St Philip's Church

St Philip's Church is a Church of England church in Weston Mill, Plymouth, Devon — a congregation whose story embodies the rise and reshaping of a dockyard suburb. The original church, built in 1912–13 to serve the workers of Plymouth Dockyard's great Edwardian extension, was demolished for housing in 2014; since 2012 the adjacent former church hall of 1981 has carried the name and the worship of St Philip's forward.

The church was built to serve the new district of Weston Mill in the parish of St Budeaux, a suburb established in connection with the North Yard (Keyham) extension of Plymouth Dockyard, carried out between 1896 and 1907. The director of those works, Sir John Jackson, acquired some ten acres of land to house his workers and their families, and before any permanent church existed he provided a mission hall near the site of the future church and another at Ocean Street. In 1904 the district of St Philip and St James was formed within St Budeaux parish, covering a population of about 4,000 drawn from both St Budeaux and Pennycross parishes, and the Reverend E. Synnott — chaplain to Sir John Jackson's dockyard employees — was licensed as curate-in-charge. That same year Richard Hall Clarke of Bridwell House, Cullompton, gave a site for a church, and Synnott commissioned Bastick W. Nunn of Stoke to draw the original plans: a church for 600, with nave, north and south aisles and transepts, an apsidal chancel, vestries, organ space, and a tower with spire. After Nunn's death the designs were revised by the local architect Montague Alton Bazeley.

St Philip's was one of twelve churches built under the Three Towns Church Extension Scheme for Plymouth and Devonport, and one of two chapels of ease to the parish church alongside St Boniface. The Bishop of Exeter, the Right Reverend Archibald Robertson, laid the foundation stone on 4 May 1912, and Messrs Lapthorn and Co built the church — though shortage of funds meant only the four-bay nave, aisles, transepts and the lower portion of the tower were completed, with a temporary chancel and vestries added at the east end pending a permanent chancel and the rest of the tower that never came. Costing £6,300 and seating about 500, the church was consecrated by the Bishop of Exeter on 18 October 1913. It was built of Radford limestone with Bath stone dressings under slate roofs, its windows mostly early Perpendicular with Decorated windows in the transepts; the two-stage south-west tower had angle buttresses, a timber pyramid roof (added in 1976) and a half-octagonal stair turret, and the main entrance was approached up a flight of granite steps above a basement vestry. The original fittings included a font of Polyphant stone designed and given by the architect Bazeley himself, an oak pulpit on a stone base, and an organ by William Hill & Son, installed by Hele & Co — the gift of Sir John Jackson at the opening.

With no permanent chancel or vicarage, the congregation's first priority became a church hall for the Sunday School and parish organisations. A fundraising scheme was approved in December 1921, and work began in March 1924 — with volunteers removing two thousand tons of rock and earth from the site before the hall went up. With no labour costs, the whole scheme cost just £319, and the Bishop of Plymouth, the Right Reverend Howard Masterman, opened the hall on 29 September 1924. In 1933 St Philip's became a parish church in its own right, with a new parish created from "contiguous portions" of St Budeaux, St Boniface (Devonport) and St Thomas (North Keyham). The Second World War left its mark: the west window was damaged in the raid of 21 April 1941, and the temporary chancel also suffered. In 1968 that chancel was replaced by a concrete apse incorporating a large stained glass window by Dom Charles Norris — the celebrated Buckfast Abbey monk-artist — depicting Philip the Apostle. The south aisle held memorials to the district's fallen of both World Wars, the First World War memorial being an oak mural tablet voluntarily made by Mr Wallis of Bishopsteignton, unveiled by the Archdeacon of Plymouth on 29 January 1933. The 1924 hall served until 1978, when surveyors recommended its replacement; a new hall designed by D. J. Farrant was built in 1981.

By the 2010s, declining congregations and the financial burden of the building led the Church of England to seek closure. English Heritage assessed the church for listing in 2011–12 but concluded that, despite "clear local interest", it did not meet the standards — though Plymouth City Council recognised it as having "significant townscape merit, making a significant and positive contribution to the character of the area". The church closed in late 2012 and the congregation moved into the church hall. Rogers & Jones Architects, commissioned by Aster Homes, considered retaining the building for residential, community or office use, but concluded that the most practical, commercially viable and community-appropriate solution was redevelopment; in 2013 Aster Communities and the Diocese of Exeter applied to demolish the church and replace it with six flats and five terraced houses, refurbishing the hall as a place of worship and community resource with a memorial garden, parking and amenity space. Permission was granted in 2014 and the church came down that year. The Hill organ found a new home, gifted in 2013 to St Michael & All Angels Church at Cornwood on the edge of Dartmoor.

St Philip's remains an active place of worship in the former church hall — the dockyard suburb's congregation, founded for Sir John Jackson's workers more than a century ago, still gathering on the site their volunteer forebears dug out of the rock by hand.