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This 1920s reinforced concrete-framed commercial building has an unusual, lively and eclectic arrangement of classical decorative elements on the facade.
The building has been added to once, in 1960, when a penthouse was built on the roof. It was also much altered internally throughout the 1960s. More recently the building has been converted for various uses. The building has housed a range of tenants in its history, among them dentists, land agents, jewellers and insurance agents.
often times it is only the belief in individualism that allows me to retain my sanity. while I often find myself a victim of the expectations of others, they cannot define me, limit me, or control me as long as I understand that their perceptions of who I must be are irrelevant to the truth of who I am. there resides in each of us a personality that defies external limitation. -Drizzt Do'Urden
Kit Jones - Tank cubes puzzle interactive, made for the Tank Museum. Each side of the puzzle depicts a different tank. Level 6, External Brief, 2024.
St Paul's, Newington
Woodroffe Buchanan and Coulter, 1955
Modern architecture church with large copper and lead roof and concrete, brick and stained glass external structure. Marble, wood and plaster interior and artwork by Sculptor Freda Pinto and Gerald Holtom.
Post-war churches, whether wholly new or partial replacements for their bomb damaged predecessors, rarely rise above the mediocre. Money was always scarce and traditional building skills, common before the war, could no longer be taken for granted. Nor was it clear which style should be chosen or what kind of compromise should be struck between tradition and contemporary building technology.
St. Paul’s, Lorrimore Square, distinguishes itself as one of the very few new Anglican churches built in London after the war which tries to break out from the past and adopt what then passed for full-blooded modernism. It replaces an early Gothic revival church of 1856, destroyed by fire in 1941, which had once been a controversial centre for High Church ritualism before its congregation migrated en masse to St. Agnes, Kennington. Only the tower and spire now survive from this original church: everything else is the work of H.G. Coulter of Woodroffe, Buchanan and Coulter and dates from 1955-60 (although consecration took place in 1956).
The new church retains the traditional plan with a long nave, transepts and an east end Lady Chapel but expresses them within a framework of reinforced concrete, walls of concrete blocks with small offsetting windows, and a roof of strange wedge shaped panels. Pevsner refers to “a restless, somewhat self-consciously modern exterior, with spiky gables and dormers in a copper roof and a zig-zag honeycomb patterned side-windows . . . the interior is pleasantly calm, with subdued lighting and a ceiling of interesting shapes”.
The carving of the risen Christ is by Freda Skinner, and the coloured glass by Goddard and Gibbs.
Outside, a small rooftop fleche, covered in copper, helps maintain the church’s focal position within the late 1950s Brandon Estate, one of the LCC’s pioneering post-war redevelopment schemes for the rebuilding of South London.
[*Open House Festival]
Taken during Open House Festival 2024