Church Of St Thomas

LYTHAM ST ANNES

SD32NW ST THOMAS ROAD, St Annes 621-1/2/118 (North East side) Church of St Thomas

GV II

Church. 1899-1905, by Austin and Paley. Blood red Accrington brick in English garden wall bond (3+1), with sandstone dressings and red tile roofs. Perpendicular style. Nave with north and south aisles, full-height chancel with north transept, and detached north-west tower linked to the aisle by a short passage. The 6-bay nave has large 4-light traceried clerestory windows with transoms to the centre lights, and at the west end a full-height projected bay with canted corners, a large segmental-pointed 6-light west window with a transom and tracery, tall panels of blind tracery in the canted corners, and a stone parapet ramped up in the centre over a blind oculus with mouchette tracery; and in the gable above, a small niche and an apex cross. The south aisle has 4 pairs of square-headed windows with tracery, a canted porch to the 6th bay, and attached to the 1st bay a gabled baptistery which is banded and has a niche with a statue and a checker-board patterned parapet. The chancel has an aisle like that of the nave, above this 3 square-headed 2-light windows with cinquefoil lights, a brick parapet, and a large 5-light traceried east window with 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 clasped by the buttresses, with blind-arcading, louvred 3-light windows, and a parapet with coupled crocketed corner pinnacles. INTERIOR: vaulted passage between tower and aisle; 6-bay aisle arcades of octagonal columns with moulded caps and 2-centred double-chamfered arches; large chancel arch in matching style; brick walls; king-post roof trusses with 2 collars, the lower with arch-bracing.

Listing NGR: SD3253828381