The Architecture of East Cliff Church

East Cliff Church is a handsome Grade II listed building built in 1878/79 to the designs of Kemp Welch and Pinder with additions in 1889/91 by Lawson and Donkin.  Built in grey-buff brick with stone dressings under a 20th century concrete tile roof, the church with its imposing tower and cupola holds an important central location on Holdenhurst Road, one of the main thoroughfares into the town, and is one of the first important buildings one sees when arriving in Bournemouth by train.

Built in Romanesque-cum-Cinquecento style, the church front facing Holdenhurst Road has a gabled porch with a pair of round-arched windows (formerly the main entrance doorways) under a relieving arch, two cinquecento windows and a wheel window above. The clocktower has similar windows with Romanesque intersecting arcading, has a four-faced clock and is topped by a recessed timber polygonal cupola with added leaded dome.  The sanctuary has a number of cinquecento windows under hoodmoulds.

The fine church interior has a U-shaped gallery on scallop-capitalled columns with leaf-decorated S-section balustrade and a secondary gallery across the corner of the sanctuary filled with later coloured glass; a triple-columned arch to apse which has a round-arched arcade and a ribbed semi-dome with circular top-light; a decorative bressumer below organ pipes; fine timber roof trusses with posts and braces forming a series of arches with cusping in spandrels; panelled pews; and early 20th century coloured glass to the windows.