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South Bermondsey
St Augustine

Built: 1875 - 1883
Architect: Henry Jarvis & Son
Diocesan Record Office: London Metropolitan Archives

The church was declared redundant in 1995 and leased to another Christian denomination. The building is within the present parish of Bermondsey, St Anne & St Augustine.

Description

"One of Richard Foster’s churches. The Victorians believed that poor districts should have fine churches; and this is one of them. It was begun in 1875, and the east end and part of the nave were consecrated on 20 July 1878. Foster laid a stone on 18 November 1882, to commemorate the beginning of the western part - which was completed in the next year. There was to have been a tall tower, with gables, and an octagon with a low spire; but this was never built. Vestries by Hesketh and Stokes, 1907.

The architects were Henry Jarvis and Son, who produced a most impressive church: nave and aisles, vaulted chance! with aisles and ambulatory, a north organ gallery and south chapel. The church stands on an undercroft with a concrete vault. The exterior is fairly austere thirteenth-century: the inside lets itself go. The pillars in the nave, of sandstone, are of an unusual plan: a figure of eight. The double lancets of the aisles have tracery on the inner plane, five openings to a bay: the plate-traceried windows of the clerestory have an inner arcade. At the east end of the chance! are three openings to the ambulatory: the one in the centre has a gable with crockets.

Various details are reminiscent of other architects: Jarvis and Son were certainly not among the leading architects of the nineteenth century. But the church as a whole is admirable."

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

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