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Battersea
St Mary-le-Parc

Built: 1883
Architect: William White

The church was demolished in November 1967 and replaced by a new church, vicarage and block of flats.  This church was also declared redundant and sold in 1994.  The buildings were within the area of the present parish of Battersea, St Mary.

Description

"A fragment of a most ambitious church, opened in May 1883. The scheme, proposed in 1881, was to make this the parish church, instead of the old St Mary's - but nothing came of this, and the new church was made a chapel of ease. It eventually gained a parish. White's design included a large tower and spire on the north of the chancel. What was actually built was the east end: apse with ambulatory, chancel, south chancel aisle (apsidal, used as a chapel); north chancel aisle, used as a vestry, and north transept (added in 1903 by J S Quilter): and two bays of the nave, with north aisle, and a makeshift aisle on the south.

Notwithstanding the general feeling of unsuccessful accomplishment, and the fact that the church is very poorly fitted, it is without doubt an impressive interior. The best part is the sanctuary: the pillars are circular and solid: rather unexpectedly, the capitals have naturalistic foliage. (Why have the arches been painted bright red?) The arch at the west is a good deal lower than the roof and there is quite an effect of space; there are similar arcades north and south of the chancel. The screen is of iron."

(from 'Parish Churches of London', Basil F L Clarke, Batsford, 1966)

Built: 1968 - 70
Architect: David Cole

The church was declared redundant in 1991 and sold in 1994 to a Philippino Pentecostal Church.

Description

"Location and setting:
The church stands on the south side of Parkgate Road, London SW11. The site of the original church built here extended to the west side of Albert Bridge Road, and the church was placed prominently at the angle of the two roads not far to the south of Albert Bridge which takes the road northwards over the River Thames into Chelsea. But when the Victorian church was demolished the eastern part of the site was redeveloped with a block of flats, and the church now occupies a more reticent position beside the side street. To the west of the church is the contemporary vicarage, and a large London plane tree in front of the church is more prominent in the streetscape than the vertical element which takes the place of a tower. There is hardly any curtilage, only a paved area in front of the church and a very small yard behind it. The garages of the block of flats adjoin the east side of the site.

Architect and date:
By David Cole of Weybridge, 1968-70. The foundation stone was laid by Earl Spencer.

Plan:
Roughly a square with irregular projections from the sides. The church is placed above a hall with ancillary rooms, and is approached by a flight of steps on the west side; the altar stands across the south-east angle of the interior and on the south side is a small chapel which also serves as a porch to a wheel-chair ramp leading up from the block of flats on the east.

Dimensions:
About 49ft. square.

Building Materials:
The walls are built of dark grey-brown brick laid in Flemish bond with concrete lintels, and the flat roof is covered with 3- layer bitumen covered with chippings.

General Description:
The church is designed in the rectilinear modern style fashionable at the time, which in its more extreme forms is called Brutalist. The walls are sheer, of dully coloured brick, and the windows take the form of vertical slits between planes of brickwork set back from the principal walls. On the north side two of these are placed at right angles to the walls and rise higher than the flat roof to form a vertical feature in place of a tower or spire. To the west of the main block of the building is a straight flight of brick steps in two sections, each of twelve steps, which form the only entrance to the church apart from a now disused ramp leading up from the south-east into the south chapel. The large plane tree which forms a principal feature of the setting of the church stands directly in front of, and very close to, the bottom of the steps. Nearby a door leads into the lobby of the hail which is placed beneath the church. The other three sides of the church are not really visible from any public place, but continue the rectilinear style with tall vertical slits for windows near the edges of each principal wall.

The interior is reached from a small lobby at the head of the external steps and is roughly square in plan. The walls are of exposed brick of the same dull shade as the exterior facings and the vertical windows are mostly concealed within the angles of the building so that shafts of light fall across the brickwork and enliven the surface. The roof is concealed by a flat ceiling of wooden laths and over the altar, which stands on two tiled steps across the south-east angle, is a raised area of ceiling allowing light to fall on the altar from above.

A doorway on the south leads into the chapel which has a window or three unequal vertical slits in the east wall and an external doorway in the south wall. A second doorway at the west end or the south wall leads into two or three small rooms intended for use as sacristies and communicating with the upper floor of the adjoining vicarage."

(from report prepared by the Council for the Care of Churches, March 1990)

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