Church Heritage Record 624021

Aisled nave, west baptistery with flanking porches, transepts, polygonal chancel with ambulatory, north organ chamber, south vestry

Nave c 23m (75 ft) x 9m (30ft).

With a medieval core near the historic parish church of St Michael, Ashton developed into a small market town. Wool spinning was a traditional cottage industry in the surrounding hilly areas, which were particularly suitable for rearing sheep. A small amount of coal mining took place nearby. A major development in the history of the town was the construction of the canals and the railway, Ashton being at the junction of three major canals. Ashton then witnessed the (for East Lancashire) typical expansion throughout the 19th century based on the manufacture and transport of coal and cotton.

The church was built in 1876-8 with money provided by George Heginbottom. The church was designed to seat between 700 and 800 people and was erected at a cost of £10,000, on land given by the 7th Earl of Stamford and Warrington. Together with the surrounding buildings it was designed by James Medland Taylor and Henry Taylor of Manchester, a prolific practice in the North-West, the senior partner and chief designer being Medland.

A typically dramatic and unorthodox church from this most wilful of Victorian architects. The church is designed in a mixture of the Early English and Early Decorated styles, although this is just a canvas onto which Taylor projects his vision. The flying buttresses and apsidal chancel and ambulatory imparts a continental, French feel to the building.

The west front has a lean-to roof over baptistery and porches, pierced by stepped piers of twin flying buttresses, supporting pilaster buttresses to the gabled belfry, with three bell-openings in stepped pointed arches. Diaper work patterning to gables with tall twin lancets below stepped roundel with quatrefoil light to centre and single outer lancets beyond buttresses. 3-lights to baptistery and 2-lights to flanking  porches, the porch doorways beneath moulded brick stepped arches with simple hoodmoulds above. Double planked doors with decorative scrollwork, hinge straps.

The tall nave roof extends over the chancel and apsidal sanctuary. The south aisle has an organ chamber to the east end, north aisle with vestry porch to east end. Five-bay chancel and four-bay aisles, the west end bay is a stair bay to each side. Two pairs of coupled lancets to each clearstorey bay, and paired lancets to the aisles, with single lancets at the east end and west bay. Low buttresses define the aisle bays, pilasters the clearstorey bays.

There are twin lancets to the projecting south gable organ chamber, and south vestry door with stepped segmental arch rising from shouldered springers. Decorative ironwork hinge-straps with trinitarian motif; double triangle strap ends; as already noted such motifs are repeated in various forms throughout the building.

The chancel apse has a single storey canted ambulatory with 4 arched windows wrapping around it, under a clearstorey of six cusped 2-light windows with cusped heads to lights below quatrefoils. North side with gabled vestry and lean-to vestry porch to east. Facetted link between north aisle and vestry, expressed externally as corner tower, the roof pierced by a pair of flying buttresses supporting a tall moulded brick chimney stack, with heavy corbelled cap.

The nave aisles are defined by piers of grey granite which carry arcades with pointed arches of moulded brick. Nave and clearstorey walling patterned in red and yellow brick. Complex roof with arch-braced-king post trusses with curved struts alternating with arched scissor-braced trusses. Bright red tile floor with decorative encaustic tile strips, open-backed chairs. South transept has the exposed pipes of the organ chamber.

The chancel arcade is carried on compound piers of red granite, with limestone capitals with foliage decoration. The sanctuary arcade is also carried on red granite columns, with transverse arches to the flanking spaces.

The chancel has been completely reordered. The altar rail and plinth wall, as well as the pulpit, have been removed. The chancel has red carpet over encaustic tiles, with three steps to the High Altar and reredos, which have been brought forward one bay. Flanking this is a repositioned screen of choir stall fronts, of gables and pierced quatrefoil openings. These separate the High Altar from the Lady Chapel behind, with an altar set on the fine encaustic tile floor. Behind this and around the eastern bays of the apse arcade is a pierced tracery timber screen with integral stone piscina adjacent to the altar, these flanked by good wrought iron rails, defining the ambulatory with its sunken vestry.