Lot 215
CHARLES SPOONER (1862-1938)
ARCHITECTURAL DESIGNS FOR TWO CHURCHES IN EAST HAM, LONDON, 1925 & 1933
Auction: Day One | Lots 1 to 229 | Wed 15th April 2026 from 10am
Description
ST PAUL'S:
CHURCH OF SAINT PAUL, EAST HAM IN ESSEX, AS AT PRESENT DECEMBER A.D. 1925, pen and ink with monochrome watercolour, 56cm x 77cm, Ecclesiastical Commissioner approval stamp; RECONSTRUCTION, CHURCH OF ST PAUL, EAST HAM, graphite on thick card, an oblique street-level view with inset plan, signed twice, 51cm x 72cm, spotted; CHURCH OF SAINT PAUL, EAST HAM, ENLARGEMENT, 2 designs, pen and ink and watercolour, containing various plans and sections, each signed lower right ‘Charles Spooner F.R.I.B.A., Architect’, 56cm x 77cm, Ecclesiastical Commissioner and Church Building Society approval stamps, somewhat spotted and toned; ST PAUL'S CHURCH EAST HAM, pen and ink and graphite, showing various cross-sections, 46cm x 58cm; ST PAUL'S CHURCH EAST HAM, PLAN OF SITE, pen and ink with watercolour on thick glassine, signed lower right, 33cm x 52.5cm; [ELEVATION DRAWING FOR SOUTH CHAPEL SCREEN], pen and ink with watercolour on thick glassine, pencil annotations, torn with loss; [VERY LARGE ROUGH SKETCH OF THE INTERIOR OF ST PAUL'S, EAST HAM], graphite on thick glassine, central fold, chips and tears to edges and fold, 78cm x 109cm.
ST ALBAN'S:
DESIGN FOR COMPLETION OF CHURCH AND THE VICARAGE, 8 designs, pen and ink, watercolour and graphite, 4 on linen, all signed and dated lower right ‘Charles Spooner F.R.I.B.A June [or] August 1933’, all approx. 44.5cm x 56cm, numbered, annotations and ink-stamps of the Church Building Society and Ecclesiastical Commissioner, 4 with amended sections on hinge-mounted slips, the plans on linen spotted; DETAIL OF CHAPEL, graphite with traces of pen and ink, 46cm x 58cm, rough designs on verso; THE KITCHEN, ST ALBANS VICARAGE, watercolour and graphite, signed and dated 1934, 22.5cm x 22cm
Provenance
From the collection of Dr Alec Hamilton, author of Charles Spooner (1862-1938): Arts and Crafts Architect (Donington, 2012).
Footnote
St Paul's, Spooner's last complete church, was finished in 1933 and still stands today, on Burges Road in what is now the London Borough of Newham. Spooner himself considered it his best work, and it is given special mention in the introduction to the revised edition of the London: East volume of Pevsner's Buildings of England (2005): ‘The search for alternatives to Gothic is demonstrated by … St Paul, East Ham … in a simple round-arched style but with the novelty of a colonnade instead of an arcade, and innovative also for its use of concrete for beams and columns’ (p. 84); the building’s individual listing contrasts its ‘exuberantly Edwardian’ hall with the more sober design of the church itself (p. 271). St Alban's received bomb damage in 1940 and was eventually demolished in 1968.
Illustrated: Hamilton, Charles Spooner, pp. 167 (St Paul's, [Elevation Drawing for South Chapel Screen]), 169 (St Alban's, ‘Design for Completion of Church and the Vicarage, No. 1'), 170 (ibid., No. 4).