Church Heritage Record id19409

Nave south of five and a half bays with north and south aisles; west porch, north-west tower and spire, west porch; chancel with large north vestry and small south storeroom.

The church was designed by R.J. Johnson and the foundation stone was laid by Sir William Armstrong on 29 November 1866. The church was dedicated by the Bishop of Durham on 20 February 1868 and received a parish on 7 July that year. The cost was £5,700, and contributions were given by Sir William Armstrong, members of the Cruddas family, the Diocesan Special Church Building Fund and the Incorporated Church Building Society. The tower and spire were added in 1878 and the north aisle, vestry and west porch were added in 1882. The spire was repointed in 1947 and 1961.

The church follows the type of the much-publicised St. Mary Magdalene, Munster Square, London, designed by R.C. Carpenter in 1849. It has a broad, high nave with wide aisles on north and south, and no clerestory since the aisles stand under their own steeply-pitched gabled roofs. There is a well-proportioned chancel, and a tall tower surmounted by a graceful spire stands at the end of one of the aisles. The style throughout is Decorated, and some aisle windows have intersecting tracery, others tracery of a sexfoil above three equal lights. One in the north aisle, towards the east end, has a square head with reticulated tracery and is the only four-light aisle window. The chancel has a five light east window with a tall central light reaching to the head of the window and sexfoils above the paired outer lights. The east gable of the south aisle has a three-light window set high in the wall and the east end of the north vestry, which is slightly lower than the aisle, ends in a polygonal apse and has a transeptal cross-gable on the north with two tall square-headed windows. The west wall of the nave has a four-light window with a cinquefoil and two trefoils in the tracery. The north and south walls of the aisles have differing designs of buttresses and there is a gabled porch in the narrower west bay of the south aisle with a roundel enclosing a bust of St. Stephen carved in relief. The low west porch in Perpendicular style with a straight moulded parapet has heraldic shields in the spandrels of the doorways.

The tower is divided externally by stringcourses into four unequal stages, of which the lower is much the tallest and has a slender window in the west wall. The second stage has only small rectangular openings in each face, and the third stage, which is very shallow, has paired rectangular lights in each face. The reticence of these lower stages makes all the more effective the belfry with its three tall, two light openings in each face deeply recessed between small buttress-like motifs. The angle buttresses which have risen almost without set-offs to this level, suddenly have two set-offs and die into the wall just below the parapet. The parapet is embattled and each merlon is pierced with one letter of the sacred monogram IHS so that all three letters appear once on each face. Small octagonal turrets at the angles have simple flying buttresses to the spire, a motif which, like the general aspect of the bell-openings, Paley and Austin were to use ten years later at St. George's, Stockport. There are lucarnes in the principal faces at the lowest possible level and a second tier very high up, almost at the apex of the spire, to stretch its elegant proportions yet further. The effect of slenderness is increased by roll mouldings up the edges.

The interior of the church is spacious and quite simple, with octagonal columns having moulded bases and capitals supporting the double chamfered arches of the nave arcades, and plastered walls except for the base of the tower, which by having exposed stonework appears appropriately massive. All the roofs - of nave, aisles and chancel - are boarded to form barrel vaults, slightly pointed, with ribs traversing them at each bay and at the mid-points of each bay. The nave roof is decorated with pierced quatrefoils and painted running scrolls at the wall heads. There is also a continuous painted band along the ridge of the vault. The floors are of wooden boards with tiled alleys covered by coconut matting. The chancel, which is one step above the nave, has marble steps and a mosaic floor laid in 1912. There are two further steps at the rails. The chancel arch has an outer chamfered order reaching to the floor and an inner moulded order carried on corbels and very short colonettes with foliate capitals. The spiral stair leading up the tower has eighty-four steps up to the bell-chamber, from which point the spire is hollow up to the apex without intermediate timbers or floors.