BACKGROUND AND CONTEXT Historic England has received an application to assess the Church of the Good Shepherd in Batheaston for listing. The building is within the Batheaston Conservation Area.

A live planning application is currently being considered for the redevelopment of the site, including proposals to demolish the building. It is understood that the target decision date for this application is currently 29 December 2023.

HISTORY AND DETAILS The Church of the Good Shepherd in Batheaston was built between 1966 and 1967. It replaced a temporary church, dedicated to St Euphrasia Pelletier, the foundress of the Good Shepherd order, which had been erected 20 years previously. The new church was designed by Martin Fisher, an architect from Bath who also designed St Peter and St Paul in Combe Down (1965), and St Catherine in Frome (1968), neither of which are listed. Seating 280 people in a radial plan around a corner altar, the Good Shepherd is suggested to have been one of the first churches in the diocese that expressed the liturgical intentions of the Second Vatican Council, though St Peter and St Paul was reputedly the first church built in the parish after the Council’s conclusion. The roof, reportedly originally of sheet copper, was renewed in 1991 and new stone sanctuary furnishings by Martin Fisher were installed in the early C21.

The church is constructed of narrow concrete blocks and fibre glass blocks in vertical sections which appear opaque from the exterior. The building is square on plan, set over a single storey with a basement. The roof rises diagonally, increasing in height above the sanctuary at the south-east (liturgical east) corner. The main entrance is through a small flat-roofed narthex to the north, which features a projecting porch with an emblem fixed to a concrete lintel above a pair of double doors. A series of windows at basement level is visible to the east elevation, and to the sanctuary above is a projecting oriel window in blue glass. An external staircase leads from the basement level to a door in the south wall. A windowless projection composed of concrete panels at the south-west corner contains a confessional.

Reportedly, the internal walls of the narthex and of the basement hall are of exposed narrow concrete blocks, while the walls of the church are painted. The holy water stoups in the narthex are also of concrete. The interior of the church is well-lit through panels of fibreglass blocks. The windows behind and above the sanctuary have coloured blocks simulating stained glass. The stone altar and ambo date from the most recent reordering by the original architect. The tabernacle is placed on a wall-mounted pedestal and surmounted by a tall canopy. Above the altar is a canopy whose shape echoes that of the roof, with the raised pitch pointing north-west. To the left of the sanctuary, the projecting oriel window contains a modern concrete sculpture of the Virgin and Child. In the north-east and south-west corners are tall statues of St Thomas More and St John Fisher under timber canopies, from an army chapel. The sunken baptistery in the north-west corner has a cylindrical stone font which matches the new altar and lectern. The benches are arranged in four blocks.

ASSESSMENT The Principles of Selection for Listed Buildings (DCMS, November 2018) sets out the broad criteria when assessing buildings for listing, advising that careful selection is required for buildings from the period after 1945.

Historic England’s Listing Selection Guide for Places of Worship (December 2017) provides further context for this building type.

The Good Shepherd in Batheaston is not recommended for listing for the following principal reasons:

Degree of Architectural interest:

* although the building is an interesting example of its type, with some notable architectural features, including the striking, tent-like roof form and imaginative use of fibre-glass blocks instead of traditional glazing, the success of the design is variable and not of the standard required of post-war buildings to meet the threshold for listing. * there have been alterations with the replacement of the roof covering, and some of the furnishings, although designed by the original architect, are much later than the original construction.

Degree of Historic interest:

* while the building has claims to historic interest as an early expression of the liturgical movement in the diocese when considered in the national context, it does not display a sufficient degree of innovation to raise the interest enough for statutory listing.

CONCLUSION While the Good Shepherd has local interest as an unusual mid-C20 church, it falls short of the level of interest required for it to be listed in the national context.

SOURCES Foyle, A and Pevsner, N, The Buildings of England: Somerset North and Bristol (2011), p213. Taking Stock Report, The Good Shepherd, Batheaston, accessed on 29 November 2023 from https://taking-stock.org.uk/building/batheaston-the-good-shepherd/ ‘Church With a Contrast’, Western Daily Express, (5 May 1967).