Church Heritage Record 623558

A plain parallellogram with nave and chancel all under the same roof; at the west end a narthex is surmounted by a gallery and north of the chancel is a transept with a west aisle. North of this again is a small porch and vestry, with a chamber above the former.

The church was built to designs by Frederick and Horace Francis; it was consecrated on 27 March 1865 and enlarged (presumably by the addition of the north transept) in 1868. The Francis Brothers were prolific designers of good straightforward churches, although as at Christ Church Lancaster Gate they did occasionally produce something of greater quality. A fire in 1906 caused the re-designing of the interior and in particular the roof structure and tracery of the east window; the architect for this work was R.L. Hesketh.

The site for the church was provided by houses standing at right angles on the street corner, and this explains the awkward plan of the building. The south and east walls rise sheer from the pavement to a great height considering the relatively small size of the building, and the bays of the nave are recessed slightly leaving shallow buttresses the same depth as the plinth at the base of the walls rising between the windows. At sill level is a moulded stringcourse and five of the windows are of the same dimensions, all of three lights and four with identical tracery design of quatrefoils between intersecting ribs while the fifth, at the east end, has three trefoils within a circle. All the windows have moulded labels terminating in uncarved blocks and the easternmost further has attached shafts each side, with the capitals also uncarved. At the west end of the south wall is a shallow bay with a doorway below a two-light window. The west wall of the nave is blind since it abuts against former stables.

The facade to Down Street consists of the big gable of the chancel, with a clasping buttress at each corner with attached shafts and uncarved capitals, and the shafts to the east window also have uncarved capitals. At the base of this wall the stringcourse along the upper edge of the plinth steps up three times with the rise in ground level and the plinth itself is decorated with a band of recessed quatrefoils with a trefoil-headed niche at each stop. Much of the wall above is taken up by the great east window, of seven main lights grouped two-three-two and there is a vesica in the gable to ventilate the roof space. The north transept has two three-light windows in the east wall and further north again there is a narrow bay set back slightly with a doorway with three pairs of shafts at each side and a pierced tympanum. Above this is a window lighting a chamber above the porch. From the way in which this part of the building is finished at the top it looks as though a small tower was intended.

The fire of 1906 caused two alterations to the exterior of the building. First, the windows in the south wall were originally each set under individual gablets which must have caused considerable probloms of maintenance, and this was replaced by a straightforward roof-structure with a horizontal stone parapet running the length of the wall. Secondly the original regular geometrical tracery in the east window was replaced by the present wayward flowing tracery.

The interior of the church is approachedeither through a doorway towards the west end of the south wall or in the northernmost part of the north transept. The former leads into a small narthex beneath the west gallery from which the nave is entered by two arched doorways. The interior wall surfaces were painted with whitewash in about 1950 which obliterated a scheme of patterned brickwork and made the architectural features such as doorways and windows stand out more boldy than the architect intended.

The west wall is blind and has an arcade of four trefoil headed arches at gallery level and a roundel filled with four trefoils round a quatrefoil in the upper part of the wall, the surround of stone and the panels of red brick. Along the south wall are five windows of identical size with a smaller one at the west to light the gallery. This is complemented by an identical window on the north but the rest of the north wall has three pairs of two-light windows set high in the wall, at clerestory level, to avoid buildings outside. These lights have trefoiled heads with a roundel pierced between each pair. The eastern window on the south side which lights the chancel is differentiated by shafts within as it was outside and by a different tracery pattern. All these windows have opaque glass inserted after the 1906 fire. 

The nave and chancel are roofed in one by a simple timber barrel vault enriched over the sanctuary with cusped panelling and four angels blowing trumpets standing on corbels and sheltered by canopies. The big east window is shafted internally and forms part of one composition with the arcade which serves as a reredos. 

On the north side at the east end of the church a large arch opens into the north transept with a smaller arch on the west opening into a west aisle of the transept. Both are carried on clustered shafts which terminate by dying into the responds in a conical shape and the capitals are carved with naturalistic leaves. The moulded hoods terminate in stops carved as heads of considerable individuality. The transept has two three-light windows in the east wall and a doorway in the north wall leading to a porch. Above this is a chamber opening into the transept through two arches carried on a central shaft which give onto a timber gallery. Since there is otherwise no suitable place in the church for an organ, it must be presumed that this must have been intended as an organ chamber. The naturalistic foliage on each of the responds continues east and west along the wall to form a band of ornament. The character of the transept is also richer than the nave as a result of the small colonettes with carved captials which support the roof. The piers of the two arches opening into the west aisle also are elaborate, being composed of clusters of shafts with richly naturalistic foliage carved on the capitals. This aisie has a small doorway at the north end leading to the vestry and above this is a window in the form of a roundel under an arch, the tracery consisting of a quatrefoil in the centre with a border interrupted by four small roundels. The west wall has five windows set within a shafted arcade and shaped like the trefoiled tops of much longer lights with a further trefoil above each. The floors through out the church are of red tiles with small black diamonds at the intersections and timber boarding under the pews.