Church Of St Thomas

The Church of St Thomas, built between 1899 and 1905 by architects Austin and Paley, is located in Lytham St Annes. It is constructed from blood red Accrington brick in an English garden wall bond, featuring sandstone dressings and red tile roofs, and is designed in the Perpendicular style. The church comprises a nave with north and south aisles, a full-height chancel with a north transept, and a detached north-west tower connected to the aisle by a short passage.

The nave has a six-bay design with large four-light traceried clerestory windows that include transoms for the centre lights. At the west end, there is a full-height projected bay with canted corners, featuring a large segmental-pointed six-light west window with a transom and tracery, tall panels of blind tracery in the canted corners, and a stone parapet that rises in the centre over a blind oculus with mouchette tracery. Above this, in the gable, is a small niche and an apex cross. The south aisle includes four pairs of square-headed windows with tracery, a canted porch at the sixth bay, and a gabled baptistery attached to the first bay, which is banded and features a niche with a statue and a checker-board patterned parapet.

The chancel mirrors the aisle design, with three square-headed two-light windows featuring cinquefoil lights, a brick parapet, and a large five-light traceried east window with a brattished transom. The tall square tower has diagonal buttresses with offsets, an extruded stair-turret on the east side, stone bands, an arched west doorway, and a set-back belfry stage embraced by the buttresses, which includes blind arcading, louvred three-light windows, and a parapet adorned with coupled crocketed corner pinnacles.

Inside, there is a vaulted passage between the tower and the aisle, with six-bay aisle arcades supported by octagonal columns with moulded caps and two-centred double-chamfered arches. The large chancel arch matches this style, and the interior features brick walls and king-post roof trusses with two collars, the lower of which has arch-bracing.