Church Heritage Record id19674

(The church is orientated so that the ritual east in fact faces north; ritual directions are used throughout this record) A wide aisled nave of five and a half bays, base of projected north-west tower and south porch. The transepts extend from the cast bay of the nave and the west bay of the chancel. The vestries lie on the south side of the chancel.

Although not a large or sumptuous church, Cloughfold has several features which mark it unmistakably as the work of the Paley and Austin partnership. One is the wide nave, with narrow passage aisles, which gives a welcoming aspect to anyone entering at the west end. Another is the pairing of the cross-gables of the transepts. Perhaps the most familiar feature of the Paley and Austin style is the use for window tracery of free Perpendicular forms. 

The view normally had of the church is from the north-west, as it is approached from Rawtenstall, and immediately the lack of the intended tower is felt. Not only would it have improved the building, but it would have been a focal point in a formless area. Because the tower is missing, the wide nave has a more brooding appearance than was intended. The only other part to be seen clearly from the road is the west wall, composed chiefly of a large four-light window with big mouchettes and smaller panels in the tracery; this is flanked by buttresses which have four closely spaced off-sets towards the top. The aisles do not come to the west wall, that on the north being terminated by the ground floor of the tower which has incipient angle buttresses and a pyramidal slated roof and acts as a porch; that on the south ends at the porch, which has a circle containing three whirling mouchettes as a west window.

The lateral walls have paired lights with ogeo trefoiled heads in the aisles and fourfold lights under segmental arches in the clerestory. Tall two light windows light each gabled wall of the transeptal chapels and since the vestry blocks the east wall of the south transept there is an additional window contrived in the roof.

The chancel follows the proportions of the ave , only slightly smaller in width and height and about half the length. A chimney rises unexpectedly from the east nave gable. The east window is a large five-light composition, the four flanking lights of equal height while the central one rises higher.

The church is faced with local stone within and without. The roofs are slated.

The interior is colourless as a result of the grey stone work and the black and white roof pattern. Since the westr window is filled with stained glass of rather heavy colours, and the small windows of the aisles are likewise filled with stained glass, most of the light comes from the clerestory above. 

There are few carved details in the nasonry of the inner walls, the arches of the arcades being simply double-chamfered. These chamfers die without capitals into the tops of the octagonal piers. The only small detail appears at the foot of each arch where a corbel-like projection carved with crenellations supports a colonette which soon dies into the springing of the arches above. At the west end, the embrasure of the west window is carried down to the floor and within the lower part an arched recess is contrived which thus frames the font and cover.

The roof structure has bold tie-beams supported on curved braces against wall-posts which come down between the clerestory windows. Upon the tie-beams rest two queen posts and short collar beams join the tops of these together. The whole structure is quite elaborate and seems almost too strong for the space which it covers.

The west porches on the north and south sides lead into the nave aisles and thence into the nave by arches half the span of the others. In compensation, the east bay of the nave is wider than the others and opens into the transeptal spaces. The north transept is arranged as a chapel.

The chancel arch follows the pattern of the other arches in the church by dying into its responds. It is thus unusually wide, of the same width as the nave. It is crossed by a screen of alabaster in front of which on the north side is the lectern and on the south side is the pulpit (also of alabaster). The rood beam above is of dark wood, and supports the rood and figures of the BlessedVirgin Mary and St. John.

The chancel is virtually square and, having only two windows which are both filled with stained glass, is darker than the nave. The black oak reredos enforces this, and so do three rectangular zinc panels painted with religious scenes which appear on the east wall each side of the window and above the sedilia on the south side. The roof is similar to that in the nave, but is panelled at the top to give it four planes rather than two. There is also an additional central post between the two queen posts. The spandrels are filled with pierced circles reminiscent of the design of the west window of the porch.

Although the screen divides the nave from the chancel quite definitely, an interesting spatial effect is set up by the fact that the transepts open into both the nave and the chancel, so that the exclusiveness imposed by the screen may be avoided.