St. Leonards on Sea, E Sussex - Parish Church - Judges postcard c.1970s

• • • Postcard

       

    • Picture / Image:  St. Leonards Parish Church, [East Sussex]
    • Publisher: Judges of Hastings (C 2612X)
    • Postally used: no
    • Stamp:  n/a
    • Postmark(s): n/a
    • Sent to:  n/a
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Text from the free encyclopedia WIKIPEDIA may appear below to give a little background information (internal links may not  work) :

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St Leonard's Church is an Anglican church in the St Leonards-on-Sea area of Hastings, a town and borough in the English county of East Sussex. The main church serving James Burton high-class mid 19th-century new town of St Leonards-on-Sea was designed by Burton himself just before his death, and it survived for more than a century despite being damaged by the cliff into which it was built; but one night during World War II, the sea-facing building was obliterated by a direct hit from a damaged V-1 "doodlebug" which had crossed the English Channel. The Gilbert Scott brothers' bold replacement church was ready in 1961, and along with a sister church at nearby Bulverhythe it continues to serve the parish of St Leonards-on-Sea, now part of the Hastings conurbation. English Heritage has listed the building at Grade II for its architectural and historical importance.

By the 12th century, Hastings on the English Channel coast was one of Sussex's largest and most important towns. The famous Battle of 1066 took place nearby; a castle was founded; the town operated its own mint; it was the leader of the Cinque Ports; and seven churches existed within its boundaries.^[1][2][3][4] The surrounding manors included Gensing, a large and attractive expanse of land running down from a forested valley on to flat agricultural land and a beach immediately west of the town.^[5] As Hastings recovered from an 18th-century slump and started to become fashionable and well patronised again in the early 19th century,^[6] speculative development was encouraged.^[5]

James Burton, a builder and entrepreneur who later fathered the prominent architect Decimus Burton, saw the potential of the Gensing estate land, which was owned by the Eversfield baronets of Denne Park near Horsham, West Sussex.^[5]He bought a large section of this manor, including 1,151 yards (1,052 m) of seafront land, for £7,800 in February 1828, and developed a carefully planned new town, St Leonards-on-Sea, on it.^[5] Residential, commercial and hotel development was rapid, especially after it was incorporated as a town by an Act of Parliament in 1832 (previously it had been run as a private enterprise by Burton),^[7] and the resort soon rivalled neighbouring Hastings in popularity.^[8]

The resort took its name from the long vanished St Leonard's Church and its accompanying parish, which still existed in name. The church, on the site of the present Norman Road Methodist Church, was demolished "between 1404 and 1428"—one of several churches lost in the Hastings area in the medieval period.^[5] At various times it had belonged to an abbey in Rouen in France and to Harmondsworth Priory in Middlesex.^[9] One of Burton's first acts in planning the town was to find a site for a new parish church. Services were originally held in a house, number 36 Marina, and arranged by Burton's wife.^[10] In January 1830, Burton announced to the General Quarter Sessions that Anglican worship would take place at the town's Assembly Rooms on a temporary basis. This was followed by a statement that he sought to build a "chapel" and burial ground serving St Leonard's parish and the neighbouring parish of St Mary Magdalene.^[11] (This largely undeveloped area of land, east of St Leonard's parish, was named after some almshouses rather than an ancient church.)^[5][9]

...

The Gilbert Scotts already had several postwar churches and unexecuted schemes to their name, individually or jointly.^[14]They generally worked in a "simplified modernistic Gothic Revival" style, which was their chosen motif for St Leonard's Church.^[25] Giles Gilbert Scott's proposal for the rebuilding of war-damaged Coventry Cathedral (1946–47) and his brother's work on the St Mary and St Joseph's Church on the Lansbury Estate in east London (1950–54), both based on a series of parabolic arches, informed their work at St Leonards-on-Sea:^[26] the design theme was used both inside and out.^[25][27] Adrian was principally responsible for the design, and construction began in October 1953.^[28] The building was ready to be opened for worship in April 1955,^[28] although it lacked the intended south tower: this was added in 1960–61^[14] and the church was reopened.^[27] Adrian Gilbert Scott was apparently inspired by the unusual sea-facing site (the church is the only one on England's south coast to have a direct, uninterrupted sea view from its entrance): he stated "no architect could wish for a more romantic or inspiring site on which to build a church".^[29]

More landslips from the cliff occurred in the 1980s^[30] and 1990s, and defences had to be built around the church; in 2000, the building's future was said to be uncertain, and closure was considered.^[14][23] More damage was caused by an electrical fire on Christmas Day 2003.^[30]

The church is built of pale buff-coloured brick and cream-coloured stone.^[14][24][25] The roof over the nave and chancel is shallow with deep eaves and is laid with pantiles. A "fine blocky Gothic tower", elevated above the road and with a staircase in front, dominates the façade; it has a series of parabolic arches forming recesses. These have Perpendicular Gothic mouldings.^[24][25] The church has a simple north–south plan like its predecessor (the Gilbert Scotts changed to this layout after an earlier, more complex plan was considered too expensive).^[14] Recessed into the tower are three straight-headed wooden double doors with triple windows above them and a tall, pointed-arched three-light lancet window above.^[14] Higher still is a clock and a giant window in the form of a cross,^[25] illuminated at night and used as a landmark by vessels in the English Channel.^[31]

Inside, the nave has narrow aisles with vaults and internal buttresses, but the dominant feature is another set of parabolic arches which form "a giant arcade" as they lead the eye to the chancel and sanctuary and to the side walls.^[24][25] The walls have greenish-blue stonework set in a wave-like pattern; this motif was also found at the contemporary Lansbury Estate church.^[14][25] Other maritime themes include images of "locally caught skate and herring" as part of the loaves and fishes imagery on the marble floor of the sanctuary—described as a "forceful" allegory.^[14] The rector of the church at the time of the bombing, Canon Cuthbert Griffiths, was responsible for the internal decoration: soon after the old church was destroyed he dreamed that Jesus was preaching to the church's congregation from a boat on the Sea of Galilee (Matthew 13).^[23][28] Soon afterwards, he travelled there, and in the village of Ein Gev he bought a boat whose prow had been converted into a pulpit. He arranged for it to be brought back on board a ship to be used in the new church. The Prince Line Shipping Company transported it on a vessel which was making its last voyage; the company presented the boat's binnacle to Canon Griffiths to use as a lectern.^[14][23]