Church of St Alban

Church of St Alban

A Roman Catholic church designed by Edward Goldie of London and built between 1898 and 1901. The building is executed in the Free Decorated Gothic Revival style.

The church is constructed of Yorkshire sandstone from Longridge Quarry with ashlar dressings and is roofed in slate. The plan comprises an aisled nave and aisled sanctuary with flanking chapels, a west narthex and baptistery, north and south transepts, and a west tower.

The church is a large town building set back from the road on a rising site, accessed by a drive from the west. The buttressed west front contains the main entrance, a deep and richly moulded doorway with arches springing from three shafts and intermediate arches. The front is gabled and has gabled flanking paired windows that light the narthex. Above this rises a huge west window with Geometrical tracery and a crocketed hood mould rising to an ornate niche in the gable apex. Attached to the right is a four-stage tower with stepped buttresses and a three-sided stair turret. The tower has a ground floor gabled side entrance of three orders with a carved tympanum depicting the Crucifixion. The two intermediate stages have decorated windows, and the upper stage has decorated belfry openings with triangular hood moulds. The tower is finished with a parapet and stout corner pinnacles. The aisle windows have hood moulds with label stops. The westernmost bay of the north aisle has a projecting, canted and buttressed baptistery with a conical roof. Two short lean-to projections to each aisle house confessionals, their gables breaking through the eaves. The nave rises above with bay divisions marked by deep and high gabled buttresses that break through the eaves and are finished by triangular coping. Each bay has a high three-light clerestory window set within a pointed arch. The transepts have large seven-light windows with Geometrical tracery. The south transept has a low, canted porch with a high opening. The east end is blind with a low rectangular projection whose sides are pierced by paired windows.

The interior is richly detailed. The sanctuary aisles and side chapels are rib vaulted whilst the sanctuary has a prominent pointed barrel vault. The sanctuary features tall arcades of clustered piers with quatrefoils in the spandrels, which continue around the side walls as blind arcading either side of the reredos. The quatrefoils in the spandrels contain painted figures of the Four Evangelists. The original high altar remains in its original location, featuring an arcaded marble frontal and a high, pinnacled reredos enriched with polychrome carving and gilding. Either side of the crowned tabernacle throne are depictions of the martyrdom of St Alban, and above a large crucifixion panel flanked by statues of a Martyr (possibly St Alban) and St Patrick. The forward altar is also highly enriched with marble arcading and mosaic panels of the Agnus Dei flanked by a chalice and the Hand of God. Good quality marble altar rails and early 20th-century ornate metal gates remain. Fine altars also remain to the side chapels: the Lady Chapel to the north is of white marble with gold detailing, and the Sacred Heart to the south is richly polychromatic, executed in Sicilian white and red marble with highly coloured figures.

The six-bay nave has a terrazzo floor and a barrel-vaulted ceiling. The arcade is plainly treated with chamfered arches appearing to be cut into the solid wall. The triforium is richly carved with blind tracery and brattishing. Wall shafts rise from this point and continue upwards as transverse arches. Below these in the spandrels are integral high relief Stations of the Cross which continue into the transepts. The stone pulpit is situated on the north side of the crossing with high relief carvings of angels and saints and above it a timber tester. The pews have shaped ends with inset carved quatrefoils and are considered to be original. Confessionals with Gothic traceried panelling and doors give off each aisle. The west gallery is carried on three arches with a central projecting bay to the front. The organ loft is reached from a stone staircase within the tower, and the organ pipes are arranged either side of the west window. The narthex has a railed off canted bay with a marble and alabaster pieta and marble plaques to the parish Fallen of the First World War. The north west corner contains a rib-vaulted baptistery retaining its original font, gates and sunken floor.

Slender and ornate cast-iron gate piers remain from the previous 18th-century church on the site. They have inset Gothic panels and ball finials, with a central carriage opening and flanking pedestrian openings.