROAD
21-MAY-76 (East side)
CHURCH OF ST GEORGE
II
Nave and chancel 1868 by George Truefitt. Other parts of the church completed by 1884. Reordered 1990-1.
MATERIALS: Coursed local rubble with ashlar bands between the main windows and limestone dressings. Red clay tile roofs.
PLAN: Nave and chancel in one, W narthex-porch, NE and SE vestries, SE organ chamber, NE aisle, N porch (in angle of the aisle and nave).
(The church is oriented N and all directions given here are liturgical.)
EXTERIOR: The style of the church draws freely upon motifs from C13 architecture. The exterior is striking thanks to its wide nave and chancel which form a single composition. The E end has a dramatic, broad semi-circular apse while the W end has a hipped roof. The main body of the building has lower, subsidiary parts grouped around it, most significantly a small aisle (three bays externally, two internally) at the NE of the nave and which is located beneath its own E-W gable. This structure is continued to the E under a lower roof-line to form a vestry terminating in a semi-circular apse which forms a diminutive counterpart to the main, chancel apse. At the W end there is a narthex-porch with N, S and central doorways (the latter under a gable). Hipping of the roofs is used extensively by the architect and, apart from on the nave roof, this distinctive feature reappears on the N porch, on the W end of the chapel, on the N and S ends of the narthex-porch, and on the SE vestry. Rising from the N side, at the beginning of the apse, is a small square bell-turret with short colonettes at the corners supporting a stone spirelet. The fenestration is varied. The E end has five single-light windows each with a trefoil beneath a circular quatrefoil. The nave has three large two-light windows on either side consisting of a pair of trefoiled lights beneath a large circle with very shallow cusping. At the W end there is a row of six trefoil-headed lights which fill the wall between the roof of the narthex-porch and the eaves: they are separated by square shafts. The rest of the windows are trefoil-headed and are arranged singly or in pairs. None of the windows have hood-moulds. The SE vestry is cheaply built, having rendered walling and wooden windows, and seems to represent a `temporary' structure. There is no clerestory and the church has no parapets.
INTERIOR: The large, single vessel of the nave and chancel form, as they do externally, an impressive, unified space, there being no structural division between the two. Round the apse the walls are decorated with fleuron diapering. On either side of the nave, before the start of the apse, are two depressed pointed arches on a high base with a central twin pier between carrying elaborate foliage carving. The arches on the N lead to the short NE aisle. The W wall has three round-arches, the centre one containing a doorway: on either side of these three arches is a further smaller doorway under a depressed pointed arch. The main roof is arch-braced to a collar and has iron tie-rods in view of the great width of the building: the panels of the roof have diagonal boarding. On the upper parts of the nave walls and round the apse are panels with incised texts.
PRINCIPAL FIXTURES: The main feature is a screen which formerly marked the division between nave and chancel. It is now located at the W end and has single lights with wiry Gothic tracery. At the W end are two pink round-headed marble tablets forming a First World War memorial. The reredos is of wood and has a carved representation of the Last Supper. The font, no doubt dating from 1868, has an octagonal bowl with crosses on alternate faces and has three marble shafts surrounding the stem. The memorial organ (date of death 1913) has two tall towers of pipes and is located in the easterly of the arches on the S side of the nave. Many of the C19 pews, with shaped ends, remain. There is attractive C19 patterned stained glass in the windows round the apse and at the W end.
SUBSIDIARY FEATURES: Dark brick hall of 1935-6 to the W: the foundation stone (laid 4 Sept 1935) notes the architect as Harold Overnell ARIBA. It has distinctively 1930s windows with tapering heads.
HISTORY: St George's was consecrated in 1868 when it consisted of a nave and chancel. The rest of the components seem to have been added by 1884 (VCH). From the outset it served a Low Church congregation, hence the broad, unified space of the nave and chancel, and lack of iconography and subdivided spaces that might be expected in a church in the Anglo-Catholic tradition. A reminder of the piecemeal nature of the building is the `temporary' vestry on the S side whose basic, rendered and wooden-windowed structure was no doubt intended to be replaced by something better when funds allowed. The church was reordered in 1990-1 when the screen was moved to the W end, the main floor was covered in cork tiles and there was extensive painting carried out.
George Truefitt (1824-1902) was articled to the architect L N Cottingham at the age of fifteen for five years and later worked for the Worcester architect Hervey Eginton. He became a FRIBA in 1860 and retired from practice in 1890 and settled in Worthing where he died. His church work was, it seems, for Evangelical clients. A major scheme of his was the development of the Tufnell Park Estate in Islington, London, in the late 1850s and 1860s where he designed the remarkable circular church of St George.
SOURCES:
The Victoria County History of Sussex, vol 6, pt 1, 1980.
Ian Nairn and Nikolaus Pevsner, The Buildings of England: Sussex, p 387.
REASONS FOR DESIGNATION:
The church of St George, Worthing, is designated at Grade II for the following principal reasons:
* It is of special interest as a mid-Victorian church of striking design with boldly massed components and strong detailing.
* It is a telling example of Victorian church-building for Low Church clients in terms of its broad, undivided nave and chancel and lack of iconography.
