Church of Our Lady, Star of the Sea including boundary wall to Gordon Road, Lowestoft, Suffolk

Summary

A Roman Catholic Church built between 1900-1902, designed by the architects George and Reginald Baines.

Description

Building: A large Roman Catholic church in a decorated Gothic style.

Date: 1900-1902.

Architect: George and Reginald Palmer Baines, with Surveyor F W Richards.

Materials: Red Somerleyton brick and Costessey ware (terracotta made in Costessey near Norwich).

Plan: All references to compass points in this report are liturgical, that is describing the sanctuary as the east end. The building is roughly rectangular in plan, with an apsidal east end, and a rectangular area where the sacristy extends to the north-east. The tower is offset to the north-west corner. The south-west corner porch is attached to a glazed link corridor which leads to Stella Maris Hall.

Exterior:

The building consists of a tall nave of six bays, with a single-storey apse at the east end. The nave has six two-light, windows each side with tracery in the Decorated style, forming the clerestory. There are single-storey aisles each side of the nave, with lean-to roofs. There is a copper-covered, timber octagonal fleche towards the eastern end. The apse is flanked by square chapels with gabled roofs and circular east windows. The nave roof is gabled: the gable-end forms the west frontage onto Gordon Road. To the north of the west front is the tower, of three stages, with angle buttresses. Each face of the lower stages has an arched window, except the north face which has a large gabled door with a tympanum. The second stage of the tower has an arcade of three blind arches, the upper stage has paired, pointed arch windows. The tower is topped with four crocketed pinnacles.

The west front contains two doorways, one to the nave and one to the south-west porch. Both have two-centred arch ogee surrounds with finely-moulded archivolts: the nave doorway is recessed and has a niche with a statue of the Virgin and Child above the door. The hood moulds above the main door have carved angel stops. The west front has buttresses with large octagonal crocketed finials. There are bands of blind-arcaded tracery above the west door and the south-west porch. Above the west door is another band of blind-arcaded tracery, and above this is the large five-light west window with Decorated style tracery.

Interior:

The interior is entered from the south-west door, which is attached to the Stella Maris Hall by a glazed link, or by the west door which opens into the narthex.

The principal rafters of the nave form false hammer-beams to which tie-rods are secured. The aisles have similar large principal rafters with spandrel cusping. There are five-bay arcades of polished granite columns, with alternating round and octagonal capitals, and bases on tall stone plinths. There is a largely complete set of original pews. The clerestory and aisle windows contain glass with stained glass patterns in an Arts and Crafts style.

The high sanctuary arch has naturalistic leaf capitals. There is a seven-section ceiling to the apse formed of plastered and painted panels, depicting the Kingship of Christ and the English Martyrs. There is an original set of furnishings: an elaborate gothic reredos with painted figures beneath gilded gothic arches, and a throne and altar, all carved by A B Wall of Cheltenham. It is reported that a ceramic mosaic floor is retained underneath the carpet. There are fine ironwork grilles separating the sanctuary from the two side chapels. The five two-light windows of the apse contain rich, colourful figurative stained glass.

The Sacred Heart chapel on the north of the sanctuary has an original marble altar, reredos and altar rails. The ceiling is a plaster groin vault, painted with angels and symbols of the Passion.

The Lady chapel on the south of the sanctuary retains its original furnishings and is decorated in a similar manner to the north chapel, with angels, and chequered ribs, but the vault is painted blue. Both of the side chapels have ceramic mosaic floors and round windows with star-shaped tracery and stained glass.

The north wall contains a door to the sacristy with an ogee hood mould with scrolled ends, and above it are wall paintings depicting St Thomas More and St John Fisher. The sacristy extends out towards the north and has a pointed-arched external door.

The north wall also contains the confessional with a pair of pointed-arched doors with stained glass, beneath hood moulds with round stops with foliate carving.

The tower is accessed through doors at the west end of the north aisle. There is a spiral staircase with access to the upper stages of the tower, and a turning, cantilevered staircase leading to the organ loft, which contains a 1902 Norman and Beard organ.

The narthex at the west end is formed from glazed panels.

Subsidiary Features:

To the street frontage of the church and presbytery is a low brick wall with six heavy brick and stone piers with gothic decoration.

History

England’s many medieval churches had been built for a Roman Catholic mode of worship (the Latin rite). Elizabeth I’s 1559 Act of Uniformity rendered them all part of the Church of England and outlawed the Catholic Mass. The following two centuries imposed upon a diminishing minority of Catholic worshippers in England severe civil inequalities, public suspicion and periods of outright persecution. Aside from a small number of private chapels and foreign embassies, there were very few buildings dedicated to Catholic worship.

The Second Catholic Relief Act of 1791 permitted the first new generation of Catholic places of worship to be built in England and Wales since the Reformation. They were forbidden to feature bells or steeples and were typically small, classically or domestically detailed, and were often hidden or set back from public view. The 1829 Act of Emancipation removed most remaining inequalities from Catholic worship and was accompanied by a growing architectural confidence. By the 1840s A W N Pugin’s vision of the Gothic revival as a recovery of England’s Catholic medieval inheritance fuelled stylistic debate and inspired new design for both Catholics and wider society. In 1850 Pope Pius X ‘restored’ the role of bishops, cathedrals and dioceses in England, inviting even grander architectural projects.

There was a significant expansion in the numbers of Catholics in England between 1850 (around 700,000), 1911 (around 1.7m) and 1941 (2.7m). This increase was accompanied by the development of a new Catholic parish system in 1908, by the construction of convents, monasteries, schools and social institutions, and by landmark buildings such as Westminster Cathedral (consecrated 1910).

Though the First and Second World Wars had some short-term impacts on the rate of expansion, the boom in schools, new towns, suburbs and housing estates in the 1950s and 60s saw more Catholic churches built in England than at any time since the Reformation. During that period the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) introduced profound reforms to the Catholic church, including architectural changes informed by the Liturgical movement. Key changes include saying the Mass in languages other than Latin, and the reordering of churches to reflect a greater ecumenism and communality of worship.

The revival of Roman Catholic worship in Lowestoft is believed to have begun in around the 1860s, when Jesuit priests from St Mary’s Great Yarmouth travelled there and established a mission in 1867. The first permanent chapel was created above a fishing net store in the Denes, by the first appointed mission priest, the Reverend Geoffrey Brennan.

In 1884 Geoffrey Brennan’s successor, the Reverend Alexander Scott, raised funds for a new church building, and in 1885 purchased the site of the current building. In 1899, an anonymous donation of £10,000 enabled the parish to engage the architects George and Reginald Palmer Baines of London (a father and son partnership). It is not known exactly why the Baines were selected as they were well-known designers of non-conformist churches: this was their only commission for a purpose-built catholic church. George Baines (1852-1934) was a prolific London-based Scottish architect. He was joined in practice by his son, Reginald Palmer Baines (d.1962) in 1901. His practice may have been responsible for the design of as many as 200 churches in his lifetime, the majority of which were Baptist chapels.

Bishop Riddell of Northampton laid the foundation stone of the new church in Lowestoft on 23 August 1900, and it opened on 5 June 1902. In 1904-6 the surveyor F W Richards, who had also worked on the church, built the detached presbytery to the north-west of the church.

In the Second World War, the church was severely damaged by enemy bombing. A photograph in the Northampton Diocesan yearbook for 1949 shows the church with all its windows boarded up, and piles of rubble in front of it. The damage was eventually repaired, and the building was consecrated on 22 October 1952. The railings outside the church were probably lost at this time, and the boundary wall was partially rebuilt.

Following the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) the high altar was retained, painted and gilded. However, with Mass to be said by the priest facing the people, Father Tomlinson acquired a new temporary wooden altar to stand on the sanctuary floor inside the main altar rail gates.

Father Anthony Sketch reordered the church 1985 raising the lower floor of the sanctuary, replacing the temporary wooden altar (that had lasted nearly twenty years) with a new permanent stone altar having the relic of St. Maria Goretti emplaced in a tablet therein. This was consecrated on 20 July 1985 by Bishop Alan Clark. The high altar and tabernacle were left in their original position. The pulpit was reworked into an ambo. The glazed narthex was also created under the west gallery

In 1985-6 the Stella Maris Hall was built, designed by Boris Kaye, positioned parallel to the south side and linked to the south-west porch (formerly the baptistry). The south-west door was consequentially blocked internally and the font that had been near this door was removed.

In 2019 major repairs were carried out, with grant aid from the National Lottery Heritage Fund.

Reasons for Listing

The Church of Our Lady, Star of the Sea including the boundary wall to Gordon Road, is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:

Historic Interest:

* as an illustration of the revival of Roman Catholic worship in Lowestoft in the C19 and at the turn of the C20.

Architectural Interest:

* as a distinguished design in an Early English Gothic style using red brick and Costessey terracotta ware;

* for its richly-decorated interior;

* as the only Roman Catholic church designed by the renowned architects George Baines and his son Reginald Baines, who were prolific designers of non-conformist churches.

External Links

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