Details
HENDON
31/0/10485
BRENT STREET Former St Saviour's Homes
(Formerly listed as: BRENT STREET THE PILLAR OF FIRE SOCIETY)
19-MAR-10
II
Former rescue home, later missionary complex, 1893-7, by H A Prothero and G H Phillott with minor later alterations.
MATERIALS: Red brick with stone dressings and some oak framing; tiled roofs
PLAN: The main building is centred on a quadrangle with a four-sided cloister walkway, entered via a passageway at the centre of the north-west range, which also contains the dining hall. The chapel projects outward from the centre of the north-east range. The south-east range contains the former laundry and schoolroom block. The rest of the main block comprises the original residential accommodation, initially planned as six discrete 'cottages', two each at the south and west corners of the quadrangle and one each to the north and east. Each cottage originally had its own kitchen, living room and enclosed service yard with toolshed and WC, as well as a room for a superintendent 'sister', but the internal plan in these areas has been very much altered. A separate gatehouse, containing two further 'cottages', stands at the northern corner of the site (see 'subsidiary features', below).
EXTERIOR: The main building is of one-and-a-half-storeys, built in a Tudor Revival style characterised by projecting timber-framed bays, tall brick chimney stacks with corbelled caps, and stone-mullioned windows to the principal rooms. The other windows were originally timber casements with leaded glass, but most have now been replaced with modern double-glazed units.
Externally, the salient features are the chapel, entrance tower and dining hall, and a smaller cistern tower to the south. The chapel projects forward from the Brent Street elevation, having a broad three-centred east window with Tudor-Gothic tracery and a niche finial above. The return elevations have square two-light clerestorey windows above blind lean-to aisles, and a shingled spirelet rises from the roof ridge. The square three-storey entrance tower stands in the middle of the north-west range. Its upper floors have mullioned windows, between which is a canopied niche; below, a four-centred archway with carved spandrels and oak doors gives access to the quadrangle. (A second doorway, immediately to the right, has been created by enlarging an existing window.) The dining hall is to the left, lit by three four-light windows and a big projecting bay with grid-like mullion-and-transom fenestration. The cistern tower rises from the south corner of the quadrangle, and has a battlemented parapet and louvred openings to its upper stage. The connecting ranges and corner blocks have low raking dormers and terminate in gabled projections with covered yards between.
The central quadrangle is apparently modelled on that of the famous C15 almshouse complex at Ewelme in Oxfordshire. A cloister walkway runs around all four sides, comprising a simple timber arcade covered by a catslide extension of the main roof slope. In the centre of each range a gabled timber-framed bay, with herringbone brick infill and diamond-paned mullioned windows, projects out over the walkway; the north-east bay contains the west end of the chapel and is of double height and breadth. The windows and doorways within the cloister have segmental rubbed-brick heads. Some retain original timber casements and four-panelled part-glazed doors; the chapel door has ornamental ironwork and is flanked by two diamond-paned windows with timber tracery.
INTERIORS: The most important interior is that of the chapel. This consists of a nave with narrow passage-aisles and a raised sanctuary, a western choir area, and an entrance lobby with a gallery above. The three-bay nave arcades have segmental arches of moulded brick on square brick piers. The square-headed clerestorey windows are set within pointed brick relieving arches; like the broad traceried east window they now contain modern plain glass, although fragments of stained glass survive in the upper lights. The nave floor, recently relaid, is of oak blocks in a herringbone pattern; the sanctuary floor is inlaid with coloured marble, and that in the lobby is of black and white marble. The roof is arch-braced, the principals resting on small stone corbels; the western trusses are reinforced with iron ties bearing decorative sunbursts. The two western bays of the chapel are timber-framed, and contain a three-sided gallery of carved oak with choir seating below. The choir stalls sit beneath arched canopies that support the timber-framed upper walls - in effect a continuation of the main brick arcades. These canopies have carved crockets, frieze and cresting, and the vertical posts have engaged Gothic finials; those flanking the main entrance formerly had angel corbels supporting the gallery-front, but these have now been removed. The stalls themselves have moulded arm-rests and linenfold backs. The frontals to the stalls and to the west gallery are pierced with small tracery panels. The gallery itself, reached via a spiral stair from the lobby, formerly had raked seating but now has a flat boarded floor. Its northern arm is enclosed within a glazed timber oriel structure.
The much plainer single-storey dining hall is in the north-west range and is entered via a four-centred stone archway beneath the entrance tower, to the left of which is a stone plaque marked with the date 1893 and the letters AMDG (presumably for 'ad majorem Dei gloriam' - 'to the greater glory of God'). The hall is a broad L-shaped space with a modern suspended ceiling and a wood-block floor, recently relaid. On the end wall opposite the entrance is a large fireplace with a heavily-moulded timber surround. To the left is a deep half-octagonal bay, extensively glazed, with a smaller doorway giving access to the rooms behind.
The remainder of the interior has been much altered, and few historic features remain. The porter's lodge within the entrance tower retains part of a narrow dogleg staircase with chamfered newel-posts, leading to a large first-floor room spanned by a four-centred arch of exposed brick. A second timber staircase survives in the south-east quadrangle range, and a third in the former schoolroom area to the north. In a nearby room is a blocked fireplace with a simple Classical surround.
Around the perimeter of the site there are a number of outbuildings and ancilliary structures, including the remains of a series of workshops and garages. Most have been altered or partly demolished, and all appear to post-date the main building; they are not of special interest. The same is true of No. 13 Brent Street, which may have been built as a later addition to the schoolroom block.
SUBSIDIARY FEATURES: At the northern corner of the site, facing Brent Green, is a gatehouse. It comprises two separate 'cottages', Brent Green Lodge and Lower Lodge, under a single long hipped roof, with single-storey lean-to outbuildings at either end. In the centre is a large square carriage entrance, above which a jettied gabled bay, box-framed with herringbone brick infill, projects to front and rear. The north (street) elevation has two gabled half-dormers and a doorway to the right, to which an open brick and timber porch has recently been added; the south elevation has four half-dormers and four ground-floor windows with segmental heads. The interiors have been much altered, and few historic features survive.
HISTORY: The St Saviour's Homes were founded in 1893 by the Revd William Herbert Seddon, former vicar of Painswick in Gloucestershire and honorary secretary to the Anglican evangelical association known as the Church Army. Seddon gave part of the grounds of his house, Fosters, as a site for the new buildings, which were designed by the Cheltenham architects Prothero and Phillott. St Saviour's was initially intended as a 'rescue home', presumably for the rehabilitation of 'fallen' women, but seems to have served from its opening in 1896 as a care home for the mentally disabled. In 1926 the site was taken over by the Pillar of Fire Church, a Christian revivalist group based in New Jersey, USA. The chapel was used for evangelistic services, and the rest of the complex used as a school and bible college. Various alterations, including a new entrance on the street front, were probably carried out at this time. Missionary activity gradually tailed off in the later C20, and the site was sold to a new owner in 2009. Since that time, extensive works have been carried out in order to facilitate conversion into a multi-purpose complex incorporating a synagogue, school and guest accommodation.
SOURCES:
Report in St Mary's, Hendon Parish Magazine, September (1893) (held at LB Barnet archives)
Church Army Annual Report, (1896), 72 (held at the Church Army archives)
Kelly's Hendon Directory, (1897)( (held at LB Barnet archives).
'St Saviour's Homes, Hendon, NW', in The Building News, June 11 (1897), 847 (report with illustration and ground plan)
Baker, T F T and Pugh, R B (Eds). A History of the County of Middlesex: Volume 5 (1976), from www.british-history.ac.uk, accessed on 13 August 2009
Vicinus, M. Independent Women: Work and Community for Single Women 1850-1920. (dd 1985)
Stanley, S C. The Feminist Pillar of Fire: the Life of Alma White (1993)
Mumm, S. 'Not Worse than Other Girls: the Convent-Based Rehabilitation of Fallen Women in Victorian Britain.' Journal of Social History 22:3, (1996) 527ff
Cherry, B & Pevsner, N. The Buildings of England - London 4: North (1998)
Petrie, H. Hendon and Golders Green Past (2005)
CgMs Consulting, Assessment of Interest in respect of The Pillar of Fire, Brent Street, Hendon (unpublished report, 2009)
Capt. Gordon Kitney, 'Wilson Carlile and the Church Army', from www.churcharmy.org.uk, accessed on 13 August 2009
REASONS FOR DESIGNATION: The former St Saviour's Homes, built in 1893-6 by the architects HA Prothero and GH Phillott, are listed for the following principal reasons:
* Historic interest: a substantially complete example of a late-C19 'rescue home', with an unusual quadrangular cottage plan based on that of a late-medieval almshouse complex;
* Architectural quality: a well-detailed complex of buildings displaying a homely and intimate Tudor Revival manner appropriate to their original purpose;
* Chapel interior: a good Arts and Crafts Gothic ensemble retaining fittings of high quality.
