Details
ENFIELD
790/12/265 WATERFALL ROAD N14
20-NOV-03 SOUTHGATE
(South side)
Southgate Parish Church
WATERFALL ROAD N14
SOUTHGATE
(South side)
Christ Church
(Formerly listed as:
WATERFALL ROAD N14
SOUTHGATE
Parish Church of Christ Church)
GV II*
Anglican church. Stands close to Southgate Green. Foundation stone laid 1861, consecrated 1862. Designed by George Gilbert Scott in Early English style. Total cost £11,689.28. Church office built in the tower in c.1980. Snecked Kentish Rag with Bathstone dressings; slate roofs. Plan of chancel and clerestoried nave with lean-to N and S aisles, NE chapel, SE organ chamber, SE vestry and NW porch/tower.
EXTERIOR: The chancel has angle NE buttresses with gables and a SE buttress at the junction with the vestry. Triple lancet E window under a sexafoil, paired lancets on the N side. The vestry has paired E end lancets and a 3-sided, buttressed SE projection. There are steps up to a doorway on the W side with a shoulder-headed doorway to the boiler room below. The nave has angle buttresses, a clerestory of 4 paired trefoil-headed one-light windows. The W end has a richly-moulded W doorway with shafts with stiff-leaf capitals, flanked by blind-trefoil-headed arcading, shafts to match the doorway, with a hoodmould with carved heads. Large triple lancet W window with a vessica window above. Original 2-leaf door with elaborately ornamented strap hinges. The N and S aisles have angle buttresses and gabled windows to each bay. These are paired lancets under trefoils. The NE chapel has a 2-light E window with plate tracery and 2 N side lancets. Imposing, stout NW tower with plinth, moulded strings and angle buttresses, the NE buttresses incorporating a stair turret with a lean-to roof. The turret is broken forward in the centre under a gable and has a doorway and slit windows. Richly-moulded N doorway with shafts with bell capitals and original 2-leaf door with ornamented strap hinges. The N face has a tier of quatrefoils above the doorway and a clock face (clock installed in 1887) above the quatrefoils. The W face has paired lancets to the ground floor stage. Slit windows to the bellringing stage. The belfry stage has large 2-light plate traceried windows flanked by blind arcading and is corbelled below a substantial broach spire with a single tier of gabled lucarnes.
INTERIOR: Moulded chancel arch on marble shafts with ring mouldings and stiff-leaf capitals. Common rafter scissor-braced nave roof. The chancel has an open wagon roof. The N and S arcades have quatrefoil piers with ring mouldings, moulded capitals and double-chamfered arches. Arches to the organ chamber, NE chapel and tower on tapering reeded corbels, the tower arch is partly infilled by the c.1980s office. Original encaustic tiles throughout, the patterns and colours elaborated at the E end. The nave tiling incorporates attractive ornamental heating grilles. The chancel has internal black marble shafts with ring mouldings and moulded arches. Moulded arches into the NE chapel and SE organ chamber with marble shafts added in 1913. Fine alabaster, marble and mosaic reredos under three crocketted gables, the Last Supper mosaic by Salviati, the design similar to one in Westminster Abbey. This is flanked by blind alabaster and marble trefoil-headed arcading across the E wall with coloured marble banding and a stiff-leaf cornice and capitals . Alabaster and marble sedilia and recess on the S side of the chancel added in 1906 in the same style as the E wall decoration with stiff leaf capitals to the trefoil-headed arches. Good quality choir stalls with shaped, shouldered ends with rounded finials, the backs decorated with friezes of pierced quatrefoils. Polygonal timber pulpit, a First World War Memorial, with carved sides on a wineglass stem. Font with an octagonal alabaster bowl, alternate sides carved with baptism scenes. The bowl is supported on a marble stem with marble shafts with moulded capitals and bases. Tall timber font cover of 1913 with open trefoil-headed sides and an open crocketted ogee timber dome. Nave benches with moulded shouldered timber ends and umbrella stands. The NE chapel was refurbished and decorated in 1905-1906. It has good timber parclose screens. The roof is plastered and covered with stencilled decoration, the walls also stencilled and including texts and oil painted figures and scenes from the life of Christ. A coved chancel screen added to the church in 1937 has been resited against the W wall. The c.1980 timber and glass church office is reached by a staircase in the tower. The figures were executed by Percy Bacon and Bros Ltd. Notable stained glass. The E and W windows are by Clayton and Bell. Other windows are a well-documented series by the William Morris studios, the general scheme and layout the responsibility of Philip Webb, designers including Burne Jones and Ford Madox Brown. The windows represent work by the Morris studios from the 1860s to the early C20. The NE chapel windows are considered to be some of the earliest in the church and it has been suggested that the figure of St Matthew might be a self-portrait of Morris. The high-set N windows in the chancel are very fine and were designed by Burne-Jones. Several monuments are re-sited from the previous church including a large marble wall tablet to Sir David Hechstetter, d.1721.
Historical Note: There was a C17 chapel on the site to W of the present church.
A large 1860s church with a fine tower. The interior is outstanding for preserving features and fittings, some of which are original, but most pre-dating 1920 including stencilled and painted decoration of 1905-1906. Good stained glass windows include an outstanding series by the William Morris studios. The church and walls to the N and E form a group.
Sources
Collins, D, A Guide to Christ Church Southgate, c.1995
Pevsner, London 4 North, 1999, 454
Jeeves, D, Christ Church, Southgate: Notes on the Windows, c.1990
Listing NGR: TQ2968393418
This List entry has been amended to add sources for War Memorials Online and the War Memorials Register. These sources were not used in the compilation of this List entry but are added here as a guide for further reading, 26 October 2017.
