StJoGreenwich
St Joseph's Church East Greenwich
The Catholic church of St Joseph on Pelton Road, East Greenwich, was built by Henry John Hansom (1828-1904) between 1880 and 1881. Hansom, eldest son of Joseph Aloysius Hansom (1803-82), was trained by his father with whom he was in partnership between 1859 and 1861. After this he formed his own practice, at one stage in tandem with the post of District Surveyor of Battersea. His Greenwich church was built in Early Decorated Gothic style, using brick with Bath stone dressing, and lit by clerestories. Special features are the traceried window in the west front, the marble altar and tabernacle, and Gothic details portrayed in the two side chapels, the Chapel of the Sacred Heart and the Lady Chapel.
With an estimated cost of £4,335, the church was opened by Cardinal Manning on 25 May 1881. It provided for 600 people, serving the large dockside parish of Irish people, as well as Catholic pensioners of the Greenwich Hospital and Catholics from the nearby Workhouse (see "St Joseph, East Greenwich"). The mission priest at the time, the Rev. Augustine Marie Boone, was of Belgian origin, and the altar and the reredos "with painted panels of the Nativity, Trinity and Redemption" were the work of a Belgian sculptor and church decorator, M. Zeus, while the gilt brass crucifix was designed by the famous Belgian Gothic Revival architect, Baron Jean-Baptiste Bethune (again, see "St Joseph — East Greenwich"). Baron Bethune had worked with E. W. Pugin on the Castle of Loppem in Belgium.
The tower intended for the church was never built due to lack of funding. Nevertheless, as the 2010 Conservation Area Appraisal points out, St Joseph's is still one of the "notable landmarks in the street scene" since "[t]he simple brick mass of the church is impressive, hard up against the pavement, and the steeply pitched slate roof has a powerful effect when approached from the neighbouring streets"; moreover, "[i]t forms a group with the neighbouring Priest's House"
The text of this article was written by Penelope Harris for the website 'The Victorian Web.' Father Kevin Robinson, priest-in-charge of Our Ladye Star of the Sea, Greenwich provided details about the original school building.
