St Mary and St Egwin

Introduction

St Mary and St Egwin in Evesham, in the Archdiocese of Birmingham, was built in 1911-2 to designs by Sebastian Pugin Powell of Pugin and Pugin, in Middle Pointed Gothic or Decorated style. The church remains almost entirely unaltered since its completion.

History

The Catholic mission at Evesham was first established by the Passionist community at Broadway in 1887, when an iron mission church was built in the town. In 1900-1 a red-brick school was added, and a presbytery in 1903. The foundation stone of the new church was laid in September 1911, and the building, dedicated to St Mary and St Egwin, was opened on 27 November 1912. The majority of the cost of the building was funded by the rector, Rev R J Patten.

A sacristy was added soon after the church was completed. The current rood and rood beam have replaced an earlier rood beam over the altar, and stained glass was added to the side chapels and sanctuary in the 1920s and 1930s.

In 2021, thanks to the Lottery Heritage Fund, the church underwent extensive renovations to restore it to its original glory. The red-brick school added in 1900/01 is now the parish centre.

Architecture and furnishings

The church is built of rock-faced local limestone with Bath stone dressings and Welsh slate roofs. The church is orientated east-west, and has a nave with narrow aisles to north and south, transepts, chancel with polygonal east end, north and south porches and a tower at the SW corner. The interior has plain plastered walls and Bath stone dressings, with a woodblock floor and boarded roof with scissor-braced trusses exposed. The nave has tall, four-bay arcades with high, pointed arches springing from moulded capitals on octagonal shafts.

At the base of the tower is the baptistery, with low metal gates with applied symbols, red tile floor, and compartmental timber ceiling. The sanctuary is five-sided, with a forward altar. The chapels each have a stone altar with carved decoration, and timber triptych reredoses. The font is octagonal, with mouldings and cusped relief panels, on an octagonal shaft with moulded base.

The pulpit is timber, openwork with tracery and cusping. The reredos in the sanctuary is elaborately carved timber with painted panels, by Hardman. The stained glass to the sanctuary and in the east windows of the north and south chapels is by Paul Woodroffe, circa 1924-5. A highly-decorated rood beam and rood over the chancel arch replaces an earlier example over the altar.

The gabled west end has corner buttresses, two single-light windows to the ground floor and three tall, two-light traceried windows above, around a central, canopied image niche with a statue of the Virgin and Child. The south side has a later, single-storey sacristy in matching style and materials, running along the length of the aisle and transept, with a shouldered arched entrance doorway and a large four-light stone-mullioned window. To the west is an openwork timber gallery, the central part canted out, carried on chamfered and stopped posts, with a shallow arch between them, and cusped arcading to either side.

The nave benches have open backs and shaped ends. The font cover is octagonal timber, with a coronet of metal with applied gilded foliate motifs, matching the communion rails, which remain in situ. The chapels each have triptych reredoses, that to the north with gold-ground paintings, that to the south in a late Pre-Raphaelite style, possibly by Hardman or Guild of Handicrafts.