Church Heritage Record 609194

Five-bay nave with clerestory and N and S aisles, divided floor-to-ceiling at W end to form upper and lower halls with kitchen and lavatory facilities at ground floor level. Former baptistery to NW houses staircase to upper hall. Transepts, chancel with 3-sided apse. Vestry to N, organ chamber to S. Stores, boiler-house and choir vestry at basement level. 3-stage tower with broached spire to SW.

A Roman Road ran through Altrincham but no Roman remains have been discovered within the Conservation Area. Altrincham has been continuously inhabited since the Anglo-Saxon period, with a population sparse in the Anglo-Saxon and Norman periods but growing in the early medieval period: some medieval archaeology has been discovered in the town. However the Downs area was not developed until the nineteenth-century with the advent of the railway.

The site has low-moderate archaeological potential.

There are no burials but ashes are thought to have been scattered in the churchyard.

James Medland Taylor was a Manchester architect active in the second half of the nineteenth century and the early part of the twentieth. He was in partnership with his brother Henry Medland Taylor. They designed a large number of churches, the best known of which is probably St Anne, Denton. Their buildings were typically Gothic, displaying constructional polychromy. The Taylors also built the tower of Altrincham St George, nearby.

Trees (all subject to TPO by virtue of Conservation Area) include chestnut and elm.

The church is basically Early English in style, with attractive use of constructional polychromy most markedly in the use of bands of differently coloured stone to decorate the walls and the patterned slate roofs, with terracotta ridge tiles. A plinth runs around the building. The roofs have overhanging eaves and the gables are coped; the apices of the gables to the E and W of the nave roof are topped with cross finials. The church gutters feature projecting floral decorations.

The clerestory windows are stone roundels in plate tracery, pierced with sexfoils with circles between. The nave windows display both plate and bar tracery. Each window is two-light, with a roundel above pierced with a quatrefoil or trefoil. The windows are paired, with weathered buttresses between.

At the SW corner stands the steeple, a three-stage tower with set-back weathered buttresses and small lancet windows to the first two stages, with a broached spire with lucarnes and bands of ashlar decorated with trefoils. The base of the tower forms the main entrance to the church. NW doorway has stone arch with carved columns and hood-mould with foliate stops. There is a step up to the two-leaf wooden door with decorative iron hinges.

The W façade features paired doors set in Venetian Gothic arches in alternating red and white sandstone, with hood-moulds with foliate stops and a short column with carved capital between. Each door is single-leaf with decorative iron hinges. Above, the W window with Geometrical tracery – four lancets, and above, two roundels containing cinquefoils, crowned by a roundel containing trefoils and a central quatrefoil – with a string course beneath.

At the NW of the nave is a pointed arched doorway now containing square-topped door. Projecting N is the (former) baptistery. It has lancet windows in plate tracery with quatrefoil and mouchettes above, two W, one N. It has a hipped roof with a lead ball finial topped with a cross and dove.

The N transept features a lancet window to the W; to the N, a geometrical window, four light, with quatrefoils and cinquefoils above; and to the E, a cusped lancet with vesica piscis above.

Between the N transept and the chancel is a polygonal vestry with a roof, supported on wooden brackets, deeply overhanging the doorway. The roof rises to be topped by a lead ball finial. The entrance to the vestry is up seven steps; the doorway has a cusped stone surround. The E wall of the vestry has a pair of windows in a stone surround.

Between the vestry and the apsidal chancel is a weathered chimney-stack, set into the chancel roof and stepped above the vestry roof. The chancel windows are geometrical, paired cusped lancets with richly carved trefoils above. A string course runs beneath the three chancel windows. At each corner of the apse is a ball-flower. Beneath the central window is set an ashlar octagon carved with a cross.

Between the chancel and the S transept is the polygonal organ chamber. Its SE corner rises to a gable with a window, a cusped lancet with trefoil above. Smaller cusped lancets to the E and S.

The S transept features, to the E a cusped lancet with vesica piscis above. To the S, a geometrical window, four-light, with cinquefoils and a quatrefoil above. Beneath, a two-leaf door in a square stone surround marked 1906, with a lamp and square hood-mould. The door features Arts and Crafts-style hinges marked ‘Saint John’. This S door is up a flight of four steps between stone walls. In the W wall of the S transept, a lancet window.

The main entrance is via the tower doorway in the SW corner. This gives onto a porch-cum-stairwell floored with red and black quarry tiles laid in a pattern. The staircase rises on the left to an upper hall (previously, to gallery) at first floor level, and then up to ringing chamber. From the first floor up, the banisters have trefoil decoration.

The upper hall occupies the western two bays of the building; the westernmost bay was previously occupied by a gallery and is defined by a stone arch (now painted) supported on stone corbels with carved decoration. The space has a linoleum floor and is lit by the west window, which contains patterned coloured glass; and by two clerestory windows. The roof structure is still exposed. A doorway to the N leads to a stairway inserted into the former baptistery; returning to ground floor level, there are sandstone columns, now set into wall to the E with capitals carved with scripture. Below these columns, a flower-arrangers’ sink. Standing in the baptistery, a doorway to the N leads to lavatories, and another to W leads to a kitchen; doors lead from each to a lower hall beneath the upper, also floored with linoleum.

Returning to the SW porch, square-topped double doors lead into the main worship space. The interior has lost some of its grandeur through the full-height subdivision West-end subdivision but retains attractive details. The interior is painted, with an exposed scissor-braced roof structure. The aisles are divided from the nave by sandstone columns with capitals carved with floral decoration.

The stone chancel arch is supported on elaborate columnar corbels. There are two steps up to the chancel, which has been extended by a wooden platform at the level of the choir. This level now carpeted; historic tiles are likely to survive beneath, as in the nave. There are two further steps up to the sanctuary, which is floored with patterned tiles, and a further step up to the high altar. There is panelling with blind cusped tracery to chancel and sanctuary, incorporating on S side sedilia with carved eagle above.

On the N side of the chancel, a square-topped door in the panelling leads to a clergy vestry. Within the vestry, a staircase leads down to a crypt area housing a lavatory, choir vestry, and store-room. The clergy vestry is screened from the N aisle with wooden panelling, containing a square-topped door. The N transept is screened from the N aisle by a wooden screen, formerly the chancel screen. On the S side of the chancel there is an organ chamber. The archway between the organ chamber and the S transept is screened with wooden panelling decorated with blind tracery (currently awaiting reinstallation).