Church Of St Thomas

LANCASTER

SD4761SE PENNY STREET 1685-1/8/224 (East side) Church of St Thomas

GV II

Parish church. 1840-41. By Edmund Sharpe, with a chancel and steeple of 1852-53 by Sharpe and Paley. Coursed squared sandstone and ashlar, and slate roofs with plain parapets to the gables and eaves. Aisled nave of 6 bays, under 3 separate pitched roofs, with a single-bay western nave extension forming a full-height narthex. 2-bay chancel and a steeple in the angle between the north aisle and chancel. Early English Revival style. The west front has 5 tall stepped lancets with a continuous hoodmould, and below these a triple doorway with 2-centred moulded arches without capitals, set under a triplet of stepped gables, each pierced with a trefoil; the central one cuts across the string course at the base of the windows. To either side are clasping buttresses with 2 offsets, these rise into square and then octagonal arcaded turrets, capped with a finial. The return walls have a single lancet, and the west walls of the aisles have a triplet of stepped lancets with clasping buttresses on the external angles. The aisle walls have 6 triplets of tall stepped lancets between buttresses. The chancel has 2 bays with single lancets on the south side and a triplet of tall stepped lancets at the east end, each under a separate hoodmould. At the east end of the south aisle is a 2-light window with plate tracery of 2 trefoiled lancets below a quatrefoil. The steeple has a square tower of 2 stages, with clasping buttresses and a stair turret projecting from its north-west corner. Above the level of the aisle it is octagonal, and each face of the belfry stage has a pair of trefoiled sub-arches set under a heavily-moulded 2-centred arch; on the cardinal faces the sub-arches have louvres. The spire is octagonal, with 2 tiers of lucarnes on the cardinal faces, a finial and an iron cross. INTERIOR: the galleries on the north, south and west sides are carried on quatrefoil cast-iron columns with brackets above the capitals; a second tier of columns above the panelled front of the galleries supports an arcade-plate from which the roof trusses spring; in both nave and aisles these have scissor-beams and kingposts, 2 purlins and windbraces, all of thin cross section. The tall chancel arch (of 1852) is deeply moulded and carried on 2 orders of ringed shafts; the triple lancets of the east window are deeply splayed and also have ringed shafts and a linked hoodmould. The roof has closely-spaced and thin trusses, in which the arched braces, joined at their head by a sort of collar purlin, are arranged to give a pointed trefoil outline. HISTORY: the church was established after disputes about the services at the Parish Church of St Mary (qv), and was built by subscription. A district was assigned to it in 1844, and it was consecrated in 1845.

Listing NGR: SD4775361424