Church of St Margaret is a Grade II listed building in the Oldham local planning authority area, England. First listed on 8 March 1993. Church. 1 related planning application.

Church of St Margaret

WRENN ID
pitched-tracery-sepia
Grade
II
Local Planning Authority
Oldham
Constituency
Oldham West, Chadderton and Royton MP: Jim McMahon (Lab)
Country
England
Date first listed
8 March 1993
Type
Church
Address
Church of St Margaret, Chapel Road, OL8 4QQ
OS grid reference
SD 910 031
Coordinates
53.52451, -2.136
Source
Historic England listing

Also on this page: EPC · related consents · flood risk · radon risk · weather exposure · detailed attributes ↓

Description

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.

Local climate

Church of St Margaret sits in a wetter-than-average part of the UK, with an average of 1,040 mm of rain a year. This makes it wetter than 84% of listed buildings in the UK. Its exposure to wind-driven rain is greater than that of 76% of listed buildings.

It experiences an average of 43 freeze-thaw cycles a year, more than 84% of listed buildings. Of these, 24 follow at least 1 mm of rain in the preceding 48 hours. Average temperatures at this location have risen by 0.3°C per decade since 1991.

Averages for 1991–2020; temperature trend 1991–2025. Figures describe the wider area (a grid cell of roughly 10 km), not the individual site. Contains modified Copernicus Climate Change Service information 2026.

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