Church Of St Catherine With St Alban And St Paul

The Church of St Catherine with St Alban and St Paul is an Anglican church built in 1897 by Medland Taylor. It is constructed of coursed yellow sandstone rubble with red sandstone dressings and slate roofs with red ridge tiles, in an Arts and Crafts style. The plan is unusual, with the nave situated at right angles to the street, a north-west tower incorporating a porch, a south-west wing, an external south aisle, and an apsidal chancel with a north organ house and a south chapel.

The west facade consists of a wide central gable flanked by a small tower to the left and a set-back wing to the right. The tower has three short stages, the upper ones slightly set back, featuring a depressed arched doorway with a chamfered surround and moulded head, a shouldered lancet window, a small two-light window, and a belfry with wooden louvred openings and a swept pyramidal roof with a finial. The main gable has a ground floor arcade of three chamfered arches – the first two windows with one and two lights respectively, and the third a deeply-splayed ogival-headed doorway with a moulded surround and crockets spelling "CATHERINE" in carved letters in the head. A large four-centred arched window with cusped lights and a hood mould sits above, forming a pedestal for a statue in a niche, and the apex features three crosses. The two-storey set-back wing has small windows on each floor, an embattled parapet, a tall two-light window in the gable, and a passage at ground floor with Tudor-arched doorways. This passage leads through to an arcade or external aisle along the south side of the nave, formed by flying buttresses. The north side of the nave, with five bays and conventional buttresses, has tall windows alternately of two and three lancet lights. The chancel has four-light dormer windows in the first bay on both sides, the north bay gabled and the south bay with a hipped roof. The north chapel is canted, and the south chapel is rectangular with a carried-down roof.

Inside, the walls are brick. The nave and chancel are unified, with a massive arch-braced roof featuring semicircular arches, short king-posts with raked struts. A wrought-iron screen to the sanctuary has been mostly removed, as have the original choir stalls, reduced for liturgical reasons. The shallow apse has a wrought-iron baldachino, and a good stained glass memorial window of 1926 is located on the north side.