Church Of St. Joseph

The Church of St. Joseph is a Roman Catholic church built in 1855 by Joseph Hansom, located on Leigh Chapel Street. It is constructed from hammer-dressed stone and features a slate roof with fishscale bands. The church is designed in the Gothic Revival style and includes a wide nave with a polygonal chancel, a west tower, a south porch, and north and south chapels along with a sacristy. The nave has nine bays, a projecting plinth, weathered and gableted buttresses, and three-light windows with Geometrical tracery. There are small gabled chapels of later date and a porch, as well as two and three-light windows in the chancel. The roof has vents and a three-stage tower with angled buttresses and a saddle roof. The tower features an octagonal stair turret, an arched west entrance, a statue and niche at the second stage, four cusped lancets at the third stage, and two-light belfry openings below gables that have a statue finial and are flanked by elaborate pinnacles. The roof also includes gabled dormers and a cast-iron ridge crest.

Inside, the church has an unusually wide hammer-beam roof with arch braces in two directions. It suffered structural failure early in its life, leading to the insertion of slender cast-iron columns to support the hammer-beam ends. There is a west gallery, timber fittings, stained glass, various statuary, and an elaborate altar with a reredos that incorporates a heavily enriched canopy above a crucifix. The chancel ceiling is brightly painted.