Church Of St Ann

The Church of St Ann is a former church dating from 1868 to 1869, designed by John Douglas of Chester. It is constructed of red brick in Flemish bond, with blue brick dressings, and has a slate roof. The church exhibits a High Victorian style with influences from 13th-century Rhenish architecture. The building comprises a nave without aisles, with north and south porches, a south-east tower, a north vestry, and an apsidal chancel.

The 6-bay nave features stout buttresses, a plinth, a string course of blue brick, and a brick cornice with a nail-head band. Gabled porches are located in the second bay of each side, each with broad, battered clasping buttresses, a 3-order chamfered 2-centred arch doorway, and pairs of small lancet windows. Most other bays contain paired lancet windows with roll-moulded surrounds. The south-east tower, a prominent feature, is broad and square, situated at the angle of the nave and chancel. It has straight angle buttresses to its south-east corner, with blue brick offsets at the belfry stage. A stair turret on the south-west is broad, clasped as a buttress, and rises above the parapet with a conical-roofed turret. There is a corbel table to the parapet, and a tall, steeply-pitched saddle-back roof with a tiered break at its base. The tower has a small lancet on the first stage, an arcade of three similar windows on the second stage, and coupled 2-centred arched belfry windows with chamfered surrounds and wooden louvres. The tall, semicircular apse has buttresses extending almost to its full height and high 2-centred arched windows with two lancet lights and a circular head. A gabled vestry is located on the north side, opposite the tower.

Inside, the nave is wide and lofty, with unusual internal buttresses between the windows, spanned by 2-centred arches and carrying wall-posts to an arch-braced wagon roof with arcaded ashlaring and wind-braced purlins. Blind arcading is located between these buttresses, and the chancel has slender shafts supporting an elegantly rib-vaulted roof. It was reportedly heated by steam from an adjoining brewery, which has now been demolished. The building is described as an "impressively forceful High Victorian piece," concentrating its principal features at the south-east corner, from which it is first seen.