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The Church Building

The Holy Family church was designed by Liam McCormick, an architect for many post-war churches in Ireland. His design for the parish church, achieved in close collaboration with Father McDonald (who commissioned the building), is his only church in England. The present church hall and social club was built (designed by Weston, Burnett & Thorne of Southampton) and used as the temporary church until the building of the permanent church in 1966 to designs by Liam McCormick. 

The church was designed at the time of the Second Vatican Council. There is virtually no separation between sanctuary and nave, with the same tiled floor carried between the two. (It was only on March 2018 when a simple altar rail was built to separate the sanctuary from the nave). The church is well composed on a shallow slope, an irregular T-plan with the taller sanctuary at the head of the T. Almost detached slender bell tower on a podium of steps set at the liturgical northwest corner, linked to the nave by an open corridor or cloister, with a side chapel rising behind.

 

The bell tower is effectively a slab with its thin face towards the front and with a slot in the depth of the wall in which the bell is set. Fawn brick walls with glazing largely confined to a horizontal clerestory band beneath the deep, white painted, fascia to the flat asphalt roofs, and opening into the almost totally glazed liturgical west wall. A satisfying composition of counterpoised shapes and vertical and horizontal accents. In the cloister are four mosaic panels, symbols of the Evangelists. A disabled access ramp was added in 1981.

The church is entered at the right hand end of the cloister, into a passage with the main church to the right. The impression on entering the church is of the immense volume, interrupted only by slender steel pillars, the texture of the exposed brickwork and Californian redwood ceiling and the striking light effects due to the fenestration arrangement and the stained glass.

 

The interior is lit by full height clear glazing to the south-facing (liturgical west) wall of the baptistery, unusually placed off the sanctuary. This has the effect of bathing the sanctuary in light from windows not visible from the nave and enhanced by the use of white brick contrasting with the yellow brick used elsewhere. Almost the entire liturgical west wall of the nave is glazed and this window runs into the narrow clerestory band, with the effect that the roof seems to float, supported only by the steel pillars. The stained glass is by Helen Moloney of Dublin; from left to right it depicts the Creation, through the Fall to the Redemption, in bold blues, yellows, reds and greens.

The church is entered at the right hand end of the cloister, into a passage with the main church to the right. The impression on entering the church is of the immense volume, interrupted only by slender steel pillars, the texture of the exposed brickwork and Californian redwood ceiling and the striking light effects due to the fenestration arrangement and the stained glass.

 

The interior is lit by full height clear glazing to the south-facing (liturgical west) wall of the baptistery, unusually placed off the sanctuary. This has the effect of bathing the sanctuary in light from windows not visible from the nave and enhanced by the use of white brick contrasting with the yellow brick used elsewhere. Almost the entire liturgical west wall of the nave is glazed and this window runs into the narrow clerestory band, with the effect that the roof seems to float, supported only by the steel pillars. The stained glass is by Helen Moloney of Dublin; from left to right it depicts the Creation, through the Fall to the Redemption, in bold blues, yellows, reds and greens.

Above the altar a dropped panel in the ceiling forms a kind of subtle canopy. There is little to distract the eye from the altar, a 7½ ton block of Portland stone. Even the rood is matchstick thin, though the effect has been compromised by being moved onto the wall and onto a broader Portland stone cross designed to cover up a crack in the wall.

Behind the altar, the only colour to be seen was introduced by the bright green and red of the tabernacle set into the wall, red tongues of fire surrounded by a green border inscribed Sanctus.

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