Christ Church Including Attached Vestry And Verger'S House

Christ Church, including attached vestry and verger's house

Parish church built 1862-64, designed by James Murray of Coventry. The attached vestry and verger's house date to around 1877 and were designed by JC Cundall of Leamington.

The building is constructed of snecked rock-faced limestone with ashlar plinth and coarse-grained sandstone dressings. The roof is pale grey slate, possibly Lakeland slate, with stone copings and a stone spire. The architectural style is based on early 14th-century Gothic, featuring cusped lancets, roundels and geometric tracery.

The church comprises a chancel with a south chapel, a north-east tower, an aisled nave with transepts, a north porch, and a vestry and cottage attached to the west end of the south aisle.

The chancel's large east gable has a 5-light window with a large cinquefoil beneath a dripmould. The sill string continues around the angle buttresses which have gabled niches. The south chancel chapel has a gabled front and a 3-light window.

The 3-stage tower has a roll-moulded arch on nookshafts to the east door, sheltered by a crocketed ogee canopy. The tall second stage contains two slender lancets. A half-octagonal north stair turret with lancets and a hipped roof rises from the tower. The belfry stage has corner shafts and symbols of the Evangelists above 2-light louvred openings, with a corbel table and angle gargoyles. A high broach spire with lucarnes and angle spirelets crowns the tower.

The gabled transepts have three lancets below roundels. Similar paired roundels appear in the clerestory between shallow buttresses. The aisles have 3-light windows. The north porch is gabled with a moulded arch on nookshafts with crocket capitals beneath a head-stopped dripmould. Sill strings and alternate-block jambs detail the openings throughout.

A short corridor from the north-west leads to the vestry, a single-storey structure with five mullion windows and a high-pitched roof. The attached cottage has a gabled front with tall windows on each floor, the upper forming an attic within the gable. A square stair tower with a boarded door in a double-chamfered arch and set-back stonework reducing to an octagonal turret with a conical roof stands to the left. A tall chimney rises at the rear of the cottage roof.

Inside the church, the 5-bay arcade has double-chamfered arches on round piers with crocket capitals. The chancel arch is of similar design, carried on shafts. The roof features scissor bracing supported on corbelled wall-posts. The chancel contains a shallow north recess, a south organ chamber and a carved stone reredos. A Perpendicular chancel screen divides the chancel from the nave. A Gothic stone pulpit with green marble shafts stands on six piers. The font is of alabaster in Romanesque style.

The church contains high quality stained glass. The east window dates to 1864 and was made by Morris & Company, with scenes by Morris and Burne-Jones except for the Sermon on the Mount. The west window and transepts contain glass of around 1866 in bright primary colours. The north aisle has east-west windows signed by Alex Gibb & Co. of London, Atkinson Bros of Newcastle, and C Baguley of Newcastle. The south aisle also contains fine glass, including a window by Kempe commemorating Charles Kitson (died 1881) and another dating to around 1882.

The site was purchased from Edward Backhouse of Ashburne House, who stipulated that the church should have a good spire. Among the wealthy contributors to the building's cost was James Hartley, a glassmaker.