St. Peter's Church, Gloucester

Introduction

The church is in Decorated Gothic Style, with a tall tower and spire at the south-east corner.

History

The church is a distinctive composition in Gothic Revival style, one of the most notable of Blount's commissions and dating from the middle part of his career. Extraordinary Ministers of Holy Communion assist in distributing Communion and take it to the hospital and sick parishioners. The Church Repository is usually open before and after all Masses on Sundays and weekday mornings.

Architecture and furnishings

The building of the church was funded by subscriptions from parishioners with a gift of £1,000 from Frances Canning. The interior has a four-bay nave arcade with clerestory windows, a timber arch-braced roof, and a west gallery supported on marble columns. The Lady Chapel and Sanctuary painting by Clayton and Bell was later modified by Linthont of Bruges in 1979. The stained glass is by Clayton and Bell.

The church is built of dressed stone in courses with ashlar details and a slate roof. The west tower has five stages with angle buttresses and a doorway with richly moulded jambs and arch. The tower's second stage has paired lancet windows with tracery trefoils, and between them a carved corbel supports a shaft with a foliated capital forming the base of a niche with a nodding ogee-arched head below a crocketed gablet. The tower has a clock face in the fourth stage on the west side in a moulded stone frame.

The upper stage is an open arcaded belfry with paired arched openings on each side, supported on circular columns with foliated capitals, and above a corbel table is a broach spire with two-light lucarnes in each cardinal face. The gabled front to the nave has three lancet windows with hoodmoulds, above which are two canopied niches containing statues of saints supported on corbels carved with busts of angels. Above a string course the gable has a large rose window with foiled geometrical tracery and a vesica light in the apex.

The chancel has gablets above the clerestory windows. The chancel arch is supported on short marble shafts set on carved corbels. The south chapel has a timber double-pitched panelled ceiling and the north chapel a similar segmental ceiling. The fittings include an elaborately carved and arcaded pulpit and a richly carved and painted reredos at the east end of the chancel.

Singers are welcome to assist in music for the Masses. The parish has a Music Ministry among its parish activities.

Sacraments and pastoral care

To be married at St Peter's, one of the couple must be a parishioner, either living in the parish boundaries or attending Mass there most Sundays. Gloucester Royal Hospital is looked after by a team of Catholic Priests, so the duty chaplain is the one to contact for anointing of the sick.