Emmanuel Church - Lyncroft Gardens, West Hampstead, London, UK - This Old Church on Waymarking.com

 Emmanuel Church is a historic Grade II church in West Hampstead, a suburb of London, England.

The church is located on the corner of Lyncroft Gardens and Fortune Green Road, just off West End Green.

Services started in a schoolroom at West End Green in 1846. However, the church was formally founded in 1875.

The current building was designed by architect J. A. Thomas in the Gothic Revival architectural style. Construction began on 19 June 1897 and was completed on 29 June 1903. It was built with red bricks. The south chapel inside the church has a painting by Frank O. Salisbury.

The church is still active. Services are conducted every weekday and eucharists every Sunday.

The church building has been listed as Grade II by English Heritage since 11 January 1999.

Emmanuel Church is one of many hundreds of parish churches that were constructed in urban areas during the course of the nineteenth century. Its brick construction is an indication of its late nineteenth century date. For many years, fashions in church building decreed that churches should be constructed of stone. It was only with the bold use of brick in the distinctive churches of William Butterfield and John Loughborough Pearson, in the second half of the nineteenth century, that brick came into widespread use in the construction of churches.

From about 1840 it became fashionable to build churches in the ‘Gothic Revival’ architectural style, the nineteenth century’s updated revision of the styles of church architecture in use from the eleventh to the fifteenth centuries. There are echoes of this style in the architecture of Emmanuel Church, principally the tall pointed arches (a standard requirement for Gothic Revival) and the narrow lancet windows, typical of ‘Early English’ the earliest style of original Gothic, dating from the eleventh and twelfth centuries. ‘Early English’ was definitely an unfashionable style in the nineteenth century, architects preferring larger windows with elaborate ‘Decorated’ or ‘Perpendicular’ tracery. ‘Decorated’ in particular was considered by the Ecclesiologists to be the ‘perfection’ of the style; ‘Early English’ was dismissed as primitive and ‘Perpendicular’ was considered a sign of the decline of the Gothic style.

The typical feature of the Early English phase is the narrow lancet window, a feature that Emmanuel Church possesses in abundance, compared with the wide traceried windows of the ‘Decorated’ and ‘Perpendicular’ phases.

Emmanuel Church is sometimes described as being ‘basilican’ in plan. A basilica is a rectangular building with a main aisle, two side aisles, a double colonnade, and an apse at the opposite end to the main entrance. This is derived from state and civic architecture in the Roman empire, and was adopted by the earliest Christian churches. Although Emmanuel Church has some elements of a ‘basilica’, other traditional elements, including a coffered ceiling, are missing.

Anglican church. 1897-8, chancel and first 4 bays; 1903 west end completed. Only ground and first floor of tower built. R Whitfield and JA Thomas, architects. Red brick with stone dressing. Tiled roof.

PLAN: Basilican plan with north and south lean-to aisles of 5 bays, apsidal east end. 'Salisbury' chapel at south-east corner. Entrance through north porch fronting Lyncroft Gardens (originally base of tower). Clerestory chancel lower than nave.

EXTERIOR: 5 bays divided by brick buttresses. Paired Early English lights in each bay in clerestory, with brick moulding and brick dentilled cornice above. Aisles have 3-light lancets with brick moulding and brick dentilled cornice above. Narthex at west end with small apsidal chapel with separate roof. 3-light window with brick mouldings on western apse with brick dentilled cornice above. 5-light lancet window at east end; group of three flanked by single lancets at west end.

INTERIOR: white brick with bands of red brick. Tall 5-bay nave with aisles. Arcades of pointed arches on clustered columns. Arcade at west end divides nave from narthex. Barrel-vaulted open timber roof. Paired lancet windows in clerestory; aisle windows 3-light lancets, plain glazed. Chancel with reredos depicting Last Supper designed 1908 by JA Thomas. Carved oak pulpit 1901 by Thomas. Organ built 1910 by JW Walker and Sons. Mosaic floor. 3 windows at east end depicting scenes from the Life of Jesus 1903. Brass eagle lectern 1898. West end has baptistry in apse: Gothic Revival stone font resting on marble colonnettes (1898). Oak cover 1902. Stained glass of 1904 depicts subjects connected with the Baptismal service. Includes window given by the architect of the church JA Thomas in memory of his partner, R Whitfield d.1901. Salisbury Chapel furnished in 1952 by painter Frank Salisbury.