The church is a Grade II* listed building and the entry at
English Heritage (visit
link) tells us:
"Church. 1866-7, designed by Joseph Peacock. Octagonal
north-east vestry, passage behind east end and south-east chapel added by H R
Gough 1887. Chancel recast 1903-8 by G F Bodley and Walter Tapper. Coursed
Bargate stone (Yorkshire parpoints to 1887 additions), with Bath stone
dressings. Slate roof. Transitional but eclectic Gothic style, with many
individual features. Nave and lean-to aisles, double transepts broadening out of
aisles, and further short transepts north and south of choir. North-west tower
planned but not built. Tracery of unusual patterns throughout, with rose windows
over long lancets in east end and choir transepts as well as over two very long
windows at west end. Clerestory of irregular design. Deep entrance porch at west
end of north aisle. Interior has nave of six bays with arcade of Pennant stone
columns, Bath stone arches and polychromatic brick wall surfaces, all now
painted. Timber roof to nave of braced Queen post type. Pews by Peacock. Chancel
wholly recast by Bodley and Tapper. Tall reredos by Bodley with gilded wooden
figures carved by Bridgeman of Lichfield; organ loft on north side, 1905-6;
black and white marble paving by Bodley and Tapper; rood by Tapper, 1908. Also
by Tapper, St Stephen's Chapel under organ, 1913. Equivalent chapel on north
side by Sir Charles Nicholson, 1936. Font under west windows by Peacock, now
surrounded by choir stalls by Tapper and with tall inter-war canopy. Stained
glass of variable quality, but including good west windows by Mayer of Munich,
1881. Much in aisles by Lavers, Barraud and Westlake. One of the best remaining
churches by the 'rogue' Victorian architect, Joseph Peacock; 'tamed by other
hands' (Goodhart-Rendel) but with a richness of added interest rather than loss
of effect."
The British History On-Line website (visit
link) has a detailed history:
"St. Stephen's Church stands at the south corner of the
junction between Gloucester Road and Southwell Gardens. It was built in 1866–7
to forceful designs by Joseph Peacock, was enlarged in 1887, but has since, in
the words of H. S. Goodhart-Rendel, been 'tamed by other hands', notably those
of G. F. Bodley and Walter Tapper in 1903–10.
During the 1860s H. B. Alexander's lands east of
Gloucester Road were in process of intensive development. St. Stephen's, sited
strategically on Alexander's freehold midway between an area already being built
up and another earmarked for impending development, seems to have been first
conceived as an estate church, looking especially towards the rising
neighbourhood of Queen's Gate Gardens and Place to the east. But no doubt it was
expected to appeal also to the whole new district between Harrington Road,
Gloucester Road, Kensington Road and Queen's Gate, where St. Augustine's was not
built till 1870–1.
St. Stephen's owes its origins to Archdeacon John
Sinclair, Vicar of Kensington. By March 1864 Sinclair had agreed with Alexander
for the site, which was to cost £3,000. An architect, Joseph Peacock, had been
chosen and a design settled; subscriptions were now solicited. First, however, a
temporary church was built on the east side of Gloucester Road, a little to the
south of Cromwell Road, and opened early in 1866. At the same time the
foundation stone of the permanent St. Stephen's was laid. It took just under a
year to erect, being consecrated on 10 January 1867. Simms and Martin were the
builders. Their tender of August 1865 amounted to £7,777, but the cost of
construction was reckoned a year later at about £9,500. For the time being
Peacock's tower was postponed, though by the terms of the agreement with
Alexander it had to be added within five years. A large proportion of the money
came from John Cator of Woodbastwick Hall, Norfolk, who became patron of the
church.
As it appeared on completion, St. Stephen's was the most
accomplished of a group of four South Kensington churches, all built between
1866 and 1873, which shared elevations of rough-hewn stone, polychromatic brick
interiors, plans which set out to reconcile the tenets of ecclesiology with the
seating traditions of Evangelical worship, and strident styles of Gothic verging
upon what has become known as 'roguishness'. (fn. d) Peacock (1821–93) was
numbered by Goodhart-Rendel among the 'rogues' of the Gothic Revival, but little
enough is known of his career or intentions. He was probably trained as a
surveyor, yet became primarily an architect of churches, among which St. Simon
Zelotes in Milner Street, Chelsea (1858–9), is the best-known and best-preserved
example.
Peacock's brief at St. Stephen's seems to have been to
provide a 'Broad Church' interior which could house a large and fashionable
congregation without recourse to galleries; 1,100 sittings in all were required,
of which most were for renting. He therefore planned the church on 'correct'
ecclesiological lines, with distinct nave, aisles and chancel (fig. 153). But in
order to give extra capacity he enlarged the easternmost bays of the aisles and
built large, commanding transepts north and south of the choir.
These arrangements were candidly, indeed piquantly,
expressed on the exterior of the church, which was broken up into contrasting
and occasionally colliding parts with some semblance (as at the junctions of the
transepts with the gables to the aisles) of portions added over the years.
Peacock's massive Rhenish tower, had it been built, would have added to this
sense of separate elements, for it was to stand detached in a north-west
position next to the porch. The exterior, which is in a French
thirteenth-century style, is marked by a predilection for odd but
well-calculated window sizes and shapes (fig. 154). Rose windows boldly surmount
lancets or other thin, tall lights at the east and west ends and in the
transepts, while in the queer, squat fenestration of the clerestory Peacock
evidently 'enjoyed himself', to quote the Reverend B. F. L. Clarke. The
buttressing throughout is pronounced and no doubt exaggerated beyond necessity,
notably at the end of the north transept, where it is thrice pierced by an
arched passageway with a lean-to roof. The facing of the exterior is in small
coursed blocks of Bargate stone rather than the commoner Kentish rag, with the
usual Bath dressings. At first Peacock had wanted to vary the colour with some
diaperwork, but this was suppressed in execution. Nevertheless the small columns
at the corners of the chancel and transepts are of Red Mansfield stone, and the
roofs were originally of green slate.
Internally, the church was also formerly gay and
colourful. The piers of the nave were of blue-grey Pennant stone and their
capitals and bases of Hollington stone. The arches above were ribbed in Bath
stone, but their faces were finished in a variety of pale malm, red and black
bricks, a combination which recurred throughout the walling of the church except
in the chancel, which was stone-lined. The clustered columns carrying the roofs,
the chancel arch and the ribs were variously of Bath, Mansfield, Serpentine and
Devon marble. There were patterned Minton tiles on the floors of the baptistery
(a modest excrescence in the north-west corner) and chancel, while the east wall
was diapered in tiles and 'rather resembles what is popularly known as Tunbridge
ware', felt one early visitor. The nave roof is of a braced Queenpost type,
while the chancel is vaulted, with groining of wood. The aisles and transepts
also have open roofs, those under the double gables at the ends of the aisles
being separated by a single slim stone column. An eccentric feature throughout
the interior is the sharp pitch of many of Peacock's Gothic arches, as in the
clerestory and in the screens of open columns interposed between the chancel and
transepts.
Despite all this individuality, when William Pepperell
viewed St. Stephen's in 1871 he was struck by its 'agreeable harmony' and 'quiet
general tone… There is a peaceful influence produced by the quiet colouring and
grey columns and excellent proportions of the church … There is nothing glaring,
nothing particular to arrest or attract the eye, yet every part is worthy of
inspection, and the parts taken together produce one of the best and most
exquisitely charming interiors with which we are acquainted in the
neighbourhood.'
The first incumbent of St. Stephen's, J. A. Aston, was
an Evangelical. He left in 1871 and was replaced by J. P. Waldo. Under Waldo and
his successor, G. Sutton Flack, the church began to assume a 'higher' tone,
until by 1900 it was firmly Anglo-Catholic in character. These changes affected
the interior. To Peacock's displeasure, Aston had erected galleries as early as
1868, one at the west end and another for children in the south transept; these
were to remain until 1894–5. In Waldo's time the church began to acquire
embellishment. The east windows had been stained (by O'Connor) in time for the
consecration, and Peacock had put in an angular font and a large stone pulpit
with columns of marble, but there was no proper reredos. This want was supplied
in 1876 when the builders T. H. Adamson and Sons installed a carved reredos of
alabaster and marble. Stained glass also started to arrive in quantity from
about this time, notably perhaps in the west windows of the nave, filled in 1881
with 'Munich' glass of good quality by Mayer and Company.
The impetus to build Peacock's tower seems to have faded
quite early; a weaker, alternative design was made by E. C. Robins in 1871 at
the start of Waldo's incumbency, but this was not built either. Instead, a more
practical addition was made in 1887. The church having proved deficient in
vestry space, H. R. Gough (architect of St. Cuthbert's, Philbeach Gardens) was
employed to remedy the fault. His extensions, faced in Yorkshire parpoints with
dressings of Corsham stone, were erected by Chamberlen Brothers of Hammersmith
at a cost of about £1,400. At the north-east corner Gough placed a big,
octagonal top-lit vestry; this was linked by a lean-to passage behind the main
east wall to an apsidal morning chapel, formerly known as the Lady Chapel, later
as the Holy Souls Chapel. N. H. J. Westlake of the firm of Lavers, Barraud and
Westlake decorated this chapel. In 1889 he installed stained glass here, and in
1894–5 coloured the little apse with ornamental painting and stencilling and set
an iron screen (by Jones and Willis) within the arch between church and chapel.
Westlake added to the decoration in 1910, but his work has now been painted
over, so that the only remaining objects by him in the chapel are the glass and
a pretty carved aumbry. The chapel has now been entirely cut off from the
church.
Westlake's firm also stained most of the aisle windows
of the church, and in 1899 he decorated the baptistery area in the north-west
corner. Possibly the firm was responsible also for some decorative painting on
the east wall of the sanctuary, still extant but hidden by
curtains.
In 1900 a new era began with the appointment to St.
Stephen's of the Reverend Lord Victor Seymour. Seymour's refined, aristocratic
eye found the interior unseemly, and a programme of rapid change was soon set in
motion. G. F. Bodley was the architect brought in, and in 1902 he delivered a
report as unfeeling towards Peacock's building as could be imagined. It began:
'The church was built at a time when Gothic architecture had been little
practised and was an almost unknown art. Though its dimensions are spacious the
proportions and the details are very unhappy… in colour and in the details the
fabric is sadly incongruous. The stained glass is bad, and, except in the aisle
windows of the nave which are better, though feeble, in no way commends itself…
The chancel is unfortunately short and there is a great lack of dignity about
the sanctuary … In these days of greater knowledge of church architecture it
would seem to be very desirable to try and make all the improvements that are
possible.' Specifically, Bodley suggested rebuilding the east end eight feet
further out to a new design, colourwashing the whole interior, painting the
roofs in red, white and gold, and installing a chancel screen and new reredos
('the existing reredos is extremely poor and ill designed').
These ambitious plans had to be reduced, and the east
wall remained. But in 1903 Bodley was able to reconstruct the sanctuary, with a
new marble floor, altar, lamps, cross and, most dramatically, a towering carved
and gilt reredos which obliterated Peacock's central lancet and broke into the
rose window above. The wooden figures for the reredos were by Bridgeman of
Lichfield and the decorative painting by W. O. and C. Powell, who also
embellished the sanctuary walls and roof. Other fittings and the hangings of
'red Mabuse velveteen' round the altar were by Watts and
Company.
"