As I was taking a stroll into Felixstowe yesterday, after leaving Mrs. No Name to enjoy one of the regular items in her busy social calendar, I approached a building that was fort like in appearance and gave every indication of being brutalist in nature. So it was somewhat of a surprise to find it was the Church of St. Andrew and as it was open and happy to receive visitors, I duly wandered in.
The building is a product of a design for a church that would be a suitably grand statement of Protestant triumphalism. and the result was England’s first reinforced concrete church. It is as striking and startling a building today as then – perhaps more so. It is most often seen first from Hamilton Road, where it rises above domesticated trees and mock-Tudor semis. The stark, uncompromising concrete is severe in this gentle suburbia. And yet, once inside it is rather traditional, and is familiar and as typical as hundreds of Suffolk churches, since so many were based around the late medieval Perpendicular style.
The use of concrete internally lifts the eye, given that the material rises in Perpendicular sheathes and pillars. The painted plaster between the concrete beams gives a curiously half-timbered effect but although the Suffolk Churches site acknowledges its importance and it is a Grade II* structure, there is no mention of any brutalist influence – which given that the church was built in the 1920s is understandable as it’s around thirty years before brutalism actually took off. But, take a look at the collage and tell me I’m lying.👌
Maybe the influence is the other way round! 🫨