Woodside Green Christian Centre, Surrey, Riverstone, Ultra grade

Location: Woodside Green Christian Centre, Croydon, Surrey
Architect: Martin Hewitt / Turner and Hoskins Architects, Edenbridge
Slate Used: SSQ Riverstone®, Ultra grade, Grey roofing slate

The Woodside Green Christian Centre is a charitable trust renowned for its work with children in the west-Croydon area, its new £1.7million home providing an outstanding example of how imagination can use the versatility of natural roofing slate.

The church lies at the heart of the centre and is surrounded by meeting rooms, apartments, offices and operational areas. Above them, the various roofs provide a slatescape that showcases what can be done with roofing slate – providing you have the imagination and skill! A shallow-pitch (22.5º), multi-valley roof tops the apartment block and an octagonal roof with a similar pitch sits above the main entrance foyer.

But the conical roof on the church is simply breathtaking. With a diameter of 19m, a pitch of 25º and an arc of 270°, it’s covered with hook-fixed roofing slates laid in a diminishing-course pattern. The remaining segment of the circle thrusts out of the cone, soaring upward to form the church’s tower, the glazing in its ‘cut’ faces allowing light to flood into the church below. Behind this, the tower’s roof takes the shape of an inverted kite with a central ridge forming a spine that runs from the tip of the tower down to the rear of the church. Fabulous!