Reasons for Designation
Yes List
Details
31/0/10486 DURHAM ROAD
07-JAN-11 35A
CHURCH OF ALL SAINTS
II
Church. Built in two phases 1890-92 and 1911-12 by JEK and JP Cutts. Alterations in late 1980s/early 1990s.
MATERIALS: Red brick laid in English bond with Bath stone dressings. Clay tile roofs.
PLAN: Five-bay nave, five-bay apsidal chancel, narthex, west and north porches, north and south aisles, transepts, south chapel, north vestries, north organ loft and parish rooms inserted at W end of nave.
EXTERIOR: Perpendicular style. West front with a slightly canted narthex with a large four-centred, five-light, arched window with curvilinear tracery. Either side is a two-light pointed window. Within the gable end of the nave, the west window has the same four-centred arched window but with six lights, more elaborate tracery and an ogee finial to the arch. Below the narthex window a large stone, square-headed, entrance was introduced in the late 1980s/early 1990s. The two original entrances are set in porches to either side of the narthex, projecting forward from the W ends of the aisles. These have four-centred arches within a square-headed frame with deep elaborate mouldings and fleuron decoration to the arch, label and in the spandrels. Above the entrances are the four-centred arches of the aisles. The elevation is finished with stone banding, string courses, buttresses with sloping stone capping and projecting angel sculptures on the moulding above the narthex window and at the springing point of the west window.
The side elevations of the nave are of five bays with each bay of the clerestory divided by brick pilasters and having two four-centred arched windows. The bays of the aisles are flanked by buttresses, each bay with a window set in a pointed arch. The south transept has a large five-light, pointed window with curvilinear tracery whilst the north transept has a rose window. Adjoining the north transept is the sacristy/choir vestry with a flat-roofed porch whilst adjoining the S transept is the south chapel with a two-light, square-headed window with ogee tracery on the south elevation and a three-light, four-centred arched window in the gabled east elevation. The apsidal chancel has a five-bay east end with the bays separated by buttresses topped by aedicules with pinnacles rising above. These are linked just below the battlemented parapet by a tablet flower moulding. Each bay has a tall, two-light, pointed arched window with panel tracery. A date stone with the date 7 October 1911 is affixed to the chancel. The division between nave and chancel roofs is marked by a tall, gabled, stone bellcote.
INTERIOR: Red brick finish with stone dressings and banding except for the west end of the nave which has been plastered (with a plastered ceiling under the late C20 organ loft) and the stone panelling to the chancel. Floors are mainly soft-wood parquet, probably installed in the 1970s, although the chancel retains its original polychrome tiling. The hammer-beam roof of the nave rests on simple stone corbels and has wind-bracing to the purlins and iron tie-rods. The apsidal chancel also has a hammer-beam roof with a carved ceiling boss. The west end of the church has been altered: besides the new entrance with its glazed wooden doors, the three two-centred arches through from the narthex to the nave have been infilled (as have the two four-centred arches from the original entrance porches) and an organ loft has been introduced at the west end of the nave, cutting across the first two bays of the nave arcade. The area below the organ loft has been screened off from the remainder of the nave by cut-down sections of the timber rood screen (originally installed in front of the chancel arch in 1911). Over the screen is a panelled timber balcony to the organ loft. The aisles have also been blocked off and a kitchen/service area created at the west end of the south aisle. The nave arcades have two-centred arches with compound piers, as do the tall chancel and transept arches. Below the recessed clerestory windows is a tablet flower moulding matching that on the exterior. The south chapel has been enlarged by the blocking of the four-centred arch from the south aisle to the south transept and introduction of a glazed pine screen across the transept arch. Similarly a new vestry has been created in the north transept (originally the site of the organ) by the same method. The south chapel contains an aumbry with double foiled arches and hood mould. The chancel has ornate stone panelling (decorated with blind arches with trefoil heads) extending in three tiers in the blind arches between the windows. The former choir vestry and sacristy remain to the north of the chancel.
FITTINGS: The original choir stalls and pulpit have been removed although the church always had chairs rather than pews in the rest of the church. Bath stone multi-foil bowl-and-stem font with engaged colonnettes to the stem. Marble main altar and wooden Gothic altar rails from 1912. The altar in the S chapel has an altar piece and frontal by the influential C20 embroiderer Beryl Dean (1911-2001); The Golden Madonna 1991-4. Rood cross, originally from St Thomas's, Bethnal Green, added in the 1950s. Wooden First World War memorial panel with Gothic tracery and crucifix in front of the blocked W arch in the N aisle. Organ originally installed in a Wesleyan chapel in Clapham in 1878 by the firm of Alfred Hunter and relocated to All Saints' in 1951. Rebuilt when moved to the current organ loft.
STAINED GLASS: Early C20, east window of the south chapel of the Madonna and Child flanked by angels by Burlison and Grylls; panels of saints in the central window of the chancel by George J Hunt of 2 Sydney Grove, Old Hendon. Most windows have plain glass.
HISTORY: First phase of 1890-92 to designs by JEK and JP Cutts of 28 Southampton Street, The Strand, built on land given by the Ecclesiastical Commissioners. A consolidated chapelry was assigned in 1900 from Holy Trinity, East Finchley and St. James's, Muswell Hill, and the Ecclesiastical Commissioners made further grants for building and endowment. From 1900 the church was a vicarage in the patronage of the bishop of London. A perspective drawing by the architects shows that the church was originally designed to have a prominent steeple to the north-east. This is not shown on the original ground plan which depicts the church with a temporary chancel. An apsidal chancel, transepts, and a sacristy and choir vestry to the north-east where the steeple had been intended, were added in 1911-12. An adjacent church hall was built in 1935 and subsequently demolished in the 1980s. Reordering took place in the late 1980s/early 1990s including the re-siting of the rood screen, organ and font; alterations to the entrance; creation of the new organ loft and the removal of the choir stalls.
John Edward Knight Cutts (1847-1938) was articled to the well-known and prolific church architect Ewan Christian from 1865 to 1870 after which he set up in independent practice. His younger brother, John Priston (1854-1935), was articled to him in 1877, remained as an assistant and was a partner by 1886. Cutts senior was diocesan surveyor for St Albans in 1881-7. The firm developed a busy church architecture practice and specialised in generously-proportioned, economically-modest buildings, typically of red brick in the Early English style and designed to meet the great demand for new churches at the end of the C19.
SOURCES:
Victoria County History - A History of the County of Middlesex: Volume 6: Friern Barnet, Finchley, Hornsey with Highgate (1980), 82-86;
Bridget Cherry & Nikolaus Pevsner, The Buildings of England - London 4: North (1999), 119;
www.sussexparishchurches.org - Architects and Artists A-Z - accessed 20 July 2010;
www.churchplansonline.org - accessed 20 July 2010.
REASONS FOR DESIGNATION: All Saints' Church, East Finchley, by the practice of JEK and JP Cutts in two phases, 1890-92 and 1911-12, is designated at Grade II for the following principal reasons:
* Architectural interest: an imposing late-Victorian Perpendicular church designed by a notable architectural practice, whose proportions and attention to detail, internally and externally, raise it above the standard of many large suburban churches of this period
* Materials and craftsmanship: high-quality stonework and detailing throughout, notably the window tracery and panelling of the chancel; an impressive hammer-beam roof
* Townscape value: the church occupies a prominent suburban hillside location.
This List entry has been amended to add the source for War Memorials Online. 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.
