Roman Catholic Church At Winwick Psychiatric Hospital

This is a Roman Catholic church, likely dating from around 1900, and probably designed by Synott, Synott & Powell of Liverpool. It was built as part of Winwick Psychiatric Hospital. The church is constructed of dark red brick with ashlar dressings and gabled and hipped Westmorland slate roofs, and it incorporates an Arts & Crafts interpretation of the Perpendicular style.

The building consists of an apsidal chancel with a linked vestry and sacristy, an aisleless nave, an eastern bellcote, an organ chamber and a stair tower. Architectural details include a plinth, string courses, buttresses, coped gables, and windows with simple tracery and stone mullions. The chancel has three flat-headed windows of three lights, along with a similar two-light window to the south. To the northeast are a two-story vestry and sacristy, featuring a shouldered gable containing a flat-headed window and, above it, a round arched window of four lights.

On the east side is a single-story hipped porch with a chamfered doorway and crenellated parapet. Behind this is a canted stair tower with slit windows and a prominent cruciform stack with chamfered coping. The nave has five segment-headed windows of three lights on each side, all with hood moulds. The east gable features a hipped and pinnacled triple bellcote, with a central bell opening flanked by louvred bell enclosures and topped with a cross.

The deeply recessed segment arched west gable doorway has three orders and a hood mould. Flanking it are flat-headed windows, and above is a round arched traceried window of seven lights, set on a sill band. A canted stair tower with a hipped roof stands to the southwest, with a flat-headed door to the west and mullioned windows above. The organ chamber to the northwest, two stories high, has a shouldered gable, two single lights to the north, and a round arched window of three lights above, with a door to the west.

Inside, the walls are of plain stock brick with ashlar dressings. The chancel features a rebated pointed arch without responds, and an arch-braced roof supported by corbels. Other features include a piscina, an aumbry, segment-headed doors leading to an integral ashlar pulpit, a mullioned window of four lights above the chancel arch, and a sill band. The nave incorporates an arch-braced principal rafter roof, also on corbels, a segment arched door to the southeast, and at the west end, three segment arched doors, the central one double. Above is a pointed arch containing the choir gallery and organ, with smaller pointed arched recesses on either side, one containing organ pipes and the other blocked. The west porch contains a stoup. Interior fittings include plain benches and a panelled wooden reredos.