Pevsner doesn't mention it, nor does Mee. Built in 1909, like nearby St Augustine at Thorpe Bay, in the industrial style. Lacking Pevsner I found the Taking Stock website which "aims to assess the historical and architectural importance of every Catholic church and chapel within a diocese" - a worthy goal, I'm sure you'll agree. Apparently although it opened in Feb 1910 consecration didn't occur until Sept 1955! Taking Stock's entry reads:
The church of the Sacred Heart is designed in a simplified Gothic style which owes something to both English Norman architecture and French thirteenth-century Gothic. The walls are face with red brick laid in English bond and the roofs are covered in plain tiles. On plan, the building comprises a nave with a west porch, south west apsidal-ended baptistery, north and south aisles and an apsidal-ended sanctuary with a sacristy on the north side. It is a clear that a northwest tower was intended but never built.
The west gable wall is flanked by chamfered buttresses which may originally have carried pinnacles. In the upper part of the wall is a stepped three-light window. Beneath are five round-headed windows, now largely obscured by the single-storey brick porch which is clearly a later addition. The apsidal-ended southwest baptistery has a brick corbel table and conical roof. On the north side where the tower was intended is a porch set in from the west front, under a lean-to roof. East of the tower and baptistery, the nave is of three aisled bays divided by pilaster strips, with stone corbel tables to both nave and aisles. The clerestory has three pairs of round-headed windows and the north aisle has a canted central bay flanked by pairs of similar windows. The apsidal sanctuary has a pair of round-headed windows high in each side wall and to further pairs in the curving end.
Internally the church has a western organ gallery, now glazed beneath to form a vestibule. The gallery is supported on octagonal columns with four-centred arches. The nave and aisle walls are plastered and painted. The nave arcades are of three bays of brick round-headed arches on octagonal columns with scalloped capitals. Above the nave is an open timber roof with arch braces to the collars brought down onto wall posts. The aisles have lean-to roofs with purlins, struts and collars beneath the boarded ceiling. None of the windows have any internal moulding and most are clear glazed with quarries. The tall chancel arch is semicircular and rests on octagonal responds with scalloped capitals. The sanctuary is apsidal with an open timber roof. The windows set high in the wall have stained glass. The sanctuary has clearly been re-ordered. The triple-arched stone reredos on the east wall is doubtless original but the nave altar and other fittings appear to be modern.
Frankly I thought it was hideous and utterly without merit.
SOUTHEND. There are hundreds of thousands of people who believe that it is one of England’s wonders, and verily it is one of the biggest pleasure towns in England, London’s nearest seaside. Actually it is at the mouth of the Thames, but its name is Southend-on-Sea, the south end of its mother village of Prittlewell. It has seven miles of front, and the ships of the world pass it day and night; over 60,000 a year go by. The town is served by two railways, and is so convenient for London that for years it had ten thousand season ticket-holders. It is visited by multitudes of East Enders, many travelling by coach on the great arterial road 100 feet wide and 30 miles long. Others come by steamer to land on the longest pier in the British Empire, riding well over a mile to the shore on an electric tram. There has been a pier here for more than a hundred years, it having been first built to carry Southend across the vast expanse of shallow water which at low tide becomes a sea of mud - yet a not unhealthy sea of mud, for hard footways project from the shore so that people may walk out and enjoy it when the tide is low.
The marble statue of Queen Victoria reminds us that it was the patronage of royalty which brought fame to Southend in the early years of last century. A delightful row of Georgian houses with verandahs overlooking the delightful gardens on the cliff is called Royal Terrace, because Princess Caroline stayed here in Trafalgar year. From here we see the hills of Kent, with the port of Sheerness at the mouth of the Medway, and Gad’s Hill where Dickens loved to sit in his garden and look out on the ships as we see them here.
On this sunny walk are acres of lovely shrubbery with rock gardens and waterfalls, bowling greens and swimming pools, and the biggest floral clock in England, 60 feet round and with 10,000 plants in it, the hands being driven by motor. Here also is the peace memorial, a striking obelisk by Sir Edwin Lutyens 40 feet high and with wreaths on the front and back, while on the sides are sculptured the flags for which 1338 men from Southend fought and fell. There are two other obelisks on the beach at Westcliff, the quieter part of Southend; they are the Crow Stones, marking the ancient boundary of London’s authority over the Thames. Inland hereabouts is Chalkwell Park, with a beautiful rose garden in its 24 shady acres.
Those who would see Southend as it loves to see itself should come to the carnival in August and join the quarter of a million people who watch the three-mile-long procession. Then Southend’s enthusiasm rises to its highest pitch, the consummation of the boisterous fun which all through the summer the amazing Kursaal has kept up. Here hundreds of thousands of pounds have been spent on a gigantic fair, and every year a vast multitude of people know well that here is the matchless Cockney paradise.
The marble statue of Queen Victoria reminds us that it was the patronage of royalty which brought fame to Southend in the early years of last century. A delightful row of Georgian houses with verandahs overlooking the delightful gardens on the cliff is called Royal Terrace, because Princess Caroline stayed here in Trafalgar year. From here we see the hills of Kent, with the port of Sheerness at the mouth of the Medway, and Gad’s Hill where Dickens loved to sit in his garden and look out on the ships as we see them here.
On this sunny walk are acres of lovely shrubbery with rock gardens and waterfalls, bowling greens and swimming pools, and the biggest floral clock in England, 60 feet round and with 10,000 plants in it, the hands being driven by motor. Here also is the peace memorial, a striking obelisk by Sir Edwin Lutyens 40 feet high and with wreaths on the front and back, while on the sides are sculptured the flags for which 1338 men from Southend fought and fell. There are two other obelisks on the beach at Westcliff, the quieter part of Southend; they are the Crow Stones, marking the ancient boundary of London’s authority over the Thames. Inland hereabouts is Chalkwell Park, with a beautiful rose garden in its 24 shady acres.
Those who would see Southend as it loves to see itself should come to the carnival in August and join the quarter of a million people who watch the three-mile-long procession. Then Southend’s enthusiasm rises to its highest pitch, the consummation of the boisterous fun which all through the summer the amazing Kursaal has kept up. Here hundreds of thousands of pounds have been spent on a gigantic fair, and every year a vast multitude of people know well that here is the matchless Cockney paradise.
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