Church Heritage Record 624329

Cruciform. Short wide nave with gallery and west porch. Large transepts with south porch and crossing tower with staircase and bell turret to north-east corner. Chancel with Royd (now memorial) chapel to south and vestry to north.

Nave including crossing c 25m (85 ft) x 10m (35ft), transepts and chancel c 10m square.

Built 1873, designed by James Medland & H Taylor for Albert Hudson Royds of Mount Falinge, a prominent industrialist, banker and Freemason. The Royds family were local wool merchants who had helped finance the Rochdale canal. The crossing lantern was ceiled in 1911. The Royds chapel was rededicated as a Memorial chapel after World War II.

The church is designed in a free interpretation of the Gothic revival style with definite hints of Arts-and-Crafts, and very unorthodox even for a Medland Taylor church, whose Magnum Opus this undoubtedly is.  It was clearly an expensive and ambitious commission, and indeed it cost some £22,000, an enormous sum at the time, enough to build four parish churches of this size.

The central tower is the dominant feature.  It has angle buttresses which become both clasping and diagonal at the lower level, square shaped blind arcading, two 2-light geometrical traceried openings to the lantern stage with blind arches in between and on either side, crocketed banding, decorative crenellations with crocketed corner pinnacles and an octagonal corner stair turret with traceried bell-stage and small spire capped with a vane, again with a five-pointed stair. 

The nave is of three bays with weathered buttresses, square-headed 1, 2 and 3-light windows with Decorated and Free Gothic tracery and hoodmoulds, coloured stone banding, a castellated circular stair turret to the north-east corner and a steeply pitched roof with coped gables. There is much blind tracery panelling of the same character, and the five-pointed star is worked in many places. The transept is treated similarly except for the three gable windows which are lancet shaped and of 1, 2 and 1-light, the central pair being taller and in two tiers. The west wall has a large rose window.

The vestry is of one bay and is approached by a flight of steps and a cusped doorway; the chancel is of two bays. Each is roofed separately and architectural treatment is as above apart from the diagonal buttressing. The east window is a 5-light with reticulated tracery, with carved voussoirs of alternating colours and a drip mould. There is a foundation stone in the north-east buttress and a panel set under the east window commemorating the founder’s parents, Clement and Jane Royds.

The interior betrays the Masonic influence immediately, with a plethora of images and forms derived from these ideals, from the furnishings and fittings, stained glass, carved detail and roofs. Internally as externally such reference extends to more abstract qualities such as the proportions, which are again said to relate to those of Solomon’s temple. 

The walls are bare stone, typically for Medland Taylor.  Again typically the roofs are of massive timber construction, the chancel roof being a particularly elaborate hammer-beam construction with enormous intricately carved beams and springing from shafted and foliated granite corbels, with facetted panels between. These features and the reredos (designed by Rev E W Gilbert, the first vicar) show early Arts and Crafts influence.

The floors are of stone flags with textured and patterned wood in the chancel. The interior is fully pewed, with rather fine benches with carved ends, their counterparts in the choir stalls even better, with pierced quatrefoil carving to the fronts. Every window has excellent stained glass, a full scheme.

The central crossing is surrounded by four massive detached polished granite columns with moulded capitals and bases which support the lantern above, though this is no longer visible having been enclosed in 1911, which without doubt compromises the architecture of the interior.  All the windows have rere-shafts.  The organ console is located in the south transept with exposed pipes flanking the window. The transepts are virtually as big as the nave, which has a heavy timber west gallery approached by a winding stair in the thickness of the wall.

The 3-bay arcade between chancel and chapel has particularly fine foliated capitals and polished granite columns. There is an excellent carved piscina, a monument donated in 1896 in memory of Charles Morris, vicar.