Patrick Comerford
When I was I Brockley last week, visiting Comerford Road and Saint Mary Magdalen Church, I also visited the neighbouring Church of England parish church, Saint Hilda’s Church in the Crofton Park area of Brockley.
Saint Hilda’s Church was designed by FH Greenaway and JE Newberry and was built in 1905-1908. The Grade II listed church is built of Crowborough brick with Chilmark stone dressings and is seen as a fine example of Arts and Crafts ideas superimposed onto Gothic church design. The church has been listed as an ambitious example of an Arts and Crafts Gothic Edwardian suburban parish church, and as the most notable example of a church by Greenaway and Newberry.
In its listing, English Heritage describes Saint Hilda’s as one of the best Edwardian churches in London, interpreting traditional form and detail in an innovative manner. The architectural historian Gavin Stamp say it is one of two ‘remarkable and inventive buildings’ that distinguish this part of South London, the other being the Horniman Museum in Forest Hill.
The church dedication to Saint Hilda (614-680), the founding Abbess of Whitby in 657, a double monastery of monks and nuns, is unusual. She is depicted in a sculpture at top of the east façade, and inside the church in a stained-glass window, a statue, a banner and hangings.
Although Saint Hilda’s has been a separate parish since 1900, it is closely linked to over 1,000 years of church history in Lewisham. Saint Mary’s Church, Lewisham, from which Saint Hilda’s parish was formed, dates back to the year 918, when Elfrida, daughter of King Alfred the Great, bequeathed the Manor of Lewisham to the Abbot of Ghent, who may have built the first Saint Mary’s Church in Lewisham.
Originally Lewisham parish shared the same boundaries as the present borough, apart from the ancient parish of Lee, and for many centuries Saint Mary’s was the only church in the area. The 19th century brought many changes, and by the late 1880s the ancient parish of Lewisham was subdivided into 16 separate parishes to meet the needs of the growing population.
Crofton Park is part of Brockley, but it was not until the railway station was built and named Crofton Park that the district became known as Crofton Park. In the early 1890s, the Revd Samuel Bickersteth (1857-1937), who had become Vicar of Lewisham in 1891, embarked on providing the district with a church of its own. Bickersteth later became Vicar of Leeds and then a canon of Canterbury and a chaplain to George V.
With the support of the Morley Trustees, a site was secured to build the Mission Church, followed by a permanent church and a parsonage. Work on building a temporary church began by mid-1899, and it was opened by Bishop Edward Stuart Talbot of Rochester on 22 May 1900. The new parish of Saint Hilda, Crofton Park, was formed on 17 September 1900, with the Revd John Hartforth Jacques as the first vicar.
Saint Hilda’s was the first of a group of churches built by Greenaway and Newberry for the new Diocese of Southwark and it is probably their most notable church, inspiring the later Saint Martin’s, Dagenham, by Newberry and Fowler and built in 1932.
The church is an example of Arts and Crafts ideas imposed on a Gothic form, and this produces a building that is a rich synthesis of later 19th century secular and church design. Saint Hilda’s was inspired by a wide range of architects and seminal buildings, such as the demolished Saint Agnes, Kennington (1874-1877), designed by GG Scott junior.
FH Greenaway (1869-1935) was articled to Sir Aston Webb, and JE Newberry (1862-1950) to Edward Hide. They went into partnership in 1904, and their work reflects the rich diversity in later 19th century church architecture.
Other early 20th century church works by Greenaway and Newberry include the church hall at Saint Faith, Herne Hill (1907), the enlarged mediaeval church of Saint Nicholas, Plumpstead (1907-1908), All Saints, Hampton (1908), Saint Peter’s, Wimbledon (1911-1912), and Saint John the Baptist, Sutton (1915). After Greenaway retired in 1927, Newberry entered into partnership with CW Fowler and retired in 1946.
Saint Hilda’s was built on a corner site beside the earlier mission church that is now the church hall. The new church was consecrated by Bishop Talbot, by then Bishop of the new Diocese of Southwark, on 3 June 1908. A new vicarage was built in 1911.
Saint Hilda’s is built of brown Crowborough brick with Chilmark stone dressings, it has Welsh slate roofs, while the interior was originally of exposed yellow washed brick with Corsham Bathstone dressings, but has been painted, probably over limewash.
The church has a five-bay nave with broad aisles leading to a long chancel in the High Church manner. The Lady Chapel is in a shallow north transept that opens onto the chancel.
The church has a monumental east end and a tower set on the corner of the site overlooking Brockley Road. The robust square tower with polygonal battered buttress turrets has an octagonal base designed for an intended turret or spire, with flush chequer-work brick and limestone panels and horizontal stone bands.
The south face of the tower has three ground floor windows under recessed brick arches, between brick buttress shafts but linked by a deep stone cill. The lower stage is enriched by flush stone bands. Above is a tall tripartite window. The bell chamber has narrow louvred lights with traceried heads.
The tower was commissioned after a generous donation, but its height was determined by its position on the footings of the already planned south transept.
The east end has battered angle buttresses linked at the head to the main building by a stone saddle. A shallow east window is set high on the elevation between tall, facetted shafts that run the full height of the building. Above it is a carved stone niche containing the figure of Saint Hilda, by the Scottish sculptor Albert Hemstock Hodge (1875-1918), under a gable cross. To each side, and set below the level of the east window, are narrow lancets under ogee stone heads with tall finials.
Under the easternmost window on the south side is an entrance set back under a shallow stone arch. The south-west gable porch fills a full bay and has a pair of doors on the east side.
The nave is strongly horizontal, under deep swept eaves without a clerestorey, which brings the roofline in scale with the neighbouring houses. Three triangular louvred roof lights are set at the junction of the nave and aisles.
The nave has five bays, with large windows each under a broad semicircular brick arch with a narrow tile hood. Each has five lights of panel tracery, in an early 20th century interpretation of a traditional form, with blind panels to each side, all with a continuous stone cill. They are set between battered brick buttresses with stone dressings at cill level.
In contrast to the tall, enriched east face, the west end is relatively sparse with brick battered buttresses with minimal stone dressings. The west window has panel tracery under a slightly pointed arch. The aisle windows are shallow under broad semicircular arches and similar to the nave windows.
Inside Saint Hilda’s, the nave arcade has tall simple octagonal arches with chamfers which die into the piers, between narrow shafts that rise to the wall plate.
The aisles are wide and lead to the north transept and the base of the tower to the south. The chancel arch is similarly treated and frames a wide but long chancel that was laid out in Anglo-Catholic tradition, with steps rising to the chancel and again to the sanctuary.
The chancel was enclosed by low stone screens to each side that have since been reduced, and gates that have been removed. There is a crypt beneath the chancel.
The chancel windows are small but have long deep sloping cills, said to reduce glare from the morning sun, and allow for a tall reredos in a timber frame under a shallow canopy and faced with fabric by William Morris, some of which survives.
The chancel floor is of Portland stone and green Westmorland slate; the sanctuary floor and steps are of Sicilian marble and green slate. The oak choir stalls by JE Newberry have carved front panels. The pulpit is also of oak and is set against the north chancel arch.
The font at the west end is octagonal with shafts and standing on a plain octagonal stepped base, and with a plain octagonal honey-coloured alabaster bowl. The nave, aisle and transept floors are of woodblock, parquet and large red tiles.
The stained glass in the chancel is by Henry Holliday. The organ loft is set above the south side of the chancel over a narrow ambulatory, and the organ is in the north transept. The fittings include an oak and aluminium altar cross and candlesticks designed by Newberry, made by the Artificers’ Guild. The nave chairs date from 1910.
Saint Hilda’s parish suffered many losses during World War II (1939-1945). Both the vicarage and the assistant priest’s house were destroyed in September 1944 and the Parish Hall was badly damaged. The church suffered less severely, the church and parish hall were restored and the vicarage was rebuilt in 1951
The golden jubilee of the church was celebrated in 1958 by placing of the tester over the High Altar, and renewing the hangings and carpeting in the Sanctuary. Since then, coloured hangings that change with the seasons in the Church Calendar have been made to augment the red and gold hangings of 1958.
The crypt, the first part of the church to be built in 1905, housed vestries and a chapel.
The church was refurbished in the 1970s, and the internal brickwork and most of the stonework has been limewashed (1950s) and painted (1970s).
A children’s corner installed in memory of the dead of World War II was removed when parish rooms and a lobby were built inside the church in 1994. However, the statue of the Infant Christ was refurbished and placed in the new entrance lobby.
During a serious burglary in 1996, the eagle lectern, statues of Saint Mary and Saint John that were part of the rood beam in the former Saint Cyprian’s Church, one of the large candle sticks before the High Altar and other items were stolen. The processional cross was later found snapped in two and thrown away on the railway bank at Crofton Park station.
A new statue of Saint Hilda was installed in 1998, and a new statue of Saint Mary placed in a shrine in the north aisle was a gift from Our Lady and Saint George Church, Walthamstow. A new banner of Saint Hilda was acquired in 2000.
The church hall beside the church was originally built as a temporary mission church in 1899-1900. It too was designed by JE Newberry in the Arts and Crafts style it is also Grade II listed.
The war memorial in front of the church is in the form of a granite Celtic cross and is inscribed with 141 names of the war dead. It was unveiled on 29 May 1920 by General Sir Ian Hamilton and dedicated by William Hough, Bishop of Woolwich, who had once been in charge of the Corpus Christi College Cambridge Mission on the Old Kent Road and was then Vicar of Lewisham. One woman’s name included in the list is that of Rosabelle Stanley, a nursing sister.
• Saint Hilda’s is in Diocese of Southwark and the Revd Canon Julian Sampson has been the Parish Priest and Vicar since September 2025. The worship and liturgy in Saint Hilda’s in the modern Catholic tradition of the Church of England. The Sunday Masses are at 8:30 (Said Mass) at 10:15 am (Solemn Mass, followed by refreshments, tea and coffee at 12 noon). During the week, there is a Said Mass at 10 am on Tuesdays and 7 pm on Thursdays.
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