Christ Church

Details

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OTTERSHAW,
GUILDFORD ROAD,
Christ Church

(Formerly listed as: OTTERSHAW, GUILDFORD ROAD, Christchurch)

18.06.1973

GV

II

DATES OF MAIN PHASES, NAME OF ARCHITECT: 1863 by George Gilbert Scott with the tower being added in 1885 and new parish rooms in the 1990s.

MATERIALS: Mainly red brick with black brick and (on the tower) freestone bands to create a polychromatic effect. Red clay tiled roofs. Wooden shingles on the spire

PLAN: Nave, semi-circular-apsed chancel, W tower and spire, NE chapel (formerly the organ chamber), parish rooms on the S.

EXTERIOR: The chancel has a series of lancet windows which are grouped into 3s on the NE and SE parts of the apse, and are single lights at the E end and on the S. These windows all have nook shafts, as do those of the nave which are mostly two-light windows with a quatrefoil tracery-piece in the heads. There are sturdy buttresses at the E end of the nave and rather buttressing to mark out the bays of the apse. The W tower has a projecting polygonal NW stir turret with a shouldered doorway and a stone spirelet. The belfry stage has Early English style blind arches with nook shafts flanking two-light belfry windows. The W face has a pair of lancet windows below a wheel window. The spire is of the chamfer type and has hooded louvres. The original S doorway is now internal and has nook shafts with moulded capitals and a richly-moulded arch with alternating brick and stone.

INTERIOR: The walls were originally bare brick but have now been painted white. One tile band below the eaves and running round the nave and chancel is exposed but another has been painted over. Between the nave and chancel is a chancel arch with deep moulding and a pair of shafts with deeply undercut carved capitals of passion flowers and roses. The nave roof has arch-braced trusses of scissor-braced collars and scissor-braced common rafters above the purlins. At the E end the apse roof is also scissor-braced with a carved central boss with the principal rafters chamfered and carried on carved corbels. The apse windows have internal shafts.

PRINCIPAL FIXTURES: The dominant feature is the impressive painted and gilded carved wooden reredos to designs by Charles Eamer Kempe, installed in 1901 and dedicated the following year. Its figure groups were made in Oberammagau and have delicate canopy-work over. There are hinged doors on either side. The decoration of the reredos was undertaken by Norman and Burt. The apse has a blind arcaded timber dado of trefoil-headed arches on shafts, a similar pierced sanctuary rail, an altar table with a blind arcaded front and an encaustic tiled floor. At the W end the tower arch is tall and has shafts with capitals. the organ was placed in the tower in the C20 and there is a C20 timber organ gallery. The nave has a wooden dado of blind arcading with brattished cresting. The nave seats are of the upside-down Y profile to the ends which are carved with rosettes. The floor of the nave is made up of wooden blocks. The nave walls are decorated with painted figures of the Evangelists in polychromatic wooden frames. These were acquired about 1886 and are probably by Herbert Wilson. The font is original to the church and has an octagonal bowl with ivy-leaf carving round the rim, IHC etc emblems on the faces, and a base with columns with moulded capitals. In the NE corner of the nave, the pulpit is also original and stands on a stone base. The stained glass includes windows by CE Kempe.

HISTORY: There was no church on the site before the present one was built in 1864 to fulfil the needs of the local population of the estate and village. The land, on the Ottershaw Estate, was given by Sir Thomas Edward Colebrooke. The architect, George Gilbert Scott (1811-78), began practice in the late 1830s and became the most successful church architect of his day. He also designed a number of very important and fine secular buildings, for example the Albert Memorial and the Midland Grand Hotel at St Pancras. He was awarded the RIBA Royal Gold Medal in 1859 and was knighted in 1872. He is buried in Westminster Abbey. His new churches generally have a harmonious quality which derived its character from the architecture of the late C13 or early C14 and he did not take up the more florid kind of High Victorian architecture that was popular from the late 1850s to the 1870s. It is therefore somewhat surprising to find him making extensive use of brick polychromy at Christ Church which is one only four churches where he seems to have done so: the others are at Crewe Green, Cheshire (1857-8), St Andrew, Leicester (1860-2), St Andrew, Uxbridge, Greater London (1865).

SOURCES:
Ian Nairn and Nikolaus Pevsner (rev. Bridget Cherry), The Buildings of England: Surrey, Harmondsworth, 1971, pp 399
DCS David, Christ Church Ottershaw: History and Guide, 1989.
Antonia Brodie et al., Directory of British Architects 1834-1914, vol 1 (London and New York, 2001, pp 558-9

REASONS FOR DESIGNATION:
The church of Christ Church, Ottershaw, is designated at Grade II for the following principal reasons:
* A mid-Victorian polychromatic brick church by one of the leading C19 church architects
* It retains most of its C19 fixtures
* The addition of the modern parish rooms and the painting out of the internal brickwork have had a significant impact on the original character of the building.

Legacy

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

Legacy System number:

441807

Legacy System:

LBS

End of official list entry

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