Church of St Mary

St Mary's Church in South Ruislip is a Church of England parish church in the London Borough of Hillingdon, and one of the most striking post-war Modernist churches in outer London. Designed by the architect Laurence King in the Festival of Britain style and built between 1957 and 1959, with structural engineering by Ove Arup and Partners, it was awarded Grade II listed status by Historic England in 2022 for its architectural and historic interest.

The parish itself is a creation of the great suburban expansion of the 20th century. St Mary's parish was formed in 1951 by dividing the parish of St Paul, Ruislip Manor — itself only created in 1936, carved out of the ancient and expansive medieval parish of St Martin, served by the 13th-century church on Ruislip High Street. This rapid ecclesiastical reordering reflected the explosive development around the once rural settlement of Ruislip after the north-western extension of the Metropolitan Railway: the suburban growth known as Metro-land created whole new communities that would otherwise have lacked religious infrastructure and pastoral care. In the 1930s a mission hall was built immediately north of the present church site to relieve St Paul's; it proved a stopgap until South Ruislip received its own parish, and later served as the church hall until replaced by a more modern structure in the 1970s.

Fundraising for a new church, with associated buildings including a vicarage to the south, began once the parish was established. The Essex-based ecclesiastical architect Laurence King was commissioned in 1954, and a scale model of his design was shown at an exhibition of modern architecture in London in March 1956. Construction began in October 1957, and the church was consecrated by the Bishop of London, the Rt Rev Henry Montgomery Campbell, on 2 May 1959.

King's plan is a traditional basilica with a rounded apse east of the nave, but expressed entirely in modern materials — a specifically British take on international modernism, influenced by the Festival of Britain, that is explicitly recognised in the church's heritage listing. King was also a proponent of the Liturgical Movement, and his design was intended to draw the congregation into active participation in the liturgy. The exterior is of yellow brick within an exposed concrete frame, punctuated by seven tall, narrow windows on both north and south elevations. Low aisles are linked by an ambulatory wrapping around the semicircular apse, and above, a copper-covered folded-slab roof rides on an unbroken clerestory of irregular pentagonal windows, crowned by a pyramidal, copper-clad bellcote with latticed faces rising behind the west front.

That west front is the church's signature: a large multi-panel expanse of clear glazing superimposed with a colossal seven-metre Portland stone sculpture of the crucified Christ, carved in situ by Brian Asquith, who had trained and lectured at the Royal College of Art alongside King. Below, porticoed entrance doors are cut with Greek cross openings. A side chapel adjoins the east end of the north aisle, and two covered walkways — one to the parish rooms and sacristy, the other to the vicarage King designed as part of the same commission — frame a small courtyard garden.

Inside, the church is entered through a narthex screened from the main space by a glass wall; its low ceiling forms the platform for the choir gallery above, reached by two corner staircases. The narthex doubles as the baptistry, with a centrally placed carved stone font fronted by a gold-painted fibreglass sculpture of Christ Blessing. The tall central nave is defined by great vertical slabs of exposed concrete, seven to each side with five more curving around the apse, and above each bay runs the clerestory of pentagonal windows — an unbroken ribbon of glass spanning three of the four elevations. The fourteen clerestory windows to north and south are glazed in pale yellow, blue and grey in a simple geometric pattern, while the five windows curving behind the apse carry more elaborate semi-abstract glass, the church's chief decorative glory. From left to right they depict symbols of the Nativity, the Crucifixion, the Coronation and Assumption together at the centre, Pentecost, and the Annunciation; they were designed and made by Keith New, drawing his symbolism from Rudolf Koch's "Book of Signs" — the same inspiration behind New's windows in the nave of Coventry Cathedral.

In the sanctuary, the simple stone altar with its gilded Chi Rho is covered by a Modernist ciborium formed of four small hyperbolic parabolas in part-gilded carved wood. The communion rails, pulpit and pews were made by Faith Craft, the specialist ecclesiastical furnishers established by the Society of the Faith in 1916, with whom King frequently collaborated. On the third north-east pillar stands a carved, painted and gilded Virgin and Child designed for the church by John Hayward, another regular King collaborator, who also made a hanging rood for the space behind the altar, though it is no longer in place. The choir gallery houses a two-manual organ by J. W. Walker & Sons.

The church closed in 2019 for asbestos removal and renovation, reopening in June 2024 — its listing in 2022, granted while the building stood silent, confirming St Mary's place among the most significant post-war churches of suburban London.