Church Of St Mark

Church of St Mark is a Church built between 1844 and 1846, with a north aisle added in 1851. It was designed by Sir George Gilbert Scott for Lord Francis Egerton, 1st Earl of Ellesmere. The church is constructed of snecked stone with slate and copper roofs. It is an example of Gothic Revival architecture in a 14th-century style.

The church comprises a nave with clerestory, aisles, and a west tower; a chancel, a side chapel, a vestry, and an organ chamber. The nave and aisles have five bays, featuring weathered plinths, buttresses, and coped parapets. Each bay contains a two-light window with Geometrical tracery. A gabled porch is located in the second bay. The chancel has a five-light east window and is flanked by the side chapel and the organ chamber, all with parallel pitched roofs. The chapel has three bays, with enriched buttresses and a pierced parapet.

The imposing four-stage west tower features set-back weathered and gableted buttresses, a weathered plinth, bands at each stage, a west door, a three-light west window, clock faces on the third stage, two-light belfry openings below crocketed gables, and a dogtooth enriched eaves band with gargoyles. A spire is supported by flying buttresses and incorporates gabled lucarnes at the base, all richly decorated with crockets and gargoyles.

Inside, there are decorated piers and a double-chamfered nave arcade with hoodmoulds and head stops. It has hammer-beam roof trusses. A carved stone font is present, alongside a pulpit and organ case that incorporate 16th and 17th-century carvings of French and Flemish origin. The church also contains high-quality woodwork including choir stalls, sedilia, font canopies, and a near complete set of benches. An elaborate carved stone reredos with mosaic and inlaid stone panels was introduced in 1866, along with a mosaic floor and an iron screen, thought to be by J B Skidmore. The monument to Lord Francis Egerton, who died in 1857, was designed by Scott, with an effigy by Matthew Noble and decorative carving by J. Birnie Philip. The intensely coloured stained glass in the east windows is of unknown origin, although one window in the south aisle (SA2) is by Morris & Co., dating from 1905. This is an outstanding architectural creation by Sir George Gilbert Scott, notable for its exceptional group of contemporary and antiquarian fittings.