Architecture
St Peter's Church is substantial red brick church of the 1930s designed by W. C. Mangan in his favoured Italian Lombard style, with a broad basilican interior which was restored in 2005. In 1926 the Reverend J Petit, later bishop of Menevia, established a mission here for south Dagenham. This was taken over in 1928 by the La Salette Missionaries, a missionary congregation originally founded in the French Alps. The present church hall was in use for worship by 1929. The foundation stone for the permanent and current church was laid on 31 January 1937 and was opened by Bishop Doubleday on 5 December in the same year. At the time of the opening it seated 700. A presbytery was built at the same time, from Mangan’s designs.
In 2004 the coffered ceiling collapsed and in 2005 the church was repaired and re-ordered a second time, returning to its original internal arrangement. The walls are faced with red brick and the roofs are covered in Roman tiles. To either side are single-storey projections, that on the south containing a side entry, that on the north the former baptistery (an addition of the 1960s, according to Fr Foster’s notes). On the north side is a lower Lady Chapel. The chapel itself has an apse with mosaic decoration. The frieze above the nave arcades is inscribed with texts. Above the clerestory are a heavy modillion cornice and a flat coffered ceiling (reconstructed in 2005 after collapse). The deep semi-circular sanctuary arch is also coffered but the sanctuary apse is plain. The eastern arch of the north arcade which leads into the side chapel shrine of Our Lady of Salette is now glazed. The high altar is raised on parquet steps under a handsome classical baldacchino. A modern nave altar is set on a modern parquet platform. The benches appear to be original.
