Church Of St Anne

Church of St Anne

This church was built between 1872 and 1874 and was designed by Edward Middleton Barry, the third son of Sir Charles Barry. It is constructed in coursed yellow sandstone rubble with light buff freestone dressings and steeply-pitched red tile roofs with cockscomb ridge tiles, in the High Victorian Gothic style.

The building comprises a four-bay nave with an east bellcote, north and south aisles, a south porch, north and south transepts, a short chancel of almost full height with lower parallel north and south aisles, a gabled north vestry and an apsidal east end. All corners except the porch have angle buttresses with offsets.

The prominent gabled porch on the west end of the south aisle features angle buttresses, a 2-centred arched outer doorway with chamfered and moulded surround and inner moulding in 2 orders with set-in colonettes having foliated caps, a 2-centred arched inner doorway with lettering round the head and board doors with elaborate wrought-iron strap hinges, an oculus in the gable, gable coping carved at the apex, and a 2-centred arched 1-light window in each side wall.

The aisles contain windows of 2 segmental-headed lights with trefoil tracery. The nave has pairs of 2-centred arched 1-light windows with cusped bar tracery and trefoils in the heads, and a rose window in the west gable. Each transept has a pair of large 2-centred arched 2-light windows with trefoil bar tracery and a cinquefoil in the head, with a large cinquefoil above. The south side-aisle of the chancel has two 2-light windows with trefoil bar tracery and a tall 2-light window in the east gable; the north side-aisle and vestry have similar fenestration. The apse features a continuous arcade of 7 tall 2-centred trefoiled windows with flat-faced pilasters between the lights, imposts and moulded hoodmoulds. Tie-plates occur at the west end of the aisles and nave, and at the west side of each transept, with external tie-bars crossing the windows of the transepts and the east windows of the chancel aisles; these are believed to be original.

The interior has 3-bay aisle arcades of cylindrical columns with moulded annular caps and 2-centred double-chamfered arches with hoodmoulds linked at foliated stops, each different. A wagon roof with arch-bracing covers the nave. A large 2-centred chancel arch with colonettes rising from carved foliated corbels has a dogtoothed intrados and fleuron-enriched extrados. The north and south chancel arcades have 2 bays each with clustered shafts and carved foliated caps, with spandrels painted with angels playing harp and lute. A wooden screen has been inserted in the north arcade and an organ placed in the south arcade. The apse arch has clustered shafts with roll-moulding, and the arcaded apse windows contain free-standing colonettes with carved capitals. The apse walls have stencilled decoration of stylised sheaves of wheat in gold on a dusky blue background, believed to be original. An early 20th-century stone reredos is present. Various stained glass windows include a good, intensely-coloured memorial window in the south aisle commemorating Captain Hugh Brocklehurst Pilkington, killed at the Dardanelles in 1915. Tie-rods run along both aisles and across the transepts and nave.

The church was built at a cost of £16,000, paid for by Charlotte Ellen Corry (née Fletcher), daughter of a local colliery-owning family who were cousins of the Pilkingtons.