Church Of St Mary

The Church of St Mary is a Roman Catholic church located on Durham Street in Hartlepool, built in 1850 by J.A. Hansom from Preston. It is constructed of dressed limestone with quoins at the corners and features a Welsh slate roof with terracotta ridge crestings, designed in the Early English style. The church has a disoriented layout due to ritual requirements, consisting of an aisled, clearstoried nave, a bowed apsidal chancel, north and north-east vestries, a south chapel, and a west tower, from which the spire was removed around 1945. Below the chancel is a crypt that is now used as a chapel.

The four-stage tower is notable for its clasping buttresses, a straight parapet that is corbelled out, and a vice at the north-east angle. The pointed west doorway features three moulded orders, with the middle order having nook shafts and the inner being trefoil-headed. A figure of the Virgin is set in a trefoil-headed gabled niche on the west face of the second stage. The second stage also has lancet windows with nook shafts and hoodmoulds on the north and south faces, as well as pairs of windows on each face of the top stage, each adorned with a cinquefoil.

Inside, the six-bay nave has paired, chamfered, trefoil-headed clearstorey windows, while the aisles and apse contain single lancets with hoodmoulds and carved stops. The interior is painted, featuring chamfered arcade arches on alternating round and octagonal piers. The roof is constructed with coupled rafters, two collar beams, wall posts, arched braces, and curved angle struts supporting the lower beam. A west gallery was added in 1886. The stained glass in the aisle and apse windows was created by Francis Barnett from York in 1851. The church also includes painted stone sedilia with cinquefoil heads, a heavily carved and ornamented marble altar with a predella, tabernacle, and arcaded antependium, as well as alabaster communion rails and brass gates. The centre aisle features a tessellated pavement.