The Present Church - Exterior
The foundation stone of the new Georgian church was
laid between 1 pm. and 2 pm. on Monday, 30th October 1786, by Alderman Isaac Baugh,
a merchant engaged in the Africa trade, deputizing for the Mayor, who was ill. The
architects were the Bristolians Thomas and William Paty, father and son. Since the
whole church was hemmed in by shops, only the upper part of the tower and its lower
west face, needed architectural trim. It has four storeys, the third with an Ionic
order and the fourth beautifully varied from this and with Corinthian capitals; then
comes a plain parapet and four opulent urns at the corners, and the graceful spire
stands on an over-tall panelled octagonal pedestal. This transition is the only defect
of a fine design; the rather mediaevalizing spire does not grow harmoniously from
the tower. Ultimately, the ancestor of this and many other classical steeples is
Gibbs's St Martin-in-the-Fields, London; Paty's interpretation is a lovely landmark
of about 160 feet at the highest point of the walled city. Henry Williams's disastrous
remodelling of the west portal in 1882-1883, with fussy "Florentine" details, misrepresents
Paty's clear design.
The Present Church - Interior
The interior at once receives us into an area of light,
elegance and space in spite of Henry Williams's mauling, the luminous glass, the
pale stone and painted plaster, and the gilding, make this a bright church. The
distant inspiration is again St Martin-in-the-Fields, but the nearer prototype is
Charles Evans's church of 1785 at Great Badminton, where Paty may have worked on
the decoration. No structural division is built between nave and chancel, and the
four bays on to North and South aisles are supported by tall and exceptionally slim
shafts topped with capitals of acanthus leaves but without volutes, a natural and
beautiful (but rare) development from the Corinthian. The East wall once contained
a charming altar-piece, with columns and pilasters with imaginative capitals of deal
painted white and gilded, which was consigned to the crypt in the 1882-1883 "restoration":
the altar piece would have contained the Ten Commandments and the Lord’s Prayer,
painted on deal. These painted boards have not survived. The stone mason F. Bell
then supplied the ugly stonework of the East windows and a cumbrous Italianate reredos,
which a good architect, C.W.F. Dening toned down in 1911. Luckily, the original altar
piece survived more or less intact, and in 1928 it was replaced one bay to the West
as a rood-screen; it is the policy of the church to restore it to the east end.
