Roman Catholic Church of St Peter

Roman Catholic Church of St Peter

A Roman Catholic church built in 1838-9 by Matthew Ellison Hadfield. The high altar and reredos were added in 1869 by Edmund Kirby. The building is designed in Early English Gothic style and constructed from sandstone with slate roofs.

The church follows a rectangular plan comprising a four-bay nave and a single-bay east sanctuary contained under a single roof. The exterior walls are built of coursed, rock-faced stone, with larger ashlar blocks used for the west front facing the street. Details include a plinth, ashlar window surrounds, and stone eaves brackets. The double-pitched slate roof is supported by the stone structure.

The west front is symmetrical, with corner angle buttresses and buttresses flanking the wider central bay, all topped by octagonal pinnacles. The central arched doorway has an attached column to each side and a hood mould over with carved-head corbels. The timber double doors feature decorative ironwork hinges. Above the doorway is a triplet of lancets, while the outer bays each have a single tall lancet. The east front displays a blocked triplet of lancets with a square, steepled pinnacle at the apex and octagonal pinnacles to the corner angle buttresses; however, this elevation is partly obscured by modern single-storey pitched-roof buildings used as a garage and storage. The side elevations are divided into bays by shallow buttresses, each bay having a single tall lancet. Some lancets on the south elevation and the second and third lancets on the north elevation have been shortened where modern extensions have been attached. All church windows are glazed with modern geometric patterns.

Internally, the church is spanned by full-span, shallow king post trusses with struts. The walls are plastered and painted white. The sanctuary is articulated by shallow relief arches; the east wall has a large central arch flanked by a lower and narrower arch to each side, with a single arch to both side walls. The stone high altar reredos and tabernacle by Edmund Kirby are set within the central relief arch. A Crucifixion scene with relief-sculpted figures painted in gold is set in a crocketted and enriched gable flanked by pinnacles. The tabernacle is of polished alabaster with brass doors. The narrower side arches each contain a coloured marble altar with a Gothic timber reredos; the left altar incorporates a statue of the Virgin Mary and the right altar incorporates a statue of Joseph holding an infant Christ. The high altar is set forward and made of Sicilian marble supported on three green marble columns with two panels of Caen stone carved with medallions. To the right is an ambo formed from part of a 1901 Gothic stone pulpit; four columns from the same pulpit now support an octagonal stone font to the left of the high altar. A doorway within the sanctuary relief arch on the south wall leads through to the presbytery and sacristy. At the rear of the nave is a west gallery with a timber lattice front, an iron spiral staircase in the south-west corner, and a pipe organ positioned at the right-hand end of the gallery.

The sacristy attached to the south elevation, the west wall of the presbytery, the very late 20th-century single-storey day chapel, the 2006 parish centre both attached to the north elevation, and the modern single-storey garage and storage buildings attached to the east elevation are excluded from the listing.