Description

1/0/10134 PACKINGTON STREET
16-OCT-03 CHURCH OF ST JOSEPH
Roman Catholic Church

II

Roman Catholic Church. 1885-87, designed by Edward Simpson, altered c. 1935-37 and extended 1964 by J H Langtry-Langton. Coursed stone with ashlar dressings and slate roofs. Gothic Revival style. Nave and chancel under a single roof, aisles and double transepts.
West front has single storey lean-to porch added 1964 with triangular headed central doorway flanked by single 3-light mullion windows. West gable has broad central lancet window with cusped lower tracery and flanking shafts topped with carved figure under canopies, which stand either side of a central crucifixion. Flanking lower and narrower lancet also have cusped tracery. The north aisle ends, to west, in a half-octagonal baptistery, which has a gable to each face over a circular window each with six tracery cusps, and below two square openings each containing a quatrefoil. South aisle ends in original porch, which would have formed the base of a tower, with pointed arched entrance doorway.
Nave has 3 pairs of clerestorey windows on either side, and no aisle windows below. Each window is made up of two plain lancets and a linking quatrefoil. Double transepts also have similar 2-light windows with lower tracery and a linking upper mandala or vesica. Chancel has 3 lancet windows to north and 2 to the south. East end has large central pointed arched window with 2-lights and a linking mandala.
INTERIOR has tall and broad chancel arch. Nave has two double chamfered and pointed arched arcades supported on octagonal piers to south and a similar 3 arched arcade to north. Shallow and low western arch to porch. Transepts have tall double-arched arcades. Fine quality decorative timber roofs to nave, chancel and aisles. Large painted 'stations of the cross' adorn the upper sections of the aisle walls. Original organ, wooden pews and carved stone reredos with 5 figures under a later carved wooden canopy. Floors, communion rail, and choir stalls all replaced 1937 to mark the building's Golden Jubilee. Figures of saints under canopies. The three side chapels have marble altars added 1937. This fine quality Gothic Revival style Victorian church survives well, with very interesting and high quality later alterations and additions.

External Links

• Historic England Listing
• Wikidata Q26670064

External links are from the relevant listing authority and, where applicable, Wikidata. Wikidata IDs may be related buildings as well as this specific building. If you want to add or update a link, you will need to do so by editing the Wikidata entry.

Recommended Books

• 
  Sussex: West (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Somerset: South and West (Pevsner Architectural Guides) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Suffolk: West: The Buildings of England (Pevsner Architectural Guides) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  [(Bedfordshire, Huntingdon and Peterborough)] [By (author) Nikolaus Pevsner] published on (January, 1968)
• 
  Bedfordshire, Huntingdonshire, and Peterborough (Pevsner Architectural Guides) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Devon (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)