The Church Building

Before the railway came, South Nutfield was nothing more than a hamlet of 18 or so homes, part of the parish of St Peter and St Paul, Nutfield. But when the station was opened in 1884, building in the area began in earnest. A key developer was the MP, Sir Henry Edwards, who began to buy up land around the station, selling it on as building plots and donating the site for the church.

The project for building the South Nutfield church was taken up by a Mrs Clarissa Woolloton and through her efforts and those of other local donors, the church and adjoining vicarage (never a rectory, despite its current name!) were opened in 1888. The total cost of both buildings was £3,424.

The church was designed by Edward l'Anson and built in an Early English Gothic style, in red brick, with windows and doorways in Bath Stone. It comprises a nave of five bays, chancel, an organ chamber on the south side, a tower sited at the junction of the nave and chancel on the north side with spire covered in wooden shingles.  Adjacent to the tower and parallel with the chancel, a choir vestry was added in 1909, (also by l'Anson).

 

The interior of the church was reordered in the 1990s when the pews were replaced with chairs and the nave was carpeted. The Christ Church Centre was built in two phases in 2001 and 2004, after a period of intense fundraising by the congregation, in a similar red-brick and pitched roof style to the church.

There is a small churchyard which is not consecrated, and consequently not used for burials, but a small Garden of Remembrance was consecrated in 1987 where ashes may be scattered.

More detailed information can be found in a booklet Christ Church – the First Hundred Years, available via the Parish Office.

Nutfield History Group also provides a great deal of local history information. www.nutfieldhistorygroup.org.uk