Church Heritage Record 624250

4-bay aisled nave with transepts, tower adjacent to the south transept, 2-bay chancel with north vestry.

Nave c 25m (85 ft) x 6m (19ft), transepts 8.5m (27ft) wide.

Built 1859-62 and designed by George Shaw. Shaw employed a carver who specialised in the Celtic-Romanesque detail seen in many of the furnishings and fittings. It was clearly a quite expensive and ambitious commission, the donor was W J Rideout.

The west end was reordered in 1995 to provide rooms behind a glazed screen in the two western bays, with toilets, a kitchen and a meeting room, and a nave altar has been installed.

The church is broadly designed in the Early Decorated style, but somewhat unorthodox, for example the proportions and massing are quite old-fashioned for the time.  The location of the tower is particularly odd, crammed in the angle between the nave and south transept. This is like its north counterpart as long as the chancel and, following the internal division, the nave, making of the worship space a Greek cross in plan. Despite the height of the spire, the church is solid rather than graceful. 

The huge and heavy tower is the dominant feature, with a broad base and angle buttresses with steep weatherings tapering to the very tall broach spire. It has a raked external staircase with carved panels of reversed S-shapes in roundels echoing the window tracery on the west and south sides. The staircase leads to a high level door in the west face, passing through the buttress on the way.  Some movement is visible here with cracks and spalling where the iron cramps are rusting. The south “show” face has a 2-light as in the nave over a small rectangular entrance in the lower stage, two plain 2-lights with pointed cusped heads in the stage above, then a clock (face removed to each face) below the belfry with three plain lancet openings, each stage defined by drip-courses.

The nave has buttresses with one steep weathering flanking 2-light pointed windows with simple cusped lights and quatrefoils in the heads as has the chancel south wall, the transepts have a plain 2-light window to each bay as the tower. There is a pointed doorway in the south nave wall with hoodmould, the main entrance, and simpler one opposite in the north wall. 

There is more complex tracery making much use of mouchettes in the heads to create “swirling” patterns echoing the external staircase in the transept end walls, the west nave window (all 4-lights) and the east chancel window. These cardinal windows all have striking stained glass.  The vestry in the angle of north transept and chancel has a 4-light in the east wall of equal lancets and a tall slim stack.

The interior is plastered and whitewashed, catching the light passing through the luminous stained glass windows at the cardinal points, the effect slightly lessened by the west conversion. Fine and complex false hammer-beam timber roofs throughout taken down to plain corbels. The nave roof is carried by slender round columns with moulded capitals and double-chamfered pointed arches.  Carpeted floors in blue, red in the chancel, stone flags under these, geometrical tiles in the sanctuary.

The nave is still fully pewed with dark-stained benches with plain moulded ends, such are also found in the transepts, facing inwards to the crossing. There is a simple pointed doorway to the tower and two blocked pointed window openings. The font is now in the north transept. As already noted the western two bays are taken up by a conversion behind a glazed timber screen.

The integral pulpit is reached through steps from the vestry behind to a pointed opening in the wall adjacent to the chancel arch. This is double chamfered, taken down to moulded capitals with foliate carving. There is a scrolled text in Gothic script around the arch (“Oh worship the Lord in the beauty of Holiness” Psalm 96:9). The oak choir stalls are of good quality, with tracery and poppyheads to the ends, clearly part of the original design. These and the High altar table are now “relegated” behind the nave altar, which is set on a platform extending from the chancel arch. Shouldered doorway to the vestry in the north wall.