St Francis of Assisi, Stratford

Introduction

The present church of St Francis of Assisi in Stratford was built in the 1860s as a combined school and chapel in a stripped Classical style with Italianate detailing. The church was opened by Archbishop Manning on 12 May 1868. The sanctuary addition of 1931 has a marble altar and reredos incorporating a sixteenth-century painting of St Francis by Bartolommeo Carducci.

History

In 1813, the Abbé J. F. Chevrollais built a chapel dedicated to St Patrick and St Vincent de Paul in the High Street, along with a school for 300 children. In 1861 Fr James McQuoin secured land in The Grove at Stratford from Charles Walker Esq. The design is attributed by The Buildings of England to E. W. Pugin, but this is thought to be an error. When the Franciscans arrived in 1873 they changed the dedication to St Francis of Assisi.

The friary was established in a pair of late Georgian houses to the rear of the church, extended in Gothic style in 1876 at a cost of £600, apparently from designs by Brother Patrick Dalton OFM. A new sanctuary was added to the church in 1931, with an altar and reredos from designs by W. C. Mangan, made by F. E. White and Co. In c1978 the sacristy was adapted to serve as a weekday chapel, under the direction of Gerald Goalen & Partner. The interior of the main body of the church was renovated and reordered in 1996-97 by architects Tooley & Foster Partnership of Buckhurst Hill and builders Noble & Taylor of Ongar.

Architecture and furnishings

The walls are faced with yellow stock brick, with stucco ornament and some red brick banding and red brick heads to the church windows. The west front has a pediment across the full width with two tiers of paired pilasters with entablature and cornice and an elaborate central stuccoed frontispiece. The frontispiece supports a small octagonal bellcote topped with a spirelet. The side walls are of five bays divided by pilaster buttresses, paired at each end.

The later tall square-ended sanctuary has a single broad round-headed window on each side. The interior is a single space: tall, plain and light. The west bay of the nave is occupied by a substantial timber organ gallery supported on two columns; the area beneath has been glazed in to form a vestibule. The fine organ is by Bishop & Son of Marylebone Road and is original to the church.

On the south side of the nave two round-arched recesses of different heights open into side chapels. The Holy Family group in the Sacred Heart chapel dates from 1868. A tall and shallow segmental chancel arch makes a slightly clumsy junction between the nave and the sanctuary added in 1931. The sanctuary has large windows in each side and a tall round-arched marble reredos on the east wall incorporating a sixteenth-century oil painting of St Francis by Bartolommeo Carducci.

The windows are mainly clear glazed with some twentieth-century stained glass roundels. The nave benches are probably of nineteenth-century date. The carved and painted Stations of the Cross date from 1932. The church was designed originally as a simple brick box in the classical style, with accommodation for a school on the ground floor and the church above.

Parish life

The parish has a St Francis Secular Order (SFO) group. The parish has a St Vincent de Paul Society (SVP) group. The parish has a Knights of St Columba group. The parish holds a Novena Mass for Dcana & Godfrey D'Souza.

Sacraments and pastoral care

The parish requires a minimum of six months' notice for marriage preparation and completion of formalities. Marriage preparation includes attendance on a Marriage Care course.

Baptism preparation consists of three preparation classes, usually in the evening for at least one of the parents. The parish offers a meeting with one of the Franciscan Friars for those interested in becoming a Catholic. The parish prays for the sick, lonely, anxious and suffering, and accepts intentions for parish prayers.