Roman Catholic Church Of Saint Mary And Attached Presbytery

The Roman Catholic Church of St. Mary, built in the 1790s, features an attached presbytery under one roof. The building is constructed of red brick with a sandstone plinth and quoins, topped with a slate roof that has stone gable copings. The church is designed in a vernacular style and consists of five bays in a cruciform layout, with full-height transeptal wings at the third and fourth bays. Each bay contains a large round-headed window with a simple sandstone archivolt, most featuring many small panes supported by a light wooden transom and mullions, creating three lights. The verticals extend to form intersecting tracery in the window heads. The first bay's windows are two-stage and break at gallery level, while the fifth bay, which houses the sanctuary, features stained glass protected by outer glazing without glazing bars. The west gable wall is rendered and painted white, adorned with a gable bellcote and a semicircular Tuscan porch at the entrance. The presbytery, located at the east end, has two bays and two stories, with an added two-storey canted bay window on the projecting second bay and a re-set doorway leading to a 20th-century lean-to extension. A brick stack is positioned on the front slope of the roof. Inside the church, there is a gallery at the west end, a round-headed two-bay transept arcade with painted soffits, and a flat ceiling that transitions to a depressed elliptical arch at the sanctuary. The reredos features four Corinthian pilasters framing a blind arcade, all decorated with gilded and colored painting, including large figured roundels and a central lozenge depicting the Virgin, likely from the later 19th century.