Church of St Edward

Church of St Edward

This church is built from rusticated purplish and dark red Ravenhead bricks with darker brick dressings and dark red roof tiles, with red sandstone dressings to the main entrances.

The church occupies a prominent corner site with the ritual west front facing true northeast. The plan comprises a short apsidal sanctuary with an external ambulatory, linked to a pair of pitched-roofed sacristies and the adjacent presbytery. Tall transepts and a crossing with an octagonal lantern rise over the main structure. The aisled nave contains a west narthex, a south porch, and a later north narthex.

Externally, the walls feature a Lombard frieze and dentilled cornice, with most openings recessed and finished with round-arched heads. Corner corbels appear in some areas, and raised brick crosses in relief punctuate the surfaces. The apse contains five small round windows beneath a semi-conical roof. The transepts display two tiers of three-light windows, while a pyramidal roof crowns the low octagonal crossing tower, which has three small lights in each face above four roofed arms connecting to the rest of the building. The four-bay nave has pent aisles with paired lights in both the aisles and clerestory. The south porch features double-boarded doors between red sandstone columns with Romanesque capitals and a carved arch inscribed with interlace decoration; the brick surround has strings at impost and capital-base level. A flat-roofed narthex at the north west provides the present entrance, with blind arched panels and a recent pergola extending from the north sacristy to the adjacent presbytery. Beneath the three-light west window sits a pent western narthex with bands of tile forming a Lombard frieze, flanked by full-height polygonal towers with narrow lights set in long panels. Stone steps lead to an entrance similarly detailed to the south porch.

Inside, rusticated brick surfaces are painted throughout, except for the cornices, arcades, transept and chancel arches, and the lower transverse arches in the narrow aisles. The reordered sanctuary has three steps to the forward marble altar, which incorporates re-used elements from the original high altar, with further steps to the Tabernacle within the apse. The apse features painted walls and a ribbed dome resting on a brick cornice, with ribs carried down to the floor as pilasters. The lower sanctuary walls have plain plaster panelling and two triple sedilia, with large panelled openings either side. A large Crucifix is suspended from the apse ceiling. Openings within arches flanking the chancel arch lead into sacristies. The original organ is housed in the north transept, whose west-facing panel displays a First World War memorial in the form of a painted Descent from the Cross, with the Roll of Honour to its right. Each transept contains a large arched niche in the east wall with a doorway into a sacristy; the undersides of the niches are decorated with incised cross motifs. The crossing has a ribbed dome supported on squinches, linked by a brick arcade. The narrow aisled nave contains its original benches separated by a central aisle, with arcades supported on square columns with moulded capitals. The Stations of the Cross are affixed to the aisle walls. The roof is a ribbed barrel-vault with cross vaults to the clerestory windows. Below the three-light west window sits a gallery supported on triple arches, with the main west entrance below flanked by niches.