Church Heritage Record 603005

5-bay nave and 2-bay chancel under one roof, west tower, north-east vestry.

Chancel and nave estimated to be c 24m x 6m (78ft x 19ft).

Accrington has Saxon origins, and is unusual in that it was still held at the time of the Domesday Book (1086) by a Saxon Thegn, Leowine. There was a grange here of Kirkstall Abbey till the Reformation. The settlement developed slowly through the post-medieval period, the chapel being built in 1546, perhaps to replace a chapel at the grange which had previously served the small population.  The first vicar is recorded for 1610.  The  chapel was apparently ruinous in the mid 18th-century and was rebuilt in 1763.  Galleries were added in 1795 at the west end and then to the aisles in 1804-5, when the tower seems to have been built, and the chapel widened to the north.

The chapel became the parish church in 1870 as Accrington rapidly expanded for the textile industry, as with most Lancashire towns.  The chancel was altered in 1895-6 and the furnishings and fittings partly replaced. There have been further minor works in the 20th century, in 1915 electric lighting was first installed in the church, and in 1996 a new roof was fitted to the church, after a major fundraising effort.  At this time the west gallery was also widened.

The north and south aspects give the initial impression of a harmonious single phase building, but the east and west facades are quite different, and confirm the complex development of this church.  The church is basically a long block under a single roof, which wraps around the narrow tower. There is a corbel table right around the building, except the tower and east facade.  The nave fenestration is of two stories of 3-light windows with stone arch-headed frames, imposts and keystones, and odd Y-tracery branching from a transom. 

The one exception is the west window in the south façade, a tall 2-light with Y-tracery set high in the wall.  This was probably inserted to light the west gallery, and perhaps installed in 1795, as with the similar windows in the west nave walls (see below).  Beneath it is a later gabled porch, probably of 1898, now the main means of access to the church.

Since the upper storey functions as a clearstorey to light the galleries, which were only inserted after 1795, perhaps the windows belong to the 1804 reconstruction, though one would be tempted to favour the earlier date of 1763.  Supporting the 1804 date is the fact that the belfry windows have the same motifs.  The only features which can be confidently dated to 1763 are therefore the priest’s door on the south side of the sanctuary with a gabled pediment and the date “1763” inscribed in the tympanum, and the Gibbs door surround to the west tower, which was presumably reset there from the west end of the nave when the tower was inserted; it is the only such doorway in the church.

The west aspect is rather muddled, clearly the result of rebuilding in 1795 and 1804-5 when the tower was inserted, and later.  The tower has pronounced alternate quoins, and its embattled parapet has short stumpy pinnacles at the corners; photographs from the early 20th century also show intermediate pinnacles.  The west doorway in the tower has a Gibbs surround as noted above, above it is a 2-light in the same style as the nave windows.  This pattern is repeated in the louvred belfry openings, whereby the east opening is much smaller than the others.  There is a clock face on three sides of the tower below the belfry stage, separated by a string course, these were donated in 1975.  This would appear to have entailed the removal of a sundial which can be seen in old photographs on the west face.

The windows in the west walls of the nave flanking the tower are peculiar. There is a long pointed 2-light with Y-tracery high in the walls, presumably inserted to light the west gallery (in 1795? see above), and continuing down from this a further 2-light with cusped heads, probably inserted later (in 1855?) to light the baptistery within.  Outside these are doorways with arch-headed stone frames and lintels and imposts, obviously to give access to the side galleries, and therefore of 1804 like the nave windows.  Old photographs show a small fleche marking the junction of chancel and nave, of which there is now no sign.  There is a small cross finial on the east gable.

The confused east end also seems to be a product of several phases. There is a crenellated turret at the north-east corner, but no matching turret on the south-east; instead, slightly set in from the corner, there is a buttress rising from a corbel at head-height, which simply ends in a weathering some distance below the gable.  The latter may be the remains of a pair of turrets, before the north nave wall was pushed outwards and the gable shifted accordingly in 1804. The whole gable was indeed clearly rebuilt above the stump of the buttress, this is visible in the fabric.  This would give a date of 1804 for the corner turret, which would seem right.  Why a matching turret on the south-east corner was not built?  Perhaps they thought this would have looked even odder along with the stump of the old one. An extremely imbalanced façade is the result.

The fenestration is also peculiar.  There are three windows, the outer pair 2-lights as in the nave and tower and therefore of 1804, but set between and slightly below them a large 3-light Perpendicular Gothic tracery window within a round-headed frame; the window would appear to be set within the frame of a longer window, blocked up underneath (perhaps when the reredos was installed, see below).  The tracery is clearly of the late 19th century, therefore probably 1898. A vestry with a lean-to roof was also added in 1898 to the north of the chancel.  This has a 3-light rectangular window in the east wall and a simple rectangular light in the north wall.

If the exterior is confusing and muddled, then the interior takes this further.  The immediate impression is of a crowded mass of furniture and features, reflecting again the complex history of this church.  The liturgical arrangement is that of the early 19th century, but the furnishings are of the end of the 19th; the high altar is crowded away at the back under a heavy Gothic stone reredos, upstaged still by the pulpit and lectern squarely in the middle of the nave. The panelled benches have varied carved tracery on the ends. 

There is a light stained wooden screen with glazed panels underneath the west gallery, creating the vestry and chapel rooms (created in 1855?) flanking the tower space. The latter contains a staircase leading from the boiler room underneath to the ringing chamber.  This is all in the shadow of the 3-sided panelled gallery, carried on slender iron columns with annulets and a reflected pair of staircases to gallery at the west end. The organ is set on the west gallery, which has been extended west recently with steel columns.  There is a flat panelled ceiling, the floors are carpeted throughout.