church design

In the 1950s, Churches were being built in Europe with central altars and minimum division between priest and people. These ideas passionately concerned Fr. Kirkby but he was not impressed by the new buildings he saw abroad. And so he approached a designer in his early 20’s – the late Keith Murray – whose work had impressed him in a local commission at  St.Katharine’s Foundation Chapel . He and the equally young & gifted Robert Maguire, an architect, worked from1958‐1960 to build the church – regarded  widely as the most significant post‐War Church in Britain. 
In 2013 it won the National Churches Trust Diamond Jubilee award for the best church since 1953 
This was the most radical and pure expression of a movement which focused  on the way the building would be used, and upon the relations of the gathered worshipping community,  together around the altar as one Body, in relationship with God. 

from Robert Maguire, 1962

The first design for the church without the glass Lantern