page_title: Ewan Christian
section_title: Church designs
hierarchical_section_title: Ewan Christian / Life / Career / Church designs
caption_attribution_description: English: Chancel and east tower of Holy Trinity parish church, Dalston, London, seen form the northeast from Cumberland Close
context_page_description: Ewan Christian was a British architect. He is most notable for the restorations of Southwell Minster and Carlisle Cathedral, and the design of the National Portrait Gallery. He was Architect to the Ecclesiastical Commissioners from 1851 to 1895. Christian was elected A RIBA in 1840, FRIBA in 1850, RIBA President 1884–86 and was awarded the Royal Gold Medal in 1887.
context_section_description: Among Christian's best original churches are Holy Trinity, Sunk Island, in the East Riding of Yorkshire (completed in 1877), St Matthew's Church in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire (1878–79), and his masterpiece St Mark's Church, Leicester (1869–72), all cited in his RIBA Royal Gold Medal award of 1887. Holy Trinity displays his most typical red brick lancet style with nave and chancel under a single steep-pitched high roof, a deep apse to the chancel and a bold impressive tower topped by a pyramidal spire. The tower has another familiar feature, a projecting circular stair-turret to its east side which is capped by its own small curved roof. 
  The powerful and brooding red brick tower Christian provided for his Holy Trinity Church, Dalston (1878–79), in the London Borough of Hackney, is set high over the crossing and is reminiscent of the work of his late friend Samuel Sanders Teulon (1812–73) with its solid massing of parts and its projecting stair-turret capped by a conical roof. His red brick lancet style is also shown to good effect in the little churches Christian built for new villages around The Wash in Lincolnshire, particularly at Holbeach St Marks and Christ Church at Gedney Dawsmere, both completed in 1869. The nave and deeply apsed chancel are under a single sweep of roof with little interior division and are broad and spacious inside. They are provided with either a bellcote or spirelet rather than a dominant tower to fit their country appearance and surroundings but are nevertheless impressive in their simplicity and purity. Despite his being thought to be mostly a red brick architect Christian was happy to use other facing materials where appropriate and when funding was adequate. The Church of St Matthew's (1878–79) in Cheltenham, thought by David Verey to be "admirable and handsome", is built in rugged white stone with ashlar dressings, while at All Saints, Viney Hill (1867), also in Gloucestershire, the church is appropriately built in the local sandstone. Like these, St Mark's Church (1869–72) in Leicester uses different materials. St Mark's is unusually faced in dark purple-grey slate from the quarries of the donor, William Perry Herrick (1794–1876), in Charnwood Forest, Leicestershire (Herrick's home, Beaumanor Hall near Loughborough, was built in 1845–47 in a Jacobethan style by William Railton (c.1801–77), who was Christian's predecessor as Architect to the Ecclesiastical Commissioners in 1838–48). The church displays a chancel apse, high roof and a huge tower topped by a Doulting limestone spire rising to 168 feet. St Mark's and St Matthew's were both designed as Evangelical preaching churches and have lofty naves with little division from the chancel and as in Christian's first church at Hildenborough in Kent both focused attention on the pulpit. Inside, St Mark's has rich stone arcading with polished pink Shap granite columns, heavy capitals displaying deeply carved foliage and striped polychrome arches. Above them are alabaster roundels showing figures of saints and prophets. Tall marble shafts decorate the chancel and the walls of the interior display Christian's fondness for decorating his buildings with biblical texts. 
  St Mark's southern and western boundaries being originally canted, caused the width of the site to narrow from east to west and the length to narrow from south to north. To solve the southern boundary problem Christian set the tower at the south-east corner of the church and provided three stepbacks from there towards the west which resulted in the church's stepped and gabled exterior to the south wall. Inside, the cant is disguised by the south aisle appearing to have two chapels projecting from it. At the west end Christian provided a triangular vestibule below the level of the west window to fit within the boundary; this was demolished when the church was extended to the west by one bay in 1904. Of all of Christian's churches, St Mark's is said to be his masterpiece; in its style and design, use of materials and plan it stands out amongst and ranks with the great churches of ot
caption: Holy Trinity Church, Dalston, by Ewan Christian, 1878–79, showing the crossing tower
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