Details
679/7/144 QUEEN'S ROAD
23-NOV-73 KING CROSS
(East side)
CHURCH OF ST PAUL
II*
Parish church of 1911-12 by Sir Charles Nicholson, with mostly contemporary fittings.
MATERIALS: Coursed sandstone with freestone dressings, stone slate roof.
PLAN: Nave with aisles, north porch and embraced west tower, chancel with north chapel and south organ chamber and vestries. An attached arcaded wall south of the vestry was a link to a former Sunday School.
EXTERIOR: Large parish church in free-Perpendicular style with coped parapets. The 3-stage tower has diagonal buttresses and south polygonal stair turret in the lower stage, upper stage with octagonal clasping and intermediate polygonal buttresses carried up to the embattled parapet. A 4-light west window is above a moulded west doorway. The second stage has small square-headed west and north windows, and the bell stage has 2 pointed openings with louvres. Nave and chancel are under a single roof, with large 3-light clerestorey windows, 6 on the north side and 5 on the south, and aisles have five 2-light windows. The first bay of each aisle incorporates a porch which has a doorway with arch dying into the imposts, and recessed door, below statues in niches. The chancel has a 5-light east window. The 2-bay north chapel has 2-light windows under linked hood moulds, and at its west end is a shallow lean-to porch. The tall south organ chamber is embattled and has a higher octagonal south-west turret which incorporates a bellcote with ogee-headed openings with louvres. The lower vestry extends to the south and east of the organ chamber, and has an embattled parapet, square-headed windows, and `1912¿ above the main south doorway. Another south doorway opens to a 5-bay arcaded walk to the former school.
INTERIOR: There is no structural break between nave and chancel, which is a unified space divided only by a screen. Nave arcades have octagonal piers and hollow-moulded arches without capitals, superimposed by higher arches framing the clerestorey windows. The double-chamfered tower arch is on chamfered responds, and similar but lower doorways in north and south walls open to the porches. Nave and chancel have a crown-post roof with intermediate collar-beam trusses, richer in the sanctuary where intermediate trusses have arched braces. The roof is boarded behind the trusses and divided into panels by thin ribs. In the sanctuary, bosses are gilded. Shallow lean-to aisle roofs are divided into plaster ceiling panels by embossed ribs and beams. In the chancel are 2 rounded-headed arches to the organ chamber, one of which is superimposed by a similar arch to the organ loft. Sedilia and piscina have continuous chamfers. The east wall has a large blind arch framing the window, and flanked by tall blind lancets. Walls are exposed freestone. The floor is stone paved, incorporating black-and-white marble diaperwork in the chancel and chapel (which incorporates a memorial date of 1912), and there are parquet floors below benches and raised floorboards below churchwardens¿ seats.
PRINCIPAL FIXTURES: Most of the fittings are integral with the building and contribute to the artistic completeness of the church. The font is Perpendicular style with carved panels around the octagonal bowl, and has a tall wooden canopy with buttresses and pinnacles. Benches have square-headed ends with fielded and fluted panels. Churchwardens¿ seats have ends with blind tracery and finials on the frontals. The polygonal wooden pulpit is beneath a tester with brattishing, and has linenfold panels. There are screens across the chancel and chapel. The chancel screen is dated 1913, has panelled dado and open main lights with intricate tracery in the spandrels, delicately ribbed coving, foliage-trail cornice and brattishing. The chapel screen is similar but has delicate tracery in the main lights and a simple cornice. Choir stalls are in classical style with fielded-panel backs and carved bands to ends and frontals. The tall canopied, painted wooden reredos has a central crucifixion flanked by figures of saints, all in small niches with delicate carving to the canopies. The panelled reredos in the chapel is painted with a Nativity scene, and is beneath brattishing. At the west end of the south aisle is a 1914-18 war memorial with roll call on panels, below blind tracery and a crucifixion, coving and cornice. A 1939-45 war-memorial roll call has been added beneath. Stained-glass windows include a series in the chapel by H.W. Bryans (1913), east window probably by Kempe & Co, and west window by Hugh Easton incorporating a view of Halifax.
SUBSIDIARY FEATURES: On the south and west sides the churchyard has a stone wall, piers with gable caps, and iron gates.
HISTORY: Built in 1910-12, with an integral detached Sunday School that was demolished in the 1970s, by the partnership of Sir Charles Nicholson (1867-1945) and Hubert Corlette (1869-1956), architects of London. Nicholson was a leading church architect of the early C20. He was articled to the esteemed late Victorian architect J. D. Sedding in 1889 and after Sedding¿s death in 1891 was assistant to his successor Henry Wilson. He began independent practice in 1895 and was in partnership with Hubert Corlette from 1895 until 1914. He was consulting architect to the cathedrals of Belfast, Lincoln, Lichfield, Llandaff, Portsmouth, Sheffield and Wells. He was also Diocesan Architect for Chelmsford, Portsmouth, Wakefield and Winchester.
SOURCES:
Pevsner, N., The Buildings of England: Yorkshire, West Riding (1967), 234.
Lambeth Palace Library, Incorporated Church Building Society Archives.
REASONS FOR DESIGNATION: The Church of St Paul, Queens Road, is designated at Grade II* for the following principal reasons:
* The church is an ambitious and bold design by one of the leading church architects of the early C20.
* It has a well-designed and spacious interior characterised by its simple, strong Gothic architectural detail.
* Its interior has been altered little and includes a range of high-quality fittings including font, seating, pulpit, screens, reredoses and stained glass.
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, 16 August 2017.
