Church Heritage Record 624366

South-west tower, adjacent south porch, 4-bay aisled nave, chancel with south vestry and transeptal north organ chamber.

Nave c 23m (75 ft) x 5m (16ft), chancel 8.5m (27ft)

Built in 1854, the money (£3,000) donated by the Heyworth family.  It was designed by the Lancaster based architect’s firm of Sharpe and Paley. This was the second parish church built in Bacup itself, built while the first, neo-classical church of St John built in 1788 was still standing.

The organ was moved in 1893 following the construction of the organ chamber and vestries. Major refitting was necessary following a fire in 1958 which seems to have gutted the chancel, organ chamber and vestries, destroying the organ and chancel furniture. 

There was a major repair and restoration programme in the 1980s, which involved curing dry rot, installing heating and removing all the plaster from the walls with the intention of creating a “medieval” look. The west bay of the nave has recently been screened to provide a parish room, built in memory of George Mills, died 1999.

The church has considerable vertical emphasis, partly due to its elevated location but increased by the powerful south-west tower. The church is well proportioned with considerable architectural detail, designed in the Early English style of the 13th century popular at the time of its construction. 

The tower is of three stages with diagonal buttresses to half its height, the stages set back so that the tower tapers towards the top. At the south-east corner a polygonal stair turret terminates above the parapet in a lantern with a conical cap. The pointed upper openings have been clumsily blocked with concrete slabs. The 3-light west window has a hoodmould run out as a weathering. There are smaller 3-light windows to the second stage asymmetrically set on the west and south sides, the third stage has 2-light belfry openings in recessed panels, and a plain parapet with roll-moulded coping.

The gabled porch to the west bay of the nave adjacent to the tower has stout demi-columns with stiff-leaf capitals and a 2-centred arch with four orders of hollow moulding, under a hoodmould with head stops. As elsewhere, coped gables with kneelers.  The inner doorway is similar with foliate stops to the hoodmould. The door has attractive scrolling ironwork, as to all doors. Stone steps lead in, stone benches line the walls. A shouldered doorway gives access to the tower stair, which is a newel staircase of stone. The porch roof is a wagon structure with collars, painted white.

The west end of the nave is set back, with an arched doorway under a hoodmould with head stops, and plate tracery consisting of three 2-light windows and a wheel window in the gable. The aisles have coupled single-light windows to aisles with hoodmoulds and head stops, with stepped triplets in the gable walls and quatrefoils to the nave clearstorey. The north transept (organ chamber) has a single lancet. The south wall of the 2-bay chancel has a tall 2-light window and a lancet to the sanctuary (the north sanctuary window has been blocked) and a stepped triple lancet east window.

The character of the interior is defined by the bare stone walls and due to the relatively small lancet windows rather gloomy, this effect perhaps enhanced by the trees blocking some of the light. Looking west, a light-stained wooden screen with odd zig-zag detailing reaching almost up to the arches has been erected across the western 1½ bays of the nave and aisles, defining a parish room and toilet and kitchen facilities.  It blocks the light from the west windows. There are thick iron girders within spanning the nave from column to column to support the ceiling of this.

Turning east, the nave arcades are carried on columns with moulded capitals and moulded 2-centred arches with continuous hoodmould.  Moulded stone corbels support wall-shafts at clearstorey level from which rise posts to principal roof trusses, which have arch-braced collars with diagonal struts. The nave is fully pewed with plain benches, these have and moulded ends, plain but good. Blue carpet down the central alley over stone flagged floor.

The moulded chancel arch is carried on raised black granite colonnettes which have heavily foliated corbels and caps. A large arch opens to the north, within which is a light open tracery wooden screen demarcating the organ chamber, with plain pipes displayed above.  Wagon roof. Simple light-stained choir stalls with fleur-de-lys finials.  Encaustic tile floor with floral patterns and borders in the sanctuary, the focus of which is the High Altar and stone reredos, with an attractive stained glass window above. There is a Lady Chapel at the east end of the south aisle.