Stonyhurst College, Church of St Peter (RC)

Church of St Peter, Stonyhurst College

This Roman Catholic college chapel was built between 1832 and 1835 for the Society of Jesus, designed by J.J. Scoles. Internal alterations were made in the later 19th century by Edmund Kirby and others.

The church is constructed from sandstone ashlar with a deep moulded plinth, pilasters, string courses and parapets. It features octagonal turrets and pinnacles, with a Welsh slate roof covering the church and lead roofing over the sacristies and Silence Gallery.

The building follows a Perpendicular style plan with seven bays, comprising a nave and sanctuary under one roof with lean-to aisles, a clerestory and west gallery. The sacristies are positioned beyond the east end, with a Silence Gallery leading to the Shirk. The sanctuary is flanked by side chapels aligned to the north.

The west front displays double panelled doors in a Tudor-arched surround, surmounted by a 5-light perpendicular-style window. A moulded coped gable with cross finial rises above, flanked by octagonal stair turrets topped with traceried cupolas and crocketed ogee roofs. West doorways to the aisles have smaller Tudor-arched openings with lancets above. The nave clerestory features 2-light segmental-headed windows set between pilaster buttresses that rise as crocketed pinnacles above the roof parapet. The aisles have moulded plinths and string courses with 3-light Tudor-arched windows and gableted stepped buttresses. Side chapels on the north and south of the east end have gabled transepts with 4-light windows and angle buttresses. A Tudor-arched doorway stands to the left of the north chapel. The east end echoes the west design with a large 5-light window but without doorways. A single-storey sacristy range against the east end contains 3-light windows between stepped buttresses, with a 7-bay east elevation and 3-bay south elevation finished with low-pitched roofs behind parapets. All windows feature perpendicular-style tracery and hoodmoulds.

Internally, the walls are finished in painted plaster with an ashlar plinth and some polychromatic decoration. The sanctuary and nave form a single volume, with a seven-bay arcade supported on clustered columns with four-centred arches. The sanctuary features stencilled and frescoed decoration executed by Frederick Settle Barff of Preston in 1853–4. Additional decoration was added by Goodhart-Rendel in the 1950s, with clerestory angels painted by D. Marion Grant in 1954–5. The aisle floors are laid in stone with timber boards beneath the pews. The ceilings feature braced beams on corbels with ribbed panels decorated in polychrome. The sanctuary contains Gothic oak panelling and Gothic stone niches with saints on the east wall, dating to the 1850s. A Gothic marble high altar and reredos designed by Edmund Kirby and made by Norbury & Company of Liverpool was installed in 1893. The side chapels have traceried and gilded parclose screens, with the south chapel altar to St Peter relocated here in 1924 from Clayton Hall. Frescoes of St Francis Xavier and St Ignatius Loyola adorn the side chapel east walls, painted by Wurms and Fischer in 1854 for Barff of Preston.

The west gallery is carried on plain cast-iron columns with a panelled coved and painted front by Goodhart-Rendel. An organ case of limed oak designed by Adrian Gilbert Scott dates to 1929, housing a 1927 Willis organ that was rebuilt by Corkhill of Wigan in 1991. Below the gallery, arched doorways lead to the narthex, confessionals and a stone staircase.

The church contains high-quality fittings including a Lady Altar in the south aisle dated 1898, originally from the Lumsden family chapel in Wardhouse, Aberdeenshire. Nineteenth-century statues by Mayer of Munich are displayed throughout, alongside bronze relief stations of the cross by Stella Schmolle from 1952. The oak pews feature poppy heads, and an early 19th-century octagonal stone font is present.

The stained glass collection is extensive. The east window is attributed to J.H. Miller (1835). The west aisle windows were created by Hardman (1891), chapel transept windows by Willement (1849), and other aisle windows by Willement (1844), Worrall, Hardman (designed by Pugin) and Capronnier (1859–76). Clerestory glass by Lowndes and Drury dates to 1955.

The sacristies and Silence Gallery have plastered walls and stone floors with cambered ribbed ceilings supported on moulded beams and stone corbels. Stained glass in these spaces includes work by Hardman (1855) and Casolani. A notable collection of wall memorials commemorates Jesuit priests and school pupils from the early 19th century onward, including brasses by Hardman and a marble memorial to Walter Strickland (died 1867) by Buckler.