Felixstowe St Andrew

St Andrew, Felixstowe

Felixstowe today still has its discernable districts, and by the end of the 19th century Old Felixstowe's St Peter and St Paul to the east, Walton St Mary to the north and Felixstowe West End's St John the Baptist were all substantial parish churches at the focus of their communities. The area in between rapidly developed as Felixstowe town centre, and soon enough meritted an Anglican parish church of its own.

England's first ferro-concrete church - and yet, so traditional!

The first St Andrew was little more than a hut, on the present location of the church in St Andrew's Road, but the enthusiasm of arch-evangelical vicar of the 1920s, Hubert Greene, could not be satisfied with this. Half a mile away, on the other side of Hamilton Square, stood the mighty St John the Baptist, one of the most unequivocal statements of large scale High Church Anglicanism in the county. A stone's throw from St Andrew itself stood the substantial Catholic church of St Felix. Greene engaged Hilda Mason to produce the design for a church that would be a similarly grand statement of Protestant triumphalism; but her design was turned down by diocesan planners.

Familiar from so many medieval Suffolk churches, the great south porch.

Back on the drawing board, the then little-known Raymond Erith made a few alterations and improvements, and the final 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 semi's. The stark, uncompromising concrete is severe in this gentle suburbia. And yet, it is rather traditional, too; the elevation of nave, aisles and porches is familiar from hundreds of Suffolk churches, since Mason and Erith used the language of late medieval Perpendicular. As you walk towards the church, you can see straight away that a tower was also planned; the stair turrets are in place, and lancet windows show where the fixings would have been. It would have been a grand tower, and there is an architectural drawing of it in the church.

The 1920s was a time when Anglo-catholicism was in the ascendant, and Protestant militantism, in the CofE at least, didn't have a great deal to be cheerful about.

One event that dispelled a little gloom was the rejection by parliament of the revised Book of Common Prayer in 1928. This book would have enshrined in law High Church practice, which had overtaken Cranmer's simple liturgy, and its defeat was seen as a great victory in Evangelical circles. The other people who were relieved were, ironically, extreme Anglo-catholics, who preferred to use the Roman missal.

That historic moment became the occasion for the dedication of St Andrew, and a plaque to the west of the porch remembers this. The porch itself is a formalistic exercise in late Perpendicular, and instantly recalls to mind grand Suffolk porches like Boxford and Bildeston.

The Reformation made safe at Felixstowe.

From the top: nave parapet, clerestory, south aisle parapet, south aisle. The shapes interlock and shift as you walk past, the whole piece working to dazzling effect.

The aisle that it ajoins is, again, a formal exercise, its parapet like a balcony.

The north aisle is broadly similar, and this formalism becomes a proto-Modernism, and the terracing effect is familiar from Denys Lasdun's University of East Anglia at Norwich, from 30 years later. Above them, a clerestory rises, a juxtaposition familiar, again, from a hundred Suffolk churches.

Inside, the concrete lifts the eye uncompromisingly, rising in Perpendicular sheathes and pillars. The painted plaster between the concrete beams gives a curiously half-timbered effect. The woodwork repeats this motif in shafts and panels, lightened here and there by gilt inscriptions like that on the pulpit, lectern and the altar.

The inscriptions are clearly not intended to be ambiguous. On the pulpit it says We preach Christ and Him Crucified, and the lectern weighs in with The Sword of the Spirit is the Word of God. The one on the altar says This do in remembrance of Me, which the reredos reaffirms with He is not here - He is risen, which may have been intended as a denial of the doctrine of the real presence taught across town at St John the Baptist. If so, it seems in rather poor taste.

The interior is curiously redolent of the 1920s and 1930s now, calling to mind New Town architecture, and the grandiloquence of cinemas. But it is still a very lively place, with lots going on, and a strong Evangelical heartbeat.

We Preach Christ and Him Crucified...

Looking east: He is not here, He is risen.

It also seems to be the only Felixstowe church which is not a member of Churches Together in Felixstowe - or, at least, it does not display a copy of the covenant as the other churches do, and its name is not listed with the others on the covenant. One presumes that this is an oversight, and that its correction is only a matter of time.

St Andrew, Felixstowe, is located in St Andrew's Road off of Hamilton Road in central Felixstowe. I have found it open and locked. There is no keyholder listed, but there are several phone numbers posted outside the church - and an e-mail address, if you have your laptop!