The architects of this church, Paley & Austin built it for the London & North Western Railway Company. Clearly they had limited resources at their disposal but they used these to splendid effect. The paramount need seems to have been to create a large seating area and this was achieved but without the sacrifice of artistic considerations. The church may have been cheap - see the use of plain red stock brick - but the result certainly is not. The exterior is highly unconventional and at a superficial glance, might not be taken for a church at all, but perhaps, a school. This is mainly because the façade to the street presents three tall, transverse gables. These have perpendicular tracery and above them, in the heads of the gables, is timber detailing more familiar from domestic work. This feature also appears over the east window but, away from the street on the south side, is absent from the three tall gables there. Over the west end of the church is an elegant shingled fleche. Apart from the striking gables the abiding impression of the exterior of St. Barnabas is the long roofing that sweeps down, for example, from the westerly transverse gables and also from the chancel over the vestry. The interior of the church does not have the N-S emphasis that one finds outside; this is replaced by conventional E-W directionality. The impact is of a wonderfully spacious, well-lit church. So often bare brick creates an effect of cheap mediocrity - not so here. No wall plane is particularly large; indeed, three wide arches, which mirror the N-S gables over the aisles, take up the nave walls. The stone piers are thin and the brick arches gently moulded. No capitals break the flow between pier and arch. The chancel and nave spaces are unified by the lack of a chancel arch. In fact the space demarcated for the chancel is brought forward into part of the E bay of the nave and the division is formed by a light, very open screen. This has rectangular lights with flowing art Nouveau tracery in the heads and the divisions from one bay to the next is made by turned balusters - hence a union between medieval and post-reformation motifs.

Geoffrey K. Branwood 28.8.1988