St Matthew's Church was built in St Mary's Road between 1867 and 1870. It was situated on land donated by George Brinton at the junction of several new roads where a large piece of ground known as Ransom's Field had been laid out for building. The church was built by Joseph Bull and Sons to designs by Bull and Monday, architects of Portland Terrace (see entry for Charles Albert Monday). The rather bleak Norman style was at the express wish of its first incumbent, the Reverend John Bullen.
It was raised at a cost of about £3000 with accommodation for 350. The exterior was of Swanage stone with Bath stone dressings. The common attribution of the church to the architects Hinves and Bedborough (eg Nikolaus Pevsner and David Lloyd, Hampshire and the Isle of Wight, 1967, p521) may be a confusion with St Matthew's Church in Newtown designed by Hinves and Bedborough in 1850 but never built.
St Matthew’s Church closed down in 1969, although the congregation continued to worship in the neighbouring church hall. It became the African Caribbean Centre, and is now (2020) the Southampton Lighthouse International Church.
St Matthew's Church
St Matthew’s Church. Photograph, c1980
St Matthew's Church×
see also
Further reading:
Buildings of England: Hampshire and the I.O.W., by Nikolaus Pevsner and David Lloyd, p521. (H/i)
History of Southampton, by Rev. J. S. Davies, p352. (HS/h)
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