Christ Church Esher stands on the top of a hill, near the intersection of roads that marks Esher town centre.
The church has a “splayed foot” spire.
SPLAYED-FOOT: variation of the broach form, found in England principally in the south-east, in which the four cardinal faces are splayed out near their bases, to cover the corners, while oblique (or intermediate) faces taper away to a point.
BROACH: starting from a square base, then carried into an octagonal section by means of triangular faces.
– Pevsner’s Architectural Glossary, page 116, under “SPIRE”
This simple and elegant geometry turned out to be rather tricky to draw. I worked hard to get the shape of the spire correct.
The church was built in 1853-1854 to the design of Benjamin Ferrey (1810-1880) according to its Historic England listing entry. Ferrey studied under A.W.N. Pugin1, and like Pugin, designed in the style known as “Gothic Revival”. Christ Church was built because the growing congregation could no longer be housed in the smaller St George’s, a little way down the hill.
I sketched the church on location and added the colour later. The colours are:
- Mars Yellow
- Green Gold
- Phthalo Blue Turquoise
I used just three colours, all Daniel Smith. I used gold paint for the clock. The clock is on the roof of the spire, which is remarkable. Usually the clock is on the tower, below the spire. So I wanted to put it in and show its unusual location.
Here is a sketch map of the area.
See this post for my sketch of St George’s, this post for the Tin Tabernacle in West End Esher, and this post for sketches of the council housing in Lower Green.
References
Historic England Listing Entry: https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1188268?section=comments-and-photos downloaded 7th June 2024, contains also many photos of the interior of Christ Church.
Ferrey’s biography is on Wikipedia, and also on “The Victorian Web” at this link: https://victorianweb.org/art/architecture/ferrey/
1A.W.N. Pugin designed, amongst other things, the inside of the Houses of Parliament: https://heritagecollections.parliament.uk/stories/the-architects-barry-pugin-and-scott/. The Houses of Parliament are a classic example of Gothic Revival Style. The Houses of Parliament were designed by a team consisting of Charles Barry, A.W.N. Pugin and later Giles Gilbert Scott.
Jane Sketching 