Roman Catholic Church of St Saviour, and the brick entrance walls, Totland, Isle of Wight

Summary

Description

Roman Catholic church, completed in 1923, designed by the Preston-based architects WC and JH Mangan for the Diocese of Portsmouth; to the north-east are a pair of walls flanking the principal entrance way.
The attached 1999 parish centre* and linking covered walkway* are not included in the listing.

MATERIALS: a brick building, laid in a variety of bonds, with brick detailing, and topped by tile roofs.

PLAN: the church has a cruciform footprint orientated roughly east to west, with a tower attached the west end.

EXTERIOR: the church employs patterned brickwork and Romanesque-style features including single-light round-arch windows with tile voussoirs (most of which contain leaded glazing, apart from at the east end), brick banding and a dogtooth dentil course under the eaves. The decorative brickwork includes panels with a cruciform motif employed at various points around the building. The building retains some metal raingoods including several decorative hoppers. The west front has a colonnaded narthex (enclosed with later glazing). Above, in the west gable end, are four windows, and a central recessed niche containing a later mosaic panel. This end is flanked by a pair of sweeping brick buttresses. Attached to the north-west is the tall bell tower incorporating recessed panels with projecting headers, bracket corbels beneath arched openings, and exaggerated projecting eaves topped by a pyramidal roof. A polygonal former baptistery (later the Martyrs Chapel) projects from the north-west corner of the church. The main body of the church is topped by a shallow-pitched tile roof with overhanging eaves supported by moulded timber brackets. The building is flanked to the north and south by lean-to single-storey aisles with single and paired windows. Above is the clerestory with single and paired windows divided by vertical brick bands. East of the aisles are a pair of flanking flat-roof single-storey wings with concrete parapets, and above are a further pair of sweeping brick buttresses. At the church’s east end is a polygonal apse decorated by recessed arcading, and to the north and south a pair of polygonal single-storey side chapels; all have shallow roofs and deep eaves.

INTERIOR: the main entrance is through the narthex which is divided from the main body of the church by a brick partition with blind arch recesses on either sided; a central pair of timber doors leads through to the nave. To north is the polygonal former baptistry; it includes the original metal and timber rails, a metal and timer altar (which may have relocated here from elsewhere in the church), and a painted triptych of 1983 by Lyn Cottrall, together with paintings of St John Fisher and St Thomas More. On this side of the church is the bell-tower’s stone staircase which also leads up to the organ gallery.

Within the main body of the church there are round arches throughout, and a combination of red brick with blue brick detailing has been used. Most of the internal wooden doors include leaded-glass panes. The nave has a parquet floor. Above the west end is the organ gallery fronted by a timber rail. The current organ is a late-C19 instrument by Bryceson Brothers, which is understood to have been installed in the 1950s. The nave is flanked by arcaded aisles with segmental arches on square pillars, and herringbone patterns in the spandrels. Above is the clerestory windows which are divided by brick pilasters. The walls are topped by stepped brick corbels. The nave has an exposed timber roof consisting of principal king-post trusses with diagonal bracing; the trusses are supported by moulded corbels. Most of the open wood pews are original (some closed-back pews to the rear of the nave are later replacements). The font (repositioned in the nave in 1990s) has a deep octagonal bowl with carved Gothic panels on a base of clustered polished shafts. The stations of the cross are stone reliefs which have replaced the earlier wooden panels. At the east end the nave is flanked by doors leading to, the confessional and sacristy on the north side, and a pair of storerooms to the south, as well as a southern side entrance door. There are statues at various locations within the church. There is other original metal work within the church including some surviving wall-lamp brackets and the sacristy bell.

The east end, beyond the broad brick chancel arch, has white painted plaster walls and ceilings. There is a short chancel with semi-circular stained-glass windows, below which are arches leading to the side chapels. The chancel, side chapels and altar steps have a mosaic floor laid in a fan pattern with a black marble border; the altar rails have been removed. The marble-clad high altar was brought forward to this location in the 1970s. The apsidal sanctuary has a half-dome roof and is lit by three small stained-glass windows. Most of the original stained-glass windows are in the east end and some are signed by Barrowclough and Sanders of Lancaster. There is a stained-glass window at the east end of the southern clerestorey; this was added at a later date. Against the east wall is the marble-clad tabernacle; the original timber reredos has been removed. The sanctuary is flanked by silver sanctuary lamps and round-arch niches; the southern niche contains the stone piscnina. The wooden chancel furniture, including the pulpit, are later additions.

SUBSIDIARY FEATURE: to the north-west of the church is the main entranceway flanked by curving Flemish-bond brick walls with square piers, all capped by tiles. The walls incorporate projecting headers in a diaper pattern and the piers include tile panels with a cruciform-motif that mirrors those found on the main church.

* Pursuant to s1 (5A) of the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990 (‘the Act’) it is declared that these aforementioned features are not of special architectural or historic interest. However, any works to these structures and/or features which have the potential to affect the character of the listed building as a building of special architectural or historic interest may still require Listed Building Consent (LBC) and this is a matter for the Local Planning Authority (LPA) to determine.

This list entry was subject to a Minor Amendment on 13 January 2023 to correct designer's name

History

The Church of St Saviour is a Roman Catholic church located on land which formed part of Weston Manor estate in the late-C19. Weston Manor (Grade II*, National Heritage List for England (NHLE) entry 1209416) was built for Mary Ward and her husband William Ward, between 1869 and 1870 to designs by George Goldie; it included a purpose-built Catholic chapel. Mary’s ambition was to build a separate Roman-Catholic church in Totland; however, it was her eldest son Edmund Granville Ward who realised his mother’s ambition by leaving £5000 for this purpose upon his death in 1915. The site of the church was located to the north of the house, and near to an existing school (which later became St Saviour’s Roman Catholic school) and a Roman-Catholic burial ground. The Church of St Saviour was designed by the Preston-based architectural firm Mangan and Mangan and completed in 1923. The Buildings of England Isle of Wight volume comments that the form of the church was perhaps ‘based on that of a Romanesque basilica, but with overtones of Art Deco and strident individualism’ (Lloyd and Pevsner, 2006, pp145-146).
In addition to the church, the contemporary presbytery to the south was also designed by the same architects. The sanctuary was reordered in 1973 by CAF Sheppard. In the late C20 (1999), a hall was added to the south of the church and linked to it by a covered walkway.

The architect Wilfrid Clarence Mangan (1884-1968) undertook several commissions for the Portsmouth diocese. At St Saviour, Wilfred worked with his brother James Henry Mangan (1876 -1935) who he was in partnership with from 1908 until 1926. Wilfred was amongst the most prolific inter-war and post-war Roman-Catholic church architects in England and several examples of his work appear on the National Heritage List for England, including Church of English Martyrs, Tilehurst Reading (Grade II, 1925-1926, NHLE entry 1456862) which he also designed with his brother.

Reasons for Listing

The Roman Catholic Church of St Saviour, including the brick entrance walls, Totland Bay, Isle of Wight, is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:

Architectural interest:

* the inter-war church has an strong and well-detailed external brick design in an Italianate Romanesque style that includes a prominent corner tower (campanile);
* the churches interior has a strong continuity with the external design, and retains good-quality joinery, as well as marble and mosaic work.

Historic interest:

* it is a good example of the work of WC Mangan, a notable early-C20 church architect who was responsible for several designs for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Portsmouth, working along with his brother JH Mangan

Group value:

* it has a strong architectural and functional relationship with the associated presbytery (Grade II), and a historic association with the nearby Weston Manor (Grade II*), the home of the church’s patrons.

External Links

Historic England Listing

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