Church of St Peter, St Peters Street, Rochdale

Church of St Peter, St Peters Street, Rochdale

This church was built between 1868 and 1871 to designs by architects James Medland and Henry Taylor. It is constructed of polygonal sandstone rubble with orange brick detailing, and features blue and green slate roofs.

The church is planned with a nave lit by a clerestorey, side aisles, and a semi-octagonal chancel. To the flanks of the chancel are a north vestry and south organ chamber. The west end of the nave is preceded by a lean-to roofed porch, with a former baptistry to its north and a south porch to its south; the latter was intended as the base for a tower that was never completed. In 1984, the nave and aisles were divided by a screen at the half-way point, converting the west end of the nave and south aisle into a large meeting room, with a separate meeting room created in the west end of the north aisle. The former baptistry now serves as a kitchen, and the west porch contains WCs.

The exterior displays a stone plinth, brick banding, and overhanging eaves, with stonework laid in a crazy-paving manner. The use of yellow stone and red brick dressings and decoration creates an overall effect of constructional polychromy. The nave and aisles are divided into four bays by buttresses to the aisles and pilasters to the clerestorey, with two windows to each bay; the clerestorey features quatrefoil windows while the aisles have lancet windows. The south-west porch has a pyramidal slate roof, heavy diagonal buttresses, and a pointed-arched entrance flanked by two roundels containing relief carvings of the keys of St Peter and a shield and mitre; the timber double doors are fitted with decorative ironwork. A semi-octagonal stair turret on the west side elevation was intended for access to the uncompleted tower. The organ chamber, roofed at right angles to the chancel, has a rose window in the gable surrounded by surface grid decoration in brick. The chancel itself has heavy diagonal buttresses and coupled lancets to each face with traceried heads; beneath the windows runs a band of encaustic tiles bearing a religious inscription, while the central east face is decorated with a brick Celtic cross. The north vestry is built as a continuation of the north aisle. The square former baptistry at the west end has a steep pyramidal slate roof with narrow, trefoil-headed lancet windows.

Inside, the nave arcades have chamfered arches springing from circular, banded columns with semi-octagonal terminating pilasters, some bearing floral capitals and others moulded capitals. Relief-carved roundels occupy the spandrels. The chancel arch is inner-chamfered and springs from imposts with knotted tails. The chancel contains a decorative wrought iron screen, timber and decorative iron side screens, choir stalls, a timber communion rail, and a carved-stone reredos. The chancel roof employs scissor brace trusses, whilst the nave has alternating false hammerbeam trusses and collar-beam trusses. Floors throughout carry encaustic tiles with inscriptions at the altar rails, choir stalls, and chancel step. A carved stone pulpit stands in the church, and a carved stone font with timber lid, now positioned in the south-west porch, is also present. The windows contain stained glass by F Comere and J Capronnier dated variously from 1889 to 1908 (some damaged) and by Walmsley dated 1914.

The boundary wall enclosing the church and the modern former vicarage is not of special interest.