St Paul The Apostle Church

Introduction

St Paul The Apostle Church in Wood Green is a modern church with an interior space devised on a pentagram plan.

History

A mission was established in Wood Green in 1884 and a Romanesque-style church built in 1904 from designs by Edward Goldie. The church was originally flat-roofed; the pitched roof was added in 1984.

Architecture and furnishings

The main church is in the form of a pyramidal-roofed pentagram built of bush-hammered reinforced concrete with brick facing panels and set cornerwise to the road. The street frontage is occupied by a lower building containing the vestibule and side chapels, faced with pre-cast concrete panels with round-headed openings, many containing stained glass from the old church. On the right of the forebuilding is a concrete mast topped by a cross. The main interior has structural brick and concrete exposed in the walls and a grid of concrete ceiling beams with inset timber panels resting on a massive cross-beam over the sanctuary in the apex of the pentagram.

Natural light is provided by a strip clerestory around the top of the wall and by a hidden skylight which illuminates the sanctuary. The stained glass windows reused in the vestibule are mostly early to mid-twentieth-century work by Jones & Willis, Goddard & Gibbs and others, brought from the old church. The church provides seating for 600 people. The simple sanctuary fittings are presumably contemporary with the present church.

Parish life

The parish runs groups for prayer, social action, Sacramental preparation, youth work and support of others. The parish is associated with St Paul's Primary School, St Martin de Porres Primary School and St Thomas More Secondary School. The parish office provides information on Baptism and Marriage Preparation.

Visiting

The main interior has a brick-paved floor that slopes down to the sanctuary with ranks of bench seating. Below the Pilgrim Church window is a gallery space containing the Stations of the Cross made by M. Clarke, who also made the figure of St Paul on the sanctuary wall. On one side wall of the pentagram is the organ, on the other the glazed screen to the day chapel and the vestibule with its stained glass windows.