Stephen Lawrence Prize 2025 winner news

2025 Stephen Lawrence Prize Winner architecture, Matthew Lloyd Architects UK building, RIBA award news

Stephen Lawrence Prize 2025 Winner – St. Mary’s Walthamstow

17 October 2025

Design: Matthew Lloyd Architects

Location: Walthamstow, London, England

Photos © Tim Crocker

St. Mary’s Walthamstow 2025 Stephen Lawrence Prize Winner

Jury citation:
The Vicar of the Grade II* listed St Mary’s Walthamstow shared a sad anecdote with the jury, of people walking past the church before the works were carried out saying ‘it used to be a church but now it’s closed’. Although this had not been the case, the sentiment was understandable. The main pedestrian approach to the church had been a car park and the building offered no signs of life to visually connect with the community or suggest an invitation to enter.

As both the most protected and oldest surviving building in Walthamstow, St Mary’s required significant fabric repairs and upgrades to extend its life. In tandem with this, an ambitious brief sought to redefine the church beyond its function as a place of worship and revive it for the whole community, for activity and interaction – every day of the week. This required it to be flexible, inclusive and welcoming and necessitated complete reordering of the interior. In this it has triumphed. The jury found the building warm, bright, uplifting and full of life.

Externally, the modest new single-storey extension takes the place of the former car park. This contains the parish office and an exhibition space, affording glimpses of light and human activity within. In turn it now offers passive surveillance to the adjacent path. This neat move is successful in reorientating the building to the north – passers-by will no longer wonder if the church is still open. The structure is expressed externally, and, together with a reconstituted stone plinth, larch cladding and window frames, the materials of the extension harmonise tonally with the render of the existing building, giving a calm cohesion to the whole. The main roof of the existing building was replaced with Welsh slate and insulated to improve energy performance.

Internally the works have been carried out with expert discretion to the extent that one could imagine they had always been there. New secondary glazed doors have been added inside the east entrance, allowing a visual connection to the space within and creating a draught lobby. Two generous WCs have been neatly inserted under the balcony, and, adjacent, a new café servery can be concealed behind folding panels. Creating a new opening in the wall of the south aisle to the south vestry has effectively given the church a new space – awkward access meant that this was previously underused.

To further improve accessibility and create the required flexible community space, all of the ‘benches’ (not pews) were removed, and the stone floor carefully lifted, labelled and relaid to allow underfloor heating to be installed. This significant intervention in the Grade II* building has been carried out almost invisibly, and successfully created full level access. The conservation works and new enhancements successfully extend the life of St Mary’s Walthamstow and offer a new hub for the whole community. That they have been executed with such subtlety and control is a tribute to the architects’ skill.

St Mary’s Walthamstow is a regenerative project supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund. It has enabled the parish to plan for the future of their Grade II* listed church whilst securing sustainable community outreach. Waltham Forest is one of the most culturally diverse places in the UK, and St Mary’s vision is to bring local communities together to explore their heritage, cultures, and histories. The completed project, which includes repair and re-ordering of the church and the addition of a modest extension, preserves and enhances a historic asset and its setting.

St. Mary’s Walthamstow re-opened in February 2023 and describes itself as ‘a church for the whole community’. This restored, enhanced, and extended church is now able to creatively blur the boundaries between popular, established, faith setting and the diverse and vibrant community which it serves.

St. Mary’s Walthamstow by Matthew Lloyd Architects – Building Information

Architect: Matthew Lloyd Architects – https://matthewlloyd.co.uk/

Location: Walthamstow, London
Client: St Mary’s, Walthamstow
Contractor: Borras Construction
Completed: December 2022

Awards:
Stephen Lawrence Prize 2025: Winners
RIBA Awards 2025 (Shortlisted)
RIBA Awards 2024 (Shortlisted)
Waltham Forest Design Awards 2024 (Heritage; Public Realm; Judges’ Award)
National Church Architecture Awards 2023 (President’s Award, Finalist)
AJ Awards 2023 (Shortlisted)
NLA Awards 2023 (Shortlisted)