St Paul’s Church, Cambridge

Client – St Paul’s PCC
Date of Completion – 1995

St Paul’s Church was built in 1841 in the gothic style, but being in the less fashionable 'perpendicular' it was vilified by Pugin. Despite this the church prospered and became a leading evangelical church. It expanded, with a chancel and transepts added around 1900, and a church hall in Coronation Street. 

By the 1990s the Hall was no longer usable and Freeland Rees Roberts were commissioned to build a church hall, meeting rooms and kitchen inside the existing church structure. The direction of worship was turned through 180°, allowing separate entrances for religious and pastoral uses and this also brought the transepts in to use maintaining seat capacity. The altar sanctuary now sits in the centre of the building and the two ‘halves’ are unified by the stained-glass cross with mirrored sides which send beams of coloured light through the building when the sun shines through the clerestorey windows.