Roman Catholic School-Church of St William of York and St Francis de Sales

Roman Catholic school-church of St William of York and St Francis de Sales

This Gothic Revival building comprises a school-church built in 1870-1 to designs by Richard Robinson, with an attached school added in 1910 by Edward Kay. The complex occupies a corner site and is constructed of red-brick with slate roofs.

The school-church is built of red-brick in Flemish bond with stone dressings and polychromatic black-brick detailing. The long north elevation is symmetrical with eleven bays containing five two-light lancet windows on either side of a central gabled bay. The central bay features wooden barge boards and a three-light stepped window beneath an ornately carved stone canopied niche with crocketed pinnacles, which houses a statue of St William of York. A timber ventilator in the form of a bellecote with pyramidal roof and iron cross rises behind the central gable astride the roof ridge. The pointed window arches are detailed in black brick, with polychromatic sill and impost bands throughout. Four tiny triangular roof lights pierce the pitched roof. The west end displays a three-light stepped lancet window with polychromatic detailing and three bands of black brick, flanked by plaques dated 1870 and confirming the building's construction as a memorial to Bishop Hogarth. The south elevation is plainer, with paired two-light windows, a two-storey sacristy at the south-east corner, and a projecting central range that has been truncated and partly rebuilt. A dentilled eaves cornice with roll-moulded detailing runs throughout.

The later school is attached to the west end of the church. It is a four-bay structure with more plain detailing and a half-hipped roof. A full-height pointed arched entrance with moulded brick surround and brick tympanum occupies the northernmost bay, with replacement double doors; three further bays contain two-light lancet windows. Lean-to and small extensions, along with enclosing brick walls to rear yards, are excluded from the listing.

The interior of the school-church is a lengthy space with its original roof structure surviving above a twentieth-century ceiling inserted above the tie beams. The east window contains stained glass depicting St Thomas Aquinas, Our Lord Teaching in the Temple, and St Catherine. The sanctuary features a panelled dado with Gothic detailing including crocketed pinnacles and a carved stone piscina to the right of the altar. The original altar is constructed of Caen stone with five deeply carved ornate panels bearing emblems of the Passion—the Crown of Thorns, the Pelican in her Piety, and a central Crucifixion—each framed by pairs of marble columns. A richly ornamented canopy for the tabernacle survives, supported on four green marble shafts. The screen originally separating the school room from the sanctuary has been removed. The nave walls are plastered and lightly painted with a panelled dado and square-end benches of pitch pine. Four pointed-arch openings through the south wall, each with a small applied cross to its tympanum, are original features providing access to the sacristy, the central rear projection, and paired entrances to the exterior rear yard; one of the latter is blocked while the others retain original double boarded doors. A raised area in the west bay contains the organ. The sacristy retains an original later nineteenth-century cast-iron fireplace within a timber surround and boarded cupboards; the remodelled central rear projection has a holy water stoup set within the external face of the south wall.

The attached school is a single space whose original roof structure is obscured by an inserted ceiling showing only supporting corbels. It contains a timber and glazed vestibule, panelled dado, an original inbuilt cupboard to the north end, and a wooden plaque recording its construction. A wide arched entrance at the north-east corner provides external access.