Christ Church

Christ Church is a church built between 1856 and 1860 by Harrison of Wigan. It is constructed from sandstone rubble and features a roof made of hexagonal slates in bands of blue and purple. The building includes a west tower, a nave, and a chancel with a polygonal apse, designed in a mixed architectural style that combines elements from around 1200 with late Perpendicular details.

The narrow, four-stage battlemented tower has diagonal buttresses, with crocketed gablets at the first stage. It features a deeply moulded Tudor-arched west doorway adorned with decorated spandrels, and a transomed three-light west window set in a moulded two-centred arch with a hoodmould and a dripstone band. The tower also has three moulded circular clock faces, four transomed two-light belfry louvres, and prominent gargoyles at the corners.

The buttressed five-bay nave includes a gabled porch on the second bay and three-light windows in the Perpendicular style. The chancel has two similar windows and coping pierced by mouchettes. The five-sided buttressed apse features transomed two-light windows with cinquefoils in the heads and a battlemented coping.

Inside, the church has a scissor-braced hammerbeam roof. The dado of the apse displays Commandment tables made of glazed polychrome tiles. There is also a monumental effigy in white marble of Mrs. Frances Darlington, who died in 1897, created by J. Nesfield Forsyth in 1903. The church was built by James Darlington, a Justice of the Peace and coal mine proprietor.