This morning, I bicycled to Clapham to see St. James’s Church, Park Hill, south of the Common, which is open on Tuesdays and Fridays from 11 to 2 and has an excellent exhibition (till October 15th.) both on the church and its architect, Nugent Cachemaille-Day.

The current church replaced a gothic revival Church, which was bombed in the war on the night of Monday 16th. September, a week or so into the Blitz.  It took a long time to build a new church.  £56,000 came from the War Damage Commission, £10,000 had to be raised from the Congregation.  The architect was Nugent Cachemaille-Day.  The new Church was consecrated on 13 September 1958.

The exhibition includes original architectural drawings, discovered in a drawer in the vestry.  Born 1896, educated at Westminster and then the Architectural Association, he was working for Louis de Soissons in 1920 when he did a beautifully detailed plan of Welwyn Garden City. After working as an assistant to Goodhart-Rendel (their style is similar), he set up in practice in 1929 and specialised in church buildings, including St. Nicholas, Burnage in Manchester which opened in 1932 and was – presumably still is – boldly brick and abstract, presumably more Scandinavian than Corbusian.

This is one of the drawings of the church:-

The Church from outside:-

The stained glass windows are by Arthur Erridge, who worked for Powell and Sons before the war, and Wippell in the 1950s till his death in 1961:-