Church Heritage Record 624370

5-bay aisled nave with west baptistery and adjacent south-west porch, 3-bay chancel, tower over north transept (organ chamber) and vestry adjacent, south transept.

Nave c 23m (78 ft) x 6.5m (22ft). Chancel 13m (45ft) long.

The church was built 1890-92, designed by H J Austin of Austin & Paley. The site, which is not known to have archaeological potential, and resources were largely contributed by the Brooks family of Crawshaw Hall. Lord Crawshaw contributed £3,000 to the structure and £1,000 to the endowment, allowing this majestic church to be built in such a modest settlement. Their patronage continued into the 1950s, their name can be found everywhere within the church.  This is all the more remarkable considering that this was an area noted for non-conformism, with large Methodist (many mill owners were Methodists), Quaker, Baptist, Roman Catholic and other congregations.

The church was partially reordered in the 1930s with screens to the chancel arch and organ chamber and a Brooks family memorial chapel in the south transept, and the choir stalls brought forward of the chancel screen to flank a new nave altar.  In the 1970s and later pews moved from the west end to provide a space for meetings and christenings. The south transept is now almost cleared of pews and used as a Lady Chapel.

This is a large and imposing church of considerable architectural quality, designed in the Perpendicular style but with the inventiveness characteristic of the best late Victorian and Edwardian churches in this idiom.

The embattled square tower of three stages over the north transept has diagonal buttresses carried up to short octagonal corner turrets, which rise without interruption to large crocketed pinnacles. The belfry stage has a single pointed arched opening to each face with 3-light tracery and louvres, the middle stage has a 2-light with trefoil in the head under a hoodmould to the west face, the lower stage has a very large 5-light north window with Perpendicular tracery. There is an external round-headed doorway to the tower in the angle with the aisle with its own miniature roof.

The nave and chancel are under a continuous roof, with crenellated parapets and cross finials to the gables. The west elevation is pierced by a large transomed 5-light window with intersecting tracery and hoodmould. Large gabled porch to the western bay on the south side, with a statue of the Virgin Mary in a niche above a carved surround and cornice to the round-arched doorway.  The low-pitched aisles have buttresses with gablets flanking 2-light pointed windows with tracery in the heads and hoodmoulds. There is a low diagonal porch in the angle with the south transept, the lead roof sweeps up into the interstice. The clearstorey has a pair of square-headed 2-light traceried windows to each bay, all of these classic Paley & Austin motifs.

The chancel has a very large 6-light east window with Perpendicular tracery. There is a dedication stone (laid with Masonic honours by the Provincial Grand Master) and a sunken shouldered door giving access to the boiler room at the east end. The side walls have a clearstorey with pairs of square-headed 2-lights to each bay continuing the rhythm from the nave. The attached south Lady Chapel has a gabled roof and a 4-light pointed east window with panel tracery and two square-headed 2-lights in the south wall, as impressive and as big as some parish churches.  Round arch-headed doorway in the west wall where it projects beyond the aisle.  The north vestry also has a 4-light east window but a single 2-light in the north wall.

The interior space is of some theatrical quality. This is accentuated by the use of red Rainhill ashlar, again a favourite of this firm, and the fine contemporary fittings, though these have been partly reordered and there have been incremental additions, mostly in the 1930s. There is no stained glass and the huge windows allow in lots of light. 

The arcades are carried on 4-centred moulded arches on alternately round and octagonal columns with moulded capitals; arch-braced double-collared roof to the nave, simpler roofs to the aisles, chancel and south transept. There is enormous space within the church, particularly at the west end. The south transept is also a fine and underused space, with a 2-bay transverse arcade dividing it. The three eastern bays of the nave have benches, probably the originals, with panelled backs and moulded square ends. The two western bays have been cleared to provide a meeting space with tables, these pews have been moved to the chancel. The organ pipes are displayed in the arch at the east end of the north aisle and the first chancel bay. Open tracery screen to the organ chamber introduced in memory of Florence Brooks in the 1930s. The floors are of quarry tiles with stone flags and some squares of glazed tiles in the chancel. Woodblock in some areas.

The high chancel arch with two orders of moulding (the north respond with trefoil-headed panels and inscription) offers only the slightest visual definition of nave from chancel, allowing unbroken sight lines from east to west. This intention is compromised now by the 1930s Gothic carved chancel screen.  A nave altar and communion rails were placed west of the chancel screen using the latter as a reredos, and the very fine individually carved choir stalls with poppyheads moved here.  

Another typical Paley & Austin motif is the asymmetrical treatment of the north and south sides of the chancel, with an arcade of two arches on the south side and the large arch between the tower responds and then east of this blank wall on the north. The west bay of the chancel is lined by screens incorporating painted statues under individual crocketed canopies, 1930s. There is a round-headed doorway to the north wall and a 3-bay sedilia and integral piscina with carved square-headed frame in the south wall.  At the east end is a stepped carved stone reredos.  Blind arcading with Eucharistic texts on the cornice around the walls.