Church of St. Stephen, Westminster (1846), designed by Benjamin Ferrey

St. Stephen

Benjamin Ferrey

1846

Westminster, London

Woodcut by O. Jewitt in Eastlake, facing p. 247

Miss Burdett Coutts, to whose well-directed liberality many an English Church is indebted, had commissioned Mr. B. Ferrey to design and erect the Church of St. Stephen, at Westminster, on a site where it was much needed, viz. at the corner of Rochester Row, surrounded by houses of the poorest description. The denizens of Tothill Fields, and the Westminster Scholars who came to play cricket in Vincent Square, saw, with mingled pleasure and surprise, a tower and stone spire rising to a prodigious height from the east end of the north aisle.

Image scan and text George P. Landow

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The critics pronounced the spire too attenuated, even for its style (Middle Pointed), but approved the small courses of stone which were used for the masonry below, and confessed the knowledge of detail which the porches and window tracery exhibited. By and by the church was opened, revealing treasures of carving in stone and wood, encaustic tiles, and stained glassÑnot indeed of that quality which would now be accepted as satisfactory, but certainly as good as could then be obtained. The walls are plastered internally, but the plaster is stopped, as it should be, at the window quoins. The pulpit is original in design, and the mouldings throughout the church delicate and refined. An open-timbered roof, very good in style, covers the lofty nave, while that of the chancel is polygonal and panelled. [247-48; Eastlake spells the architect's name "Ferry" on the plate and "Ferrey" in the text.]

References

Eastlake, Charles L. A History of the Gothic Revival. London: Longmans, Green; N.Y. Scribner, Welford, 1872. [Copy in Brown University's Rockefeller Library]

Last modified 5 February 2008