Church Of St Peter

Church of St Peter, Bishop Auckland

This is a parish church with an attached hall, piers and railings, built between 1873 and 1875 to designs by RJ Johnson. It is constructed in thin courses of squared sandstone with ashlar dressings, and is roofed in purple slate with stone gable copings. The church tower is copper-covered.

The building follows a 14th-century style. The plan comprises an apsidal chancel with a north vestry and south-east tower, and an aisled nave with a north-west choir vestry. The design uses cusped reticulated and intersecting tracery throughout, with coped stepped buttresses rising from deeply-sloped plinths.

The exterior is characterized by windows mostly with 2-centred arches, all featuring dripmoulds and sill strings. The east apse has windows with Perpendicular tracery with daggers in the top panels, separated by prominent buttresses each with four offsets. The south-east tower has two stages: the first very high with 2-centred windows, and the second with groups of three lancets, those on the west having sloped sills. An east stair turret has a tower cornice.

The north and south elevations feature four-light windows formed by buttresses which define bays. Square-headed windows appear in the west bays, with that on the south projecting slightly as the baptistry and having shallow buttresses. Both elevations have roll-moulded gabled parapets. The west elevation has square-headed aisle windows with reticulated tracery flanking prominent high buttresses. A central west door sits in a double-chamfered surround within a projection beneath a large 7-light window in the gable and a 2-light window in the gable peak. The boarded doors feature wrought-iron tendril hinges. The north-west choir vestry projects north of this door. The roof is steeply pitched with a hipped projection over the south-west baptistry in the south aisle, a pyramidal roof to the tower, and a gabled roof to the vestry.

The interior is finished in plaster with ashlar dressings and painted timber roof. The six-bay nave arcades have a hoodstring over high pointed hollow-chamfered arches. The piers are octagonal ashlar with moulded bases and capitals, repeated in a similar organ arch. A panelled boarded ceiling and moulded frieze are painted in strong primary colours. Windows have dripmoulds and irregular block jambs. The north-east boarded vestry door has a shouldered surround, while the north-west studded vestry door has a pointed-arched surround; both have wrought-iron band hinges. Steps lead progressively to the choir, sanctuary and altar.

The chancel is oak-panelled to commemorate the diamond jubilee of the church in 1935, with top panels featuring blind tracery. The panels incorporate a carved frieze, probably earlier, with radiating leaves flanking quatrefoils. A carved wooden Perpendicular reredos is painted in bright colours with blind tracery, pinnacles and canopies. A canopied niche stands to the south of the altar. A brass Communion rail hangs on a scrolled and tied wrought-iron balustrate. The wooden pulpit features open tracery and five steps. A tabernacle has been transferred to the south aisle chapel's south wall. An octagonal stone pedestal font in the south aisle at the west end is an 1875 gift from King James I Grammar School. Stained glass in the east windows is a First World War memorial. A low relief bronze panel on the north chancel wall records names of the dead from 1914 to 1918, framed by an angel with flowing drapery holding a loosely-furled flag; a smaller Second World War panel is also present. The boarded pews have blind quatrefoils over umbrella rails in shaped ends, with churchwardens' staffs and open tracery in the screen to the front pew. A plaque in the south aisle commemorates the baptism on 21 October 1891 of Arthur Stanley Jefferson, Stan Laurel of Laurel and Hardy.

An attached hall stands to the west of the church, connected by a one-storey link with mullion windows. The hall is one storey with a 1 by 2 window arrangement. The gable facing the street has a relieving arch over a tall mullion and transom window of three stepped lights, with flat stone gable coping on chamfered kneelers. The right return to the yard features a double panelled door and 2-pane overlight; a trefoil is carved in the soffit of a chamfered pointed arch with flower-stopped dripmould. Flanking 2-light stone mullion windows flank this, the right one partly blind and crossed by an external stair with iron balustrade to an attic door breaking the eaves.

Two tall piers stand to the yard, each with coped buttresses to the street and stepped hipped coping with moulded ridge. Spike railings on a chamfered wall end in a third pier attached to the church.