Church Of St Hild And St Helen

The Church of St. Hild and St. Helen is a large parish church dating to 1912, designed by W.H. Wood. The church is constructed of orange-red industrial brick in an English garden wall bond, with a green slate roof. Its design follows a basilican plan, with the altar facing south; it features an aisled nave, a narthex, a Lady Chapel to the north of the altar, and a choir and vicar’s vestries to the south. The architectural style is Italian Romanesque, characterized by round-arched openings and a Lombard frieze below the eaves and gables of the nave.

The building's ritual west end includes a low, projecting narthex with entrances on both sides, and flanking aisles with lean-to roofs. The gabled nave has four pilaster buttresses and a central rose window. The eight-bay aisles are defined by stepped buttresses and have single lancet windows above a sill band; the clerestory features round windows within stepped reveals, all under a continuous, chamfered hoodmould. The ritual east end has a central semicircular apse; the projecting single-story Lady Chapel to the right includes another apse and a two-bay return with paired lancets and an entrance porch. A single-story Choir vestry to the left has three small lancets and a canted corner with a doorway to the right. A gabled, two-story Vicar’s vestry, projecting from the rear of the Choir vestry and from the nave, includes a square bellcote with a louvred belfry, a pyramidal roof, and a vane.

Inside, the baptistry in the narthex contains a Romanesque-style font with a cylindrical shaft and deeply carved bowl. A rose window above the baptistry was installed in 1915 in memory of the 6th Marquess of Londonderry. The arcade is carried on square brick piers with seven arches of two orders, and a smaller arch toward the baptistry. The two eastern bays form the chancel. Carved arches and pulpits on either side were intended to form part of the choir side screens, but were never completed. The clerestory has a continuous hoodmould over the windows. Aisles have brick transverse arches. The sanctuary and Lady Chapel have hemispherical, domed apses. An organ loft to the right is defined by a single, tall arch breaking into the clerestory. The roof features seven trusses with arch-braced beams and arcading above.

Low area walls of brick with chamfered sandstone coping border the property, alongside plain cast-iron railings and two pairs of gate piers topped with scalloped pyramidal caps, to the north and east of the church.