For the saint

Saint

A saint is a holy person. In various religions, saints are people who are believed to have exceptional holiness.In Christian usage, "saint" refers to any believer who is "in Christ", and in whom Christ dwells, whether in heaven or in earth...

 after whom this church is named, see Thomas the Apostle

Thomas the Apostle

Thomas the Apostle, also called Doubting Thomas or Didymus was one of the Twelve Apostles of Jesus. He is best known for questioning Jesus' resurrection when first told of it, then proclaiming "My Lord and my God" on seeing Jesus in . He was perhaps the only Apostle who went outside the Roman...

.

For other churches with the same name see St. Thomas' Church

St. Thomas' Church

St. Thomas Church, St. Thomas Chapel, or variations may refer to:in China*St. Thomas the Apostle Church, Hong Kongin England*Cathedral Church of St Thomas of Canterbury, commonly known as Portsmouth Cathedral*Sts Thomas Minster, Isle of Wight...

 & St. Thomas the Apostle

St. Thomas the Apostle

Saint Thomas the Apostle was one of the twelve disciples of Jesus.It may also refer to:-Places:*St. Thomas the Apostle , a large civil parish in Devon, England*St Thomas the Apostle Rural, a civil parish in east Cornwall, United Kingdom-Other:...

.

St Thomas the Apostle is a Church of England

Church of England

The Church of England is the officially established Christian church in England and the Mother Church of the worldwide Anglican Communion. The church considers itself within the tradition of Western Christianity and dates its formal establishment principally to the mission to England by St...

  church, which is situated along Boston Road in Hanwell, in the London Borough of Ealing

London Borough of Ealing

The London Borough of Ealing is a borough in west London.-Location:The London Borough of Ealing borders the London Borough of Hillingdon to the west, the London Borough of Harrow and the London Borough of Brent to the north, the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham to the east and the London...

. It forms part of the Diocese of London

Diocese of London

The Anglican Diocese of London forms part of the Province of Canterbury in England.Historically the diocese covered a large area north of the Thames and bordered the dioceses of Norwich and Lincoln to the north and west. The present diocese covers and 17 London boroughs, covering most of Greater...

. It was designed to hold 428 people. English Heritage

English Heritage

English Heritage . is an executive non-departmental public body of the British Government sponsored by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport...

 has listed it as a Grade II* building.

History

Hanwell was a small village which began to expand -slowly at first – with the arrival of the Great Western Railway in the 1850s. Much of the new residential development was around where the Uxbridge Road crossed the parish of St Mary and then to the south of it. The resulting increase in souls living in the area thus necessitated the creation of a new parish -that of St Mellitus and formed in 1908. It is situated on the corner of Uxbridge Road and Church Road. The parish lies between the GWR railway and Elthorne Park. In 1906 a new tram line came into service. Running along the Boston Road from Hanwell to Brentford it encouraged more people to take up residence in this more southern part of Hanwell. With the rapidly increasing population, the southern most part of the old parish of St Mary now needed to become a parish in its own right. St Thomas was up and till then a iron mission church setting up to maybe 300 people. Money was raised by selling off the site of St. Thomas in Orchard Street (just off Portman Square but before Oxford Street) and the foundation stone of the new parish church of St. Thomas the Apostle was laid 8 July 1933. It opened the following year.

Design and construction

The architect was Sir Edward Brantwood Maufe

Edward Maufe

Sir Edward Brantwood Maufe KBE, R.A, F.R.I.B.A. was an English architect and designer, noted chiefly for his work on places of worship and remembrance memorials. He was a skilled interior designer and designed many pieces of furniture...

. The building is on a north east axis with a tall square north-east bell tower with a green copper cap sitting astride the northern wall. The exterior of the building is executed in simple lines and is constructed of brown-silver-grey engineering bricks; reputed to have come from Tondu

Tondu

Tondu is a village in Bridgend County Borough, Wales, located about north of the town of Bridgend.Tondu lies on the A4063 from Bridgend to Maesteg, and was established in the late 18th century as a coal mining village servicing the Parc Slip Colliery...

 in Wales.
A carving of the Calvary by Eric Gill

Eric Gill

Arthur Eric Rowton Gill was a British sculptor, typeface designer, stonecutter and printmaker, who was associated with the Arts and Crafts movement...

 is on the north-east face and incorporates the east window. With the aid of a platform built from scaffolding, Gill was able to carve this in situ from a single block of limestone. There is a carved keystone in the arch of the north east entrance which is the work of Vernon Hill

Vernon Hill (sculptor)

Vernon Hill was a sculptor, lithographer and Illustrator.-Biography:Vernon Hill was born in Halifax and undertook formal training in print-making from an early age, being apprenticed as a lithographer in his early teen....

.

The interior, in contrast to the straight lines of the outside, has plain curvilinear Gothic piers which draw the eyes up to a high fan vaulted ceiling.
Standing at the west end of the nave one can see that by Maufe placing the bell tower to one side, he has been able to keep the ceiling in one level plain so increasing the sense of spaciousness. The vaults are formed from reinforced concrete. Since this was still a relativity novel building technique it could be said that this building was to test this method of construction, before using it on his proposed design for the forth coming Guildford Cathedral

Guildford Cathedral

The Cathedral Church of the Holy Spirit, Guildford is the Anglican cathedral at Guildford, Surrey, England.-Construction:Guildford was made a diocese in its own right in 1927, and work on its new cathedral, designed by Sir Edward Maufe, began nine years later, with the foundation stone being laid...

. Maufe developed the technique further in his work at St Mary's Church, Hampden Park, Eastbourne

St Mary's Church, Hampden Park, Eastbourne

St Mary's Church is the Anglican parish church of the Hampden Park suburb of Eastbourne, a town and borough in the English county of East Sussex. Originally linked to the church at nearby Willingdon, it later became a separate parish church...

, which he rebuilt in 1952–54.

Also placed centrally at the west end of the nave, is the straight sided octagonal stone font, this is also the work of Vernon Hill. At the centre of its simple design is carved a symbolic motif of a fish entwine around an anchored cross

Anchored Cross

The Anchored Cross, or Mariner's Cross, is a stylized cross in the shape of an anchor. It is a symbol which is shaped like a plus sign with anchor-like protrusions at the end of each arm, hence the name Anchored Cross...

 with the Koine Greek acronym ΙΧΘΥΣ

Ichthys

Ichthys, from Koine Greek: , is the Greek word for "fish"....

 inscribed vertically down the left side.

High in the west window, the glass has been shaped in the centre panel so that the lead came

Came

A came is a divider bar used between small pieces of glass to make a larger glazing panel, sometimes referred to as leaded glass. This process is then referred to as "leading". Cames are mostly made of soft metals such as lead, zinc, copper or brass. They generally have an H-shaped cross section,...

 forms the Labarum

Labarum

The labarum was a vexillum that displayed the "Chi-Rho" symbol ☧, formed from the first two Greek letters of the word "Christ" — Chi and Rho . It was used by the Roman emperor Constantine I...

 symbol of Chi (χ) and Rho (ρ).

The aisles and each side are delineated by having pointed archways in each of the supporting piers. When standing at the end of either of these aisles from the well west end they each form a passage which passes through areas of increasing shadow along their length. This gives the illusion that the two windows at the eastern end are shining bright stars, even though they are letting in just ordinary daylight. The main windows are all lancets of clear handmade leaded glass. Maufe's choice, not to use mass produced glass, shows the influence at the time of the arts and crafts

Arts and crafts

Arts and crafts comprise a whole host of activities and hobbies that are related to making things with one's hands and skill. These can be sub-divided into handicrafts or "traditional crafts" and "the rest"...

 movement.

With such a wide range of light and shadow: vistas that change with the position of the observer, Maufe has given a spacial richness to the building which is normally only found in large ancient cathedrals. Yet with the plainness of form and the Art Deco fittings it is thoroughly modern.

The motif of Thomas the saint, is a fan of three spears with a builder's square. This motif has been incorporated as a recurrent theme into the lancet windows and into the leaded oval clerestory window

Clerestory

Clerestory is an architectural term that historically denoted an upper level of a Roman basilica or of the nave of a Romanesque or Gothic church, the walls of which rise above the rooflines of the lower aisles and are pierced with windows. In modern usage, clerestory refers to any high windows...

 above the porch way. Spears and a square from the iron gates each side of the east wall – behind which there is a cross passage. It also appears again on the cast iron rainhead

Rainhead

A leader head is a device used in roof plumbing to capture stormwater runoff from the rain guttering of a building. While, generally speaking, such a device is known as either a leader head or a conductor head within the fields of architecture, building design and construction, it may be known as...

s on the exterior of the building.

External links

• St. Thomas the Apostle, Hanwell Official website. Date accessed: 30 September 2008.
• Hanwell: Churches, A History of the County of Middlesex: Volume 3: Shepperton, Staines, Stanwell, Sunbury, Teddington, Heston and Isleworth, Twickenham, Cowley, Cranford, West Drayton, Greenford, Hanwell, Harefield and Harlington (1962), pp. 230–233. URL:. Date accessed: 30 September 2008.