Church Of St Paul

Church of St Paul

Parish church. Built in 1876 and 1902–5, designed by John Douglas. Constructed in stone-dressed red brick and timber framing with brick and plaster panels, and roofed in grey and grey-green slate.

The church comprises a through nave and chancel of 4 bays plus an apsidal bay (1876), an outer south aisle (1902), and a clock-housing on the spire (1905). The nave and original aisles sit beneath a single broad, steep roof with an impressive full-width apse to the east and a gable to the west.

The west end features a gabled ashlar porch with a lantern on a pier between two 20-panel doors, surmounted by 5 lancets in recessed arched panels. The remainder is stone-dressed brick with chamfered, pinnacled buttresses articulating the nave and aisles. Three large lancets sit above the porch, and a clock-face in a cusped stone surround is positioned near the apex of the gable. Set back slightly, a 2-storey porch to the west gallery stair on the north balances the hip-roofed apsidal baptistry on the south, each with a cusped lancet to each face. The outer south aisle has separate roofing in grey-green slates matching the baptistry.

The ground slopes steeply to the east. An open undercroft of increasing depth serves the outer aisle on the wall to the canted west end, supported by 3 brick piers carrying the aisle-floor bressumer on timber longitudinal arches. Below the sill-rail is brick-panelled close studding, with a cross-window in the canted west end. Three mullioned and transomed 5-light windows, each with an upper band of glazed quatrefoils, line this face. Between each pair of windows are 2 panels with centre-rail and lozenge bracing. The eaves are coved with plaster panels.

The eastern apse has a pair of small windows in recessed lancet-panels to each face of the crypt, moulded brick floorband and stone sillband, a 3-light east window, and 4 cusped lancets in each oblique face. A continuous roof spans the nave, original aisles and apse, with a west belfry spire rising from the roof, demonstrating Douglas's concern for solid geometry: a truncated pyramid beneath a triple band of bell-openings with slated louvres, a clock on the south face (probably 1905), and a broach spire. The roof of the 1902 outer south aisle has a hipped west end and a blunt pyramidal spire at the east end. The main roof features 3 hipped lucarnes on each slope and a "lean-to" lucarne on the north face of the spire.

The interior employs structural carpentry of pine. Four very tall octagonal aisle-posts line each side of the nave, supporting the mid-slopes of the roof. Arch-braced collar-beam trusses with crown posts span the nave; arched trusses serve the aisles. A steeply-sloped west gallery is present. Stone-banded cruciform brick piers support the south-west baptistry and outer south aisle. Floors are boarded. The plaster ceiling exposes all rafters and quadrant-braced purlins, including those to the apse which forms the presbytery. The walls are decorated with stencilled patterns in Arts and Crafts manner, graduated upward from dark to light colours—Douglas's symbol for earth and heaven.

A decorated organ occupies the east of the south aisle. A wrought-iron chancel screen and a low oaken screen to the south bay of the apse (used as vestry) are present. Oak desk and pine pews, probably by Douglas, furnish the church. Stained glass fills most windows, dating from 1881–1920: the Baptistry has glass by Frampton, the north aisle by Kempe, and the remainder by Morris and Company, with notably strong east window (1881), south-east window (1881), and east window of the south aisle (1887).

This was Douglas's own parish church. He designed its internal decoration, probably in 1902. The building demonstrates his mastery of timber framing and spatial articulation on a grand scale and is considered by Pevsner to be the boldest of Douglas's church designs. Among his Germanic buildings, it comes nearest to a Rhineland setting, seen from the liturgical east across the Dee, crowning a picturesque group of buildings on steeply rising ground.