Church Of St Walburge

PRESTON

SD5229 WESTON STREET 941-1/6/288 (East side) 12/06/50 Church of St Walburge

GV I

Roman Catholic church. Begun 1850, opened 1854, tower completed c.1857 and spire added 1867, all by J.A.Hansom; with apse 1872, by Nichols of London. Coursed brown sandstone rubble with lighter-coloured sandstone dressings, slate roof; steeple of white limestone. Nave with short 3-sided apse and very tall south steeple. The nave and apse are in C13 French Gothic style, the steeple of C15 East Midlands type. The nave, a very large single-cell vessel with steeply pitched roof, has the entrance front at the west end: this has corner turrets with pinnacles and 2 large buttresses framing a wide centre and narrow outer bays, the centre containing coupled trefoil-headed doorways with shafts under a 2-centred arch moulded in 2 orders, the outer bays with cusped 2-centred arched doorways; over the whole, an arcade of nine 2-centred arched 2-light windows with shafts, quatrefoil heads and linked hoodmoulds; a very large wheel window in the centre, and spherical triangles with trefoil trecery in the outer bays; and over the wheel window an arcade of 5 stepped lancet lights. The 13-bay side walls have emphatic buttresses, and tall attenuated 2-centred arched 3-light windows with slender shafts and bar tracery quatrefoils in the heads; the 3-sided full-height apse, in matching and accentuated style, has full-height buttresses terminating in pinnacles, with blind-arcading to the top stages, and very tall attenuated windows with slender shafts and multifoils, with 3 lights in the east end and 2 lights at the sides, all under relieving arches. The tower (to the right of the 7th bay) is square in plan and of 3 tall stages, elevated on an open base of large 2-centred arches, with angle-buttresses terminating in pinnacles and a shaft in the centre of each side adding vertical emphasis, 2 tall slender 2-light belfry windows in each side, with shafts, cruciform tracery, and gablets with pinnacles; and a very tall octagonal spire (reaching 314 feet), the base clasped by pinnacles and small arched flying buttresses, with 2-light lucarnes in the cardinal sides. INTERIOR: like a medieval hall, with a spectacular hammer-beam roof which has painted statues on the hammer beams, arch bracing and cusped tracery; corbelled canted wall-pulpit on north side, with sounding board, and approached by wall-staircase with 3 arched windows which have cusped tracery; former organ loft in tower with large arched opening and projected gallery; elaborate wooden west gallery (with organ relocated from tower 1877); panelled dado, and windows with geometrical-patterned stained glass (by Maycock); various stained glass memorial windows at east end, by Hardman of Birmingham and Mayer of Munich, including one to Henry Lord Holland.

Listing NGR: SD5296029870