All Saints Pastoral Centre London Colney, England

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TL 10 SE LONDON COLNEY SHENLEY LANE (west side) LONDON COLNEY

13/125 All Saints Pastoral Centre, including Chapel 23.6.72 (formerly listed as All Saints Convent and Convent Chapel). GV II*

Pastoral centre, begun 1899 as an Anglican cnvent. Leonard Stokes, architect. Chapel begun 1927 by Sir Ninian Comper and finished 1964 by his son Sebastian Comper, following original designs. Main building is red and mauve brick with stone and brick horizontal banding. Stone slate roof. Free neo-Tudor style. 2 storeys and attics. Large square entrance tower near centre of elevation is 3 storeys. Chamfered and buttressed angle bastions; broad battlemented parapet. Stone-carved centre piece to tower crowned by wide eaves. Figured stone frieze above the door depicting nativity. 1st and 2nd floor window bands with concave heads. Door with carved arch and spandrels. Roughly symmetrical flanking wings, 6 windows each; slightly lower 4- window range on left; on right end a single storey hall with 7 lancets and an oriel bay. All windows are stone-dressed Tudor style casements, mullioned and transomed to ground floor, mullioned on upper floor. 2-5 lights. Hipped attic dormers in pairs and fours. The hall has Perpendicular style windows separated by heavy buttresses rising through eaves. Behind the front is a large square cloistered court. Ground floor windows with semicircular traceried heads. Upper floor with shallow canted oriels on alternate bays, their parapets carried through eaves. Hipped dormers. Buttressed ground floor. Continuous drip moulds. Rear elevation is symmetrical with projecting gabled end pavilions. Wide traceried semicircular recess to central door. Flanking end walls with battlemented stair towers. On far angle of service court to left is a chimney treated as an Italian campanile with wide eaves; stone blank recesses beneath eaves. The chapel projects on the left front. Light mauve brick. Stone dressings. Resembling Kings College Chapel, Cambridge, in outline, it has 6 pointed-arch windows in a mixture of Early English and Perpendicular styles. Buttresses between rising to crocketed finials. 7-light E window surmounted by gable and crocketed niche. 3 bays on E, together with single- storey N aisle, were finished by Sir Ninian Comper. Interior of chapel is a mixture of Gothic and Renaissance detail. White- painted. 6-bay ribbed quadripartite vault. Lady Chapel on SE, joined to chancel by continuous moulded arches. Over altar is a gilded wood baldacchino of 4 Corinthian columns supporting an open crocketed ogee canopy. Choir stalls have Tuscan colonnades in of Gothic style panelling. At E end the gilded and traceried organ is carried on a Tuscan gallery. Tree of Jesse glass in E window. Interior of great hall at N end of building shows a 7- bay arch-braced collar roof, and on W wall 2 bolection-moulded fireplaces either side of moulded stone archway to kitchen. At the N end of the building a single storey loggia connects with Voluntary Mission Movement building (q.v.). (Pevsner (1977)).

Listing NGR: TL1750002827