Church Of St Margaret

The Church of St Margaret is a parish church dating from 1877 to 1879, designed by R Knill Freeman. It is built of coursed and squared rubble, cut in small blocks, with a graded slate roof and ridge cresting. A northwest tower was added in 1906.

The church comprises a nave with two aisles and a clerestory, transepts, a vestry and a chapel situated either side of the chancel. The tower has three stages, with a west doorway featuring shafts to the archway, and a plate traceried window on the north side. The upper stage contains a decorated window and a clock, and the bell chamber has triple chamfered lights. Clasping buttresses rise to an embattled parapet. A five-light Decorated window is located to the west, with a war memorial in traceried panels below. Lean-to aisles are expressed as three bays, each with paired, wide lancet windows. Paired Decorated clerestory lights have sandstone ashlar dressings in shallow panels. Four-light Decorated windows are present on the transepts. An octagonal turret with a spirelet is attached to the north transept. The chapel to the chancel has three-light mullioned and transomed windows, and the chancel itself features a five-light Decorated east window. A two-storeyed north vestry is also present.

Inside, a five-bay arcade features clustered shafts, including a single-banded marble shaft with a foliate capital that carries a square wall pilaster supporting cambered trusses of a coffered boarded ceiling. Carved heads serve as capitals to the responds. A subsidiary low and narrow arch is located at the west end, with angel corbels. Wider arches lead to the transepts, and there is a higher blind traceried clerestory overhead. Shallow segmental arches span the eastern ends of the aisles, likely serving as buttresses. The north transept contains an organ chamber and an organ built by Hills of London in 1886, and there is a chapel to the south. A wide chancel arch is present with shafts. A canted oak traceried chancel screen sits on a stone base, featuring an ogival central arch and a coved canopy. The integral pulpit has paired open traceried panels on each face. Stained glass in the south transept window is by Capronnier, dated 1887, and the west window is also by Capronnier, dated 1884. The east window is in a medieval style, depicting a narrative in dark coloured medallions and dated 1882. A medallion in the north-west window is said to have originated from an earlier church on the site. Various marble memorial tablets are located on the west wall, including one commemorating James Wolfenden, a mathematician, who died in 1841.