Church Of St Charles And Presbytery Attached

The Church of St Charles and attached presbytery were built in the 1870s by J.A. Hansom & Son, with an addition of a tower and a ritual west bay in 1882. The church is aligned north-south and constructed of rock-faced sandstone with ashlar dressings, featuring a Welsh slate roof with stone gable copings. It is designed in the Decorated style, with Perpendicular-style additions.

The church consists of a nave, a north porch, a north-west Lady chapel, a belltower, a west porch, and an apsidal sanctuary. The steeply-gabled north porch has boarded doors within a 2-centred-arched surround. The west porch features double doors in a deeply-moulded 2-centred arch, flanked by small windows and outer gabled buttresses, all under a steeply-pitched roof. A large rose window with free tracery is situated above the west porch. The nave windows are tall and 2-light, with stepped buttresses defining the bays, while the half-octagonal sanctuary has two similarly designed windows, each side buttressed. The Lady chapel has small ogee-headed lights, and the three-stage tower has a broached octagonal second stage, leading to an octagonal belfry with Perpendicular tracery and a high stone spire. Steeply pitched roofs extend over the sanctuary, which has a lower, half-octagonal roof. Stone cross finials top the structure.

The attached presbytery, to the ritual north-east, is plainer and of two storeys, with three bays returning to the church. It has plain sash windows with stop-chamfered jambs, flat stone lintels, and a wide chimney stack. A double-span roof sits atop the presbytery, with chimneys at the ends of the side furthest from the church.

Inside the church, the walls are painted plaster with ashlar dressings and a boarded dado. The roof is arch-braced and panelled, resting on corbelled shafts with leaf-carved capitals, with a similar arrangement in the apsidal sanctuary. The chancel arch is double-chamfered, with triple shafts and leaf-patterned corbels. A large west arch has a wider chamfer and head-stopped dripmould. Four round piers support a west choir gallery with a Gothic-panelled balcony, and the interior of the west porch is similarly treated. An elaborate Gothic altar, brought from Munich in 1880, features painted panels. A Gothic-style wood pulpit, carved in 1907, commemorates the 60 years of priesthood of Rev. Provost Watson, who oversaw the building's construction. Glass, supplied in 1870 and later restored after damage in World War Two, includes east windows depicting the Holy Family and a west window with figures from the Apocalypse. A square font, originally in the Lady Chapel and now used as an altar base, has four Frosterley 'marble' shafts and water-leaf decoration on the bowl. A 20th-century extension to the presbytery is not of particular interest.